Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[sgolds]

jhalada, I consider artificial segmentation to be a necessary evil. It should be used only judiciously to prevent wholesale cannibalism of high margin product by low margin product. However, if you do too much of this then competitors will take your market by offering more for less. It is a balancing act, certainly!

There was a rumor posted here a few weeks ago which talked about a socket 754 32-bit AthlonXP. Someone thinks it is going to happen. However, you make a good argument that we need to get as much AMD64 out in the wild as possible, so I am convinced that the socket 754 replacement for AthlonXP should be 64-bits.

However, there still is that cannibalism effect. I don't think the reduced cache is enough to prevent this, so I like your idea of limiting memory to 4GB (32-bits). This part could still be marketed as AthlonXP because it leaves out one important part of Athlon64, yet still supports AMD64.

We seem to mostly agree about the benefits of a small die offering for the value market, so there probably isn't need for further followup on this thread. Whether it limits addressing is not the most important aspect. Having a cheap part to soak up extra 90nm capacity is the important item, IMO.