Citizendia
Your Ad Here

Athlon
Central processing unit

AMD Athlon logo
Produced: From mid 1999 to 2005
Manufacturer: AMD
Max CPU clock: 500 MHz to 2. The hertz (symbol Hz) is a measure of Frequency, informally defined as the number of events occurring per Second. 33 GHz
FSB speeds: 100 MHz to 200 MHz
Min feature size: 0. The hertz (symbol Hz) is a measure of Frequency, informally defined as the number of events occurring per Second. In Personal computers the Front Side Bus ( FSB) is the bus that carries data between the CPU and the northbridge. The hertz (symbol Hz) is a measure of Frequency, informally defined as the number of events occurring per Second. The hertz (symbol Hz) is a measure of Frequency, informally defined as the number of events occurring per Second. 25 µm to 0. A micrometre ( American spelling: micrometer; symbol µm) is one millionth of a Metre, or equivalently one thousandth of a Millimetre 13 µm
Instruction set: x86
Sockets:
Core names:
  • K7 (Argon)
  • K75 (Pluto/Orion)
  • Thunderbird
  • Palomino
  • Thoroughbred A/B
  • Barton/Thorton

Athlon is the brand name applied to a series of different x86 processors designed and manufactured by AMD. An instruction set is a list of all the instructions and all their variations that a processor can execute See also X86 assembly language The generic term x86 refers to the most commercially successful Instruction set architecture in the history of Personal Slot A refers to the physical and electrical specification for a 242-lead single-edge-connector used by early versions of AMD 's Athlon processor Socket A (also known as Socket 462) is the CPU socket used for AMD processors ranging from the Athlon Thunderbird to the See also X86 assembly language The generic term x86 refers to the most commercially successful Instruction set architecture in the history of Personal The original Athlon, or Athlon Classic, was the first seventh-generation x86 processor and, in a first, retained the initial performance lead it had over Intel's competing processors for a significant period of time. AMD has continued the Athlon name with the Athlon 64, an eighth-generation processor featuring AMD64 (later renamed x86-64) technology. The Athlon 64 is an eighth-generation AMD64 architecture Microprocessor produced by AMD, released on x86-64 is a Superset of the x86 instruction set architecture.

The Athlon made its debut on June 23, 1999. Events 1180 - First Battle of Uji, starting the Genpei War in Japan 1305 - The Flemish Year 1999 ( MCMXCIX) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1999 Gregorian calendar) Athlon was the ancient Greek word for "Champion/trophy of the games".

Contents

Background

AMD ex-CEO and founder Jerry Sanders developed strategic partnerships during the late 1990s to improve AMD's presence in the PC market based on the success of the K6 architecture. For the Mayor of San Diego California see Jerry Sanders (politician. One major partnership announced in 1998 paired AMD with semiconductor giant Motorola. Motorola Inc ( is an American, multinational Fortune 100, Telecommunications company based in Schaumburg Illinois. [1] In the announcement, Sanders referred to the partnership as creating a "virtual gorilla" that would enable AMD to compete with Intel on fabrication capacity while limiting AMD's financial outlay for new facilities. This partnership also helped to co-develop copper-based semiconductor technology, which would become a cornerstone of the K7 production process. Copper-based chips are Semiconductor Integrated circuits usually Microprocessors which use Copper for Interconnections Since copper Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to create chips the Integrated circuits that are present in everyday Electrical and electronic

In August 1999, AMD released the Athlon (K7) processor. Notably, the design team was led by Dirk Meyer, one of the lead engineers on the DEC Alpha project. Dirk Meyer (Derrick R Meyer * 1962 was co-architect of the DEC Alpha 21064 and 21264 Microprocessors He also worked at Intel in Alpha, originally known as Alpha AXP, was a 64-bit Reduced instruction set computer (RISC Instruction set architecture (ISA developed Jerry Sanders had approached many of the engineering staff to work for AMD as DEC wound the project down, and brought in a near-complete team of engineering experts. The balance of the Athlon design team comprised AMD K5 and K6 veterans. The K5 was AMD's first x86 processor developed entirely in-house introduced in March 1996 The K6 microprocessor was launched by AMD in 1997 The main advantage of this particular microprocessor is that it was designed to fit into existing desktop designs for

By working with Motorola, AMD was able to refine copper interconnect manufacturing to the production stage about one year before Intel. The revised process permitted 180-nanometer processor production. The accompanying die-shrink resulted in lower power consumption, permitting AMD to increase Athlon clock-speeds to the 1 gigahertz range. [2] AMD found processor yields on the new process exceeded expectations, and delivered high speed chips in volume in March 2000.

