AMD adds tri-core Phenom to desktop lineup

By Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor -- Electronic News, 9/18/2007

Delivering what it is calling a “multi-core triple threat” and seemingly to steal some of the spotlight on opening day today of rival Intel Corp.’s developer forum being held in San Francisco this week, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) today announced triple-core Phenom processors to its desktop roadmap.

Last week, AMD launched its long-awaited and often delayed Barcelona quad-core Opteron x86 processor and believes its Phenom triple-core processors will be the world’s first PC processors to integrate three computational cores on a single die of silicon. The processors aim to help deliver the visual experience, performance and multitasking capabilities of true multi-core technology to a broader audience.

Even with delays, AMD’s strategy seems to be working. Last week, market research firm iSuppli Corp. reported its final estimate of Q2 microprocessor market share, showing that AMD gained 2.5 percentage points in the quarter compared to Q1 to take a 13.4 percent share of overall microprocessor revenue. Meanwhile, Intel lost 2 percentage points in share during Q2, ending up with a still-impressive 78.8 percent stake of the overall market.

Hector Ruiz, chairman and CEO of AMD sat down recently with Electronic News/Electronic Business to discuss the company's strategy, which, for the triple-core Phenom is to address the demand for increased performance on desktop PCs when running state-of-the-art applications. The processors are expected to be available in Q1 2008 to compliment the company’s quad-core Phenom processors, which remain on schedule to ship this year.

Greg White, VP and general manager of AMD’s desktop division, noted in a statement that the tri-core Phenom is a direct result of the company’s development of its quad-core design, which combined with AMD’s manufacturing flexibility allows the creation of multi-core processors in two, three, and four computational core configurations on a single die of silicon.

Given that quad-core processors represented less than 2 percent of desktop shipments in Q2 2007, according to Mercury Research, AMD believes this suggests the need for a wider selection of multi-core solutions and that its triple-core processors may stimulate broader multi-core adoption with a product family that scales to more points-of-entry for the customer.

The company noted that it is also working with Microsoft Corp. to explore the possibility of making power and performance improvements through triple-core processing in the tech giant's products.

In terms of technical details, the AMD Phenom processor family is based on the company’s direct connect architecture, and contains an integrated memory controller to accelerate performance for productivity, content creation, entertainment, and gaming.

In addition, this architecture includes AMD’s balanced smart cache for rapid access to memory, with a shared L3 cache for leading-edge performance on multi-threaded software. With HyperTransport 3.0 and up to 16-gigabits per second of high bandwidth I/O, the Phenom processors are designed to deliver what the company says is “amazing” HD video and gaming resolutions, as well as high-speed disk and network interfaces. AMD’s Cool'n'Quiet 2.0 technology allow independent frequency adjustments to each processor core, while the HyperTransport bus and memory controller allow for a cooler and quieter PC, AMD claimed.

Finally, the triple-core processors are being positioned as providing significant performance advantages over similar dual-core AMD processors in industry standard benchmarks, including SYSmark 2007 and 3DMark 2006, as well as similar quad-core AMD processors in certain gaming and digital content creation scenarios.

For a detailed opinion on this AMD news, see "AMD's Phenom: Chop o' the morning to you!" from EDN's Brian's Brain blog.