Athlon Recharged

Will AMD's Hammer Nail It?

AMD plans to unveil its eighth-generation CPUs in late 2002. The chips will sport entirely new designs and will debut in desktop PCs with an Athlon processor code-named ClawHammer. AMD Opteron, a chip designed for workstations and servers and offering support for multiple CPUs, should follow by mid-2003. Both CPUs will require new chip sets and motherboards; they won't use AMD's current Socket A scheme.

Opteron and ClawHammer will work with today's 32-bit applications and will also support 64-bit software through AMD's x86-64 instructions. AMD is hoping to use ClawHammer's 64-bit capability as an OinO to corporations, which have been fiercely loyal to Intel. Despite hype about 64-bit computing, consumers will be most interested in ClawHammer for its ability to maximize the use of fast system memory. Unlike today's Athlon XP, which communicates with main memory through the frontside bus, ClawHammer will talk directly with main memory using a memory controller that's integrated with the CPU, thereby eliminating some bottlenecks and improving performance. ClawHammer PCs are expected to support AGP 8X graphics cards, too.

As for the 64-bit capability, it will primarily be of use to programs that perform calculations in huge chunks or to those that must address very large amounts of memory, such as large enterprise databases, where a great deal of information needs to be processed and moved with no interruption, explains IDC analyst Shane Rau.

On the workstation and server side, the biggest question surrounding AMD Opteron machines is how many vendors will make them. Intel has an impressive customer base for its Itanium, says Kevin Krewell, general manager at MicroDesign Resources; meanwhile, AMD finds itself boxed out of most top-tier workstation and server companies.

For most of us, the transition to 64-bit computing is still years away. The vast majority of users simply don't work with the CAD, professional 3D, scientific modeling, and high-end database tools that will get the biggest boost from 64-bit technology.