General architecture

Athlon architecture
Athlon architecture

Internally, the Athlon is a fully seventh generation x86 processor, the first of its kind. Like the AMD K5 and K6, the Athlon is a RISC microprocessor which decodes x86 instructions into its own internal instructions at runtime. The CPU is an out-of-order design, again like previous post-5x86 AMD CPUs. In Computer engineering, out-of-order execution, OoOE, is a paradigm used in most high-performance Microprocessors to make use of cycles that The Athlon utilizes the DEC Alpha EV6 bus architecture with double data rate (DDR) technology. In Personal computers the Front Side Bus ( FSB) is the bus that carries data between the CPU and the northbridge. In Computing, a Computer bus operating with double data rate transfers data on both the rising and falling edges of the Clock signal. This means that at 100 MHz the Athlon front side bus actually transfers at a rate similar to a 200 MHz single data rate bus (referred to as 200 MT/s), which was superior to the method used on Intel's Pentium III (with SDR bus speeds of 100 and 133 MHz). Gigatransfer (GT and Megatransfer (MT are terms used in computer technology referring to a number of data transfers (or operations Pentium III variants Katmai The first Pentium III variant was the Katmai (Intel product code 80525

AMD designed the CPU with more robust x86 instruction decoding capabilities than that of K6, to enhance its ability to keep more data in-flight at once. Athlon's CISC to RISC decoder triplet could potentially decode 6 x86 operations per clock, although this was somewhat unlikely in real-world use. A complex instruction set computer ( CISC, pronounced like " sisk " is a Microprocessor Instruction set architecture (ISA in which [3] The critical branch predictor unit, essential to keeping the pipeline busy, was enhanced compared to what was onboard the K6. Deeper pipelining with more stages allowed higher clock speeds to be attained. [4] Whereas the AMD K6-III+ topped out at 570 MHz due to its short pipeline, even when built on the 180 nm process, the Athlon was capable of going much higher. The K6-III, code-named "Sharptooth" was an X86 Microprocessor manufactured by AMD, which was the last

AMD ended its long-time handicap with floating point x87 performance by designing an impressive super-pipelined, out-of-order, triple-issue floating point unit. In Computing, floating point describes a system for numerical representation in which a string of digits (or Bits represents a Real number. x87 is a math-related instruction subset of the X86 architecture of processors. In Computing, a pipeline is a set of data processing elements connected in series so that the output of one element is the input of the next one A floating point unit (FPU is a part of a Computer system specially designed to carry out operations on Floating point numbers [3] Each of its 3 units were tailored to be able to calculate an optimal type of instructions with some redundancy. By having separate units, it was possible to operate on more than one floating point instruction at once. [3] This FPU was a huge step forward for AMD. While the K6 FPU had looked anemic compared to the Intel P6 FPU, with Athlon this was no longer the case. The P6 Microarchitecture is the sixth generation Intel X86 Microprocessor architecture released in 1995. [5]

The 3DNow! floating point SIMD technology, again present, received some revisions and a name change to "Enhanced 3DNow!". 3DNow! is the Trade name of a multimedia extension created by AMD for its processors starting with the K6-2 in 1998 In Computing, floating point describes a system for numerical representation in which a string of digits (or Bits represents a Real number. In Computing, SIMD ( S ingle I nstruction M ultiple D ata is a technique employed to achieve data level parallelism as in a Vector Additions included DSP instructions and an implementation of the extended-MMX subset of Intel SSE. Digital signal processing ( DSP) is concerned with the representation of the signals by a sequence of numbers or symbols and the processing of these signals MMX is a single instruction multiple data (SIMD Instruction set designed by Intel, introduced in 1997 in their Pentium line of S treaming '''S'''IMD E xtensions ( SSE) is a SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data Instruction set extension to the X86 [6]

CPU Caching onboard Athlon consisted of the typical two levels. Athlon was the first x86 processor with a 128 KiB split level 1 cache; a 2-way associative, later 16-way, cache separated into 2×64 KiB for data and instructions (Harvard architecture). A kibibyte (a contraction of ki lo bi nary byte) is a unit of Information or Computer storage, established by the International The Harvard architecture is a Computer architecture with physically separate storage and signal pathways for instructions and data [3] This cache was double the size of K6's already large 2×32 KiB cache, and quadruple the size of Pentium II and III's 2×16 KiB L1 cache. The Pentium II brand refers to Intel 's sixth-generation Microarchitecture (" Intel P6 " and x86 -compatible Microprocessors The initial Athlon (Slot A, later renamed Athlon Classic) used 512 KiB of level 2 cache separate from the CPU, on the processor cartridge board, running at 50% to 33% of core speed. This was done because the 250 nm manufacturing processes was too large to allow for on-die cache while maintaining cost-effective die size. Later Athlon CPUs, afforded greater transistor budgets by smaller 180 nm and 130 nm process nodes, moved to on-die L2 cache at full CPU clock speed.

Athlon

Athlon Classic

Slot-A Athlon logo on cartridge
Slot-A Athlon logo on cartridge
An open Slot-A cartridge
An open Slot-A cartridge
An Argon core "7th Generation Processor" Slot-A cartridge
An Argon core "7th Generation Processor" Slot-A cartridge

Athlon Classic launched on June 23, 1999. Events 1180 - First Battle of Uji, starting the Genpei War in Japan 1305 - The Flemish Year 1999 ( MCMXCIX) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1999 Gregorian calendar) It showed superior performance compared to the reigning champion, Pentium III, in every benchmark. [7]

Athlon Classic is a cartridge-based processor. The design, called Slot A, was quite similar to Intel's Slot 1 cartridge used for Pentium II and Pentium III; actually it used mechanically the same slot part as competing Intel CPUs (allowing motherboard manufacturers to save on costs) but reversed "upside-down" to prevent users putting in wrong CPUs (as they were completely signal incompatible). Slot A refers to the physical and electrical specification for a 242-lead single-edge-connector used by early versions of AMD 's Athlon processor Slot 1 refers to the physical and electrical specification for the connector used by some of Intel 's microprocessors including the Celeron, Pentium II The cartridge allowed use of higher speed cache memory than is possible to put on the motherboard. Like Pentium II and the "Katmai"-core Pentium III, Athlon Classic used a 512 KiB secondary cache. This cache, again like its competitors, ran at a fraction of the core clock rate and had its own 64-bit bus, called a "backside bus" that allowed concurrent system front side bus and cache accesses. In Personal computer Microprocessor architecture a back side bus ( BSB) or backside bus, is a Computer bus used to connect the [8] Initially the L2 cache was set for half of the CPU clock speed, on up to 700 MHz Athlon CPUs. Faster Slot-A processors were forced to compromise with cache clock speed and ran at 2/5 (up to 850 MHz) or 1/3 (up to 1 GHz). [9] The SRAM available at the time was incapable of matching the Athlon's clock scalability, due both to cache chip technology limitations and electrical/cache latency complications of running an external cache at such a high speed. Static random access memory (SRAM is a type of Semiconductor memory where the word static indicates that unlike ''dynamic'' RAM (DRAM, it does not

The Slot-A Athlons were the first multiplier-locked CPUs from AMD. This was partly done to hinder CPU remarking being done by questionable resellers around the globe. AMD's older CPUs could simply be set to run at whatever clock speed the user chose on the motherboard, making it trivial to relabel a CPU and sell it as a faster grade than it was originally intended. These relabeled CPUs were not always stable, being overclocked and not tested properly, and this was damaging to AMD's reputation. Although the Athlon was multiplier locked, crafty enthusiasts eventually discovered that a connector on the PCB of the cartridge could control the multiplier. Eventually a product called the "Goldfingers device" was created that could unlock the CPU, named after the gold connector pads on the processor board that it attached to. [10]

In commercial terms, the Athlon Classic was an enormous success — not just because of its own merits, but also because the normally dependable Intel endured a series of major production, design, and quality control issues at this time. In particular, Intel's transition to the 180 nm production process, starting in late 1999 and running through to mid-2000, suffered delays. There was a shortage of Pentium III parts. In contrast, AMD enjoyed a remarkably smooth process transition and had ample supplies available, causing Athlon sales to become quite strong.

Specifications

Thunderbird (T-Bird)

Athlon "Thunderbird"
Open Athlon Thunderbird slot A cartridge
Open Athlon Thunderbird slot A cartridge

The second generation Athlon, the Thunderbird, debuted on June 5, 2000. Events 1180 - First Battle of Uji, starting the Genpei War in Japan 1305 - The Flemish Year 1999 ( MCMXCIX) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1999 Gregorian calendar) Events 1777 - San Jose California, is founded as el Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe Year 1999 ( MCMXCIX) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display full 1999 Gregorian calendar) Events 70 - Titus and his Roman Legions breach the middle wall of Jerusalem in the Siege of Jerusalem 2000 ( MM) was a Leap year that started on Saturday of the Common Era, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. This version of the Athlon shipped in a more traditional pin-grid array (PGA) format that plugged into a socket ("Socket A") on the motherboard (it also shipped in the slot A package). A pin grid array, often abbreviated PGA, refers to the arrangement of pins on the integrated circuit packaging Socket A (also known as Socket 462) is the CPU socket used for AMD processors ranging from the Athlon Thunderbird to the It was sold at speeds ranging from 600 to 1400 MHz. The major difference, however, was cache design. Just as Intel had done when they replaced the old Katmai Pentium III with the much faster Coppermine P-III, AMD replaced the 512 KiB external reduced-speed cache of the Athlon Classic with 256 KiB of on-chip, full-speed exclusive cache. Pentium III variants Katmai The first Pentium III variant was the Katmai (Intel product code 80525 As a general rule, more cache improves performance, but faster cache improves it further still. [11]

AMD changed cache design significantly with Thunderbird. With the older Athlon CPUs, the CPU caching was of an inclusive design where data from the L1 is duplicated in the L2 cache. Thunderbird moved to an exclusive design where the L1 cache's contents are not duplicated in the L2. This increases total cache size of the processor and effectively makes caching behave as if there is a very large L1 cache with a slower region (the L2) and a very fast region (the L1). [12] Because of Athlon's very large L1 cache and the exclusive design which turns the L2 cache into basically a "victim cache", the need for high L2 performance and size was lessened. AMD kept the 64-bit L2 cache data bus from the older Athlons, as a result, and allowed it to have a relatively high latency. A simpler L2 cache reduced the possibility of the L2 cache causing clock scaling and yield issues. Still, instead of the 2-way associative scheme used in older Athlons, Thunderbird did move to a more efficient 16-way associative layout. [11]

The Thunderbird was AMD's most successful product since the Am386DX-40 ten years earlier. The Am386 CPU was released by AMD in 1991. A 100%-compatible clone of the Intel 80386 design it sold millions of units Mainboard designs had improved considerably by this time, and the initial trickle of Athlon mainboard makers had swollen to include every major manufacturer. Their new fab in Dresden came on-line, allowing further production increases, and the process technology was improved by a switch to copper interconnects. In the Microelectronics industry a semiconductor fabrication plant (commonly called a fab) is a factory where devices such as Integrated circuits are manufactured Dresden (etymologically from Old Sorbian Drežďany, meaning people of the riverside forest, Drježdźany is the Capital city of the German In October 2000 the Athlon "C" was introduced, raising the mainboard front side bus speed to 133 MHz (266 MT/s) and providing roughly 10% extra performance per clock over the "B" model Thunderbird. In Personal computers the Front Side Bus ( FSB) is the bus that carries data between the CPU and the northbridge. Gigatransfer (GT and Megatransfer (MT are terms used in computer technology referring to a number of data transfers (or operations

Specifications

Athlon XP/MP

In performance terms, the Thunderbird had easily eclipsed the rival Pentium III, and the early Pentium 4 were a long way off the pace, but gradually clawed their way closer. Events 70 - Titus and his Roman Legions breach the middle wall of Jerusalem in the Siege of Jerusalem 2000 ( MM) was a Leap year that started on Saturday of the Common Era, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. Slot A refers to the physical and electrical specification for a 242-lead single-edge-connector used by early versions of AMD 's Athlon processor Socket A (also known as Socket 462) is the CPU socket used for AMD processors ranging from the Athlon Thunderbird to the Socket A (also known as Socket 462) is the CPU socket used for AMD processors ranging from the Athlon Thunderbird to the The Pentium 4 brand refers to Intel 's line of single- core mainstream desktop and Laptop Central processing units (CPUs introduced The 1. 7 GHz P4 (April 2001) served notice that the Thunderbird could not count on retaining performance leadership forever, and thermal and electricity-consumption issues with the Thunderbird design meant that it was not practical to take it past 1400 MHz (and even at that speed it was rather hot).

Palomino

Athlon XP "Palomino" 1600+

AMD released the third major Athlon version on October 9, 2001, code-named "Palomino", and named it Athlon XP. Events 768 - Carloman I and Charlemagne are crowned Kings of The Franks. Year 2001 ( MMI) was a Common year starting on Monday according to the Gregorian calendar. The Athlon XP was marketed using a PR system, which compared its performance to an Athlon with the "Thunderbird" core. The PR ( P erformance R ating system was developed by AMD in the mid-1990s as a method of comparing their X86 processors to those of rival Athlon XP was introduced at speeds between 1333 and 1533 MHz, with ratings from 1500+ to 1800+. At launch, the new core allowed AMD to take the x86 performance lead with the 1800+ model, and enhance that lead with the release of the 1600 MHz 1900+ less than a month later. [13] The "XP" suffix is interpreted to mean eXtreme Performance and also as an unofficial reference to Windows XP. Windows XP is a family of 32-bit and 64-bit Operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on Personal computers including home and [14]

Palomino was the first K7 core to include the full SSE instruction set from the Intel Pentium III as well as AMD's 3DNow! Professional. S treaming '''S'''IMD E xtensions ( SSE) is a SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data Instruction set extension to the X86 Pentium III variants Katmai The first Pentium III variant was the Katmai (Intel product code 80525 3DNow! is the Trade name of a multimedia extension created by AMD for its processors starting with the K6-2 in 1998 It is roughly 10% faster than Thunderbird at the same clock speed, thanks in part to the new SIMD functionality and to several additional improvements. The core has enhancements to the K7's TLB architecture and the addition of a hardware data prefetch mechanism to better take advantage of available memory bandwidth. A Translation lookaside buffer ( TLB) is a CPU cache that is used by memory management hardware to improve the speed of Virtual address [15]

Changes in core layout result in Palomino being more frugal with its electrical demands, consuming approximately 20% less power than its predecessor, and thus reducing heat output comparatively as well. [16] While Athlon "Thunderbird" was near its clock ceiling at 1400 MHz, changes to Palomino's transistor layout and the reduction in power demands allowed it to continue increasing clock speed even at the same 180 nm manufacturing process node and core voltage.

The "Palomino" was actually first released as a mobile version, called the Mobile Athlon 4 (codenamed "Corvette"). [15] Palomino was also available in a form that officially supports dual processing, known as Athlon MP. [17]

Specifications

Thoroughbred (T-Bred)

Athlon XP "Thoroughbred A" 1700+

The fourth-generation Athlon, the Thoroughbred, was released 10 June 2002 at 1. Events 768 - Carloman I and Charlemagne are crowned Kings of The Franks. Year 2001 ( MMI) was a Common year starting on Monday according to the Gregorian calendar. Events 1190 - Third Crusade: Frederick I Barbarossa drowns in the Sally River while leading an army to Jerusalem See also 2002 (disambiguation Year 2002 ( MMII) was a Common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. 8 GHz, or 2200+ on the PR system. The PR ( P erformance R ating system was developed by AMD in the mid-1990s as a method of comparing their X86 processors to those of rival The "Thoroughbred" core marked AMD's first production 130 nm silicon, resulting in a significant reduction in die size compared to its 180 nm predecessor.

There are two versions of this core, commonly called A and B. The A version was introduced at 1800 MHz, and had some heat and design issues that held its clock scalability back. In fact, AMD wasn't able to increase its clock above Palomino's top grades. Because of this, it was only sold in versions from 1333 to 1800 MHz, replacing the larger Palomino core. The B version of Thoroughbred has an additional metal layer to improve its ability to reach higher clock speeds. It launched at higher clock speeds.

Other than the new manufacturing process, the Thoroughbred design was largely the same as the "Palomino". The Thoroughbred line received an increased front side bus clock during its lifetime, up to 333 MT/s from 266 MT/s. This improved the processor's memory and I/O access efficiency, and improved per-clock performance as a result. AMD shifted their PR rating scheme accordingly, making lower clock speeds equate to higher PR ratings.

Specifications

Barton and Thorton

Fifth-generation Athlon Barton-core processors released in early 2003 featured PR ratings of 2500+, 2600+, 2800+, 3000+, and 3200+. Events 1190 - Third Crusade: Frederick I Barbarossa drowns in the Sally River while leading an army to Jerusalem See also 2002 (disambiguation Year 2002 ( MMII) was a Common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. Events 1192 - Minamoto Yoritomo becomes Seii Tai Shōgun and the De facto ruler of Japan. See also 2002 (disambiguation Year 2002 ( MMII) was a Common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. The PR ( P erformance R ating system was developed by AMD in the mid-1990s as a method of comparing their X86 processors to those of rival While not operating at higher clock rates than Thoroughbred-core processors, they earned their higher PR-rating by featuring a total of 512 KiB L2 cache and, in some models, a faster 400 MT/s front side bus. [18] The Thorton core was a variant of the Barton with half of the L2 cache disabled and thus functionally identical to the Thoroughbred core.

By the time of Barton's release, the "Northwood" Pentium 4 had become more than competitive with AMD's processors. [19] Unfortunately, due to the architecture of AMD's processor caches, an L2 cache increase to 512 KiB did not have nearly the same impact as it did to Intel's line. Only an increase of several percent was gained in per-clock performance. [18] The PR rating became somewhat inaccurate because some Barton models with lower clock rate weren't consistently outperforming their higher-clocked Thoroughbred predecessors with lower ratings. [19]

The other improvement, a higher 400 MT/s bus clock, helped Barton gain some more efficiency. However, it was clear by this time that Intel's quad-pumped bus was scaling well above AMD's double-pumped EV6 bus. The 800 MT/s Pentium 4 bus was well out of Athlon's reach. In order to reach the same bandwidth levels, the Athlon bus would have to be clocked at levels simply unreachable. [18]

The K7 architecture had scaled to its limit. Maintaining performance equivalence with Intel's improving processors would require a significant redesign. [18] AMD would soon launch Athlon 64. The Athlon 64 is an eighth-generation AMD64 architecture Microprocessor produced by AMD, released on

Specifications:
Barton (130 nm)

Thorton (130 nm)

Mobile Athlon XP

Athlon XP Mobile "Barton" 2400+
Athlon XP Mobile "Barton" 2400+

Mobile Athlon XPs (Athlon XP-M) are identical to normal Athlon XPs, apart from running at lower voltages, often lower bus speeds, and not being multiplier-locked. The clock multiplier (or CPU multiplier or bus/core ratio) is the ratio of the internal CPU Clock rate to the frequency of its external address/data bus The lower Vcore rating caused the CPU to have lower power consumption (ideal for battery-powered laptops) and lower heat production. Athlon XP-M CPUs also have a higher-rated heat tolerance, a requirement of the tight conditions within a notebook PC.

The Athlon XP-M replaced the older Mobile Athlon 4. The Mobile Athlon 4 used the older Palomino core, while the Athlon XP-M used the newer Thoroughbred and Barton cores. Some specialized low-power Athlon XP-Ms utilize the microPGA socket 563 rather than the standard Socket A. Before changing the number of pins for Socket A from 453 to 462 please consult the article at http//en

The CPUs, like their mobile K6+ predecessors, were also capable of dynamic clock adjustment for power optimization. The K6-III, code-named "Sharptooth" was an X86 Microprocessor manufactured by AMD, which was the last When the system is idle, the CPU clocks itself down through a lower bus multiplier and also reduces its voltage. For other meanings including people named Idle see Idle (disambiguation. Then, when a program demands more computational resources, the CPU very quickly (there is some latency) returns to intermediate or maximum speed to meet the demand. This technology was marketed as "PowerNow!". PowerNow! is speed throttling and power saving technology of AMD's processors used in Laptops The CPU 's Clock speed and VCore It was similar to Intel's SpeedStep power saving technique. SpeedStep is a Trademark for a series of technologies (including SpeedStep SpeedStep II and SpeedStep III built into some Intel The feature was controlled by the CPU, motherboard BIOS, and operating system. In Computing, the BIOS (ˈbaɪoʊs An operating system (commonly abbreviated OS and O/S) is the software component of a Computer system that is responsible for the management and coordination AMD later renamed the technology to Cool'n'Quiet, on their K8-based CPUs (Athlon 64, etc), and re-imagined it for use on desktop PCs as well. Cool'n'Quiet is a CPU speed throttling and power saving technology introduced by AMD with their Athlon 64 processor line The Athlon 64 is an eighth-generation AMD64 architecture Microprocessor produced by AMD, released on

Athlon XP-Ms were popular with desktop overclockers, as well as underclockers. Underclocking also known as downclocking is the practice of modifying a synchronous circuit's speed settings to run at a lower Clock speed than the manufacturer's The lower voltage requirement and higher heat rating resulted in CPUs that were basically "cherry picked" from the manufacturing line. Cherry picking may also refer to the process of Collecting erroneous Coins Cherry picking is the act of pointing at individual cases or Being the best of the cores off the line, the CPUs typically were more reliably overclocked than their desktop-headed counterparts. Also, the fact that they weren't locked to a single multiplier was a significant simplification for the overclocking process. Some Barton core Athlon XP-Ms have been successfully overclocked to as high as 3. 1 GHz.

As stated, the chips were also liked for their underclocking ability. Underclocking is a process of determining the lowest Vcore at which a CPU can remain stable at for a given clock speed. The Athlon XP-M CPUs were capable of running lower voltages per clock rate compared to their desktop siblings. As such, the chips were used in home theater PC systems due to their high performance and low heat output at low Vcore settings. A Home Theater PC ( HTPC) or media PC is a convergence device that combines the functions of a Personal computer and a Digital video recorder.

Athlon competitors

Supercomputers

The fastest supercomputers based on AthlonMP:

See also

References

This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL. The Athlon 64 microprocessor from AMD is an eighth-generation CPU targeted at the consumer market Athlon is the name of a family of CPUs designed by AMD, targeted mostly at the desktop market The Athlon XP microprocessor from AMD is a seventh-generation CPU targeted at the consumer market The Sempron is AMD's newest low-end CPU replacing the Duron processor The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing ( FOLDOC) is an online searchable encyclopedic Dictionary of Computing subjects The GNU Free Documentation License ( GNU FDL or simply GFDL) is a Copyleft License for free documentation designed by the Free Software

  1. ^ MOTOROLA PREPARES TO MANUFACTURE AMD'S UPCOMING K7 CHIP. HP (1998-08-07). Year 1998 ( MCMXCVIII) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1998 Gregorian calendar) Events 322 BC - Battle of Crannon between Athens and Macedon following the death of Alexander the Great.
  2. ^ AMD Announces First Revenue Shipments From Dresden "MEGAFAB", AMD Press Release, June 5, 2000.
  3. ^ a b c d Hsieh, Paul. 7th Generation CPU Comparisons.
  4. ^ De Gelas, Johan. The Secrets of High Performance CPUs, Part 1, Ace's Hardware, September 29, 1999.
  5. ^ Pabst, Thomas. Performance-Showdown between Athlon and Pentium III, Tom's Hardware, August 23, 1999.
  6. ^ Womack, Tom. Extensions to the x86 architecture.
  7. ^ Lal Shimpi, Anand. AMD Athlon, August 9, 1999.
  8. ^ De Gelas, Johan. Clash of Silicon, The Athlon 650, Ace's Hardware, September 29, 1999.
  9. ^ Lal Shimpi, Anand. AMD Athlon 1 GHz, 950 MHz, 900MHz, Anandtech, March 6, 2000, p. 2.
  10. ^ Noonan, Jim and Rolfe, James. Athlon Gold-Finger Devices, Overclockers. com. au, accessed August 24, 2006.
  11. ^ a b K7 microarchitecture information, Sandpile. org, accessed September 26, 2006.
  12. ^ Stokes, John. Inside AMD's Hammer: the 64-bit architecture behind the Opteron and Athlon 64, Ars Technica, February 1, 2005:p. 9.
  13. ^ Wasson, Scott. AMD's Athlon XP 1900+ processor: Pouring it on, The Tech Report, November 5, 2001.
  14. ^ Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Introducing the AMD Athlon XP Processor.
  15. ^ a b Lal Shimpi, Anand. AMD Athlon 4 - The Palomino is Here, Anandtech, May 14, 2001, p:4-5.
  16. ^ Wasson, Scott. AMD's Athlon XP 1800+ processor: 1533 > 1800, The Tech Report, October 9, 2001.
  17. ^ Lal Shimpi, Anand. AMD 760MP & Athlon MP - Dual Processor Heaven, Anandtech, June 5, 2001.
  18. ^ a b c d De Gelas, Johan. Barton: 512 KB Athlon XP Reviewed, Ace's Hardware, February 10, 2003.
  19. ^ a b Lal Shimpi, Anand. AMD's Athlon XP 3000+: Barton cuts it close, AnandTech, February 10, 2003.

External links

© 2009 citizendia.org; parts available under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License, from http://en.wikipedia.org
 Dapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic