Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

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Re: Yonah looks very good at the same frequency. The question is can it keep up with or surpass Athlon X2 frequency? I seems like it might in the mobile space and will be a great part there, but I haven't seen any evidence to date that Yonah or derivatives will equal or exceed Athlon X2 frequency in the desktop/server space.

You've got the right idea, at least as far as I know. Yonah is a mobile designed chip, which looks to debut at 2.16GHz and later get a boost to 2.33GHz, both of which fall below today's Athlon X2 frequencies. In mobile, however, I think Yonah stands a very good chance of leading in frequency, at least compared to AMD's 90nm parts (and I don't see them launching 65nm prior to Merom).

Re: that coming soon, or will we have to wait for Conroe/Woodcrest to possibly see this? AMD may be facing some trouble in the 2nd half of 2006. I expect AMD to improve both IPC and frequency by then, but I expect Merom/Conroe/Woodcrest will have a more significant IPC and/or frequency boost.

I've seen some unsubstantiated rumors claiming that Conroe will debut at 2.93GHz:

http://www.x86-secret.com/?option=newsd&nid=909

I think it's likely that it will be somewhere in the upper 2GHz, but perhaps 3+ GHz is possible for their Extreme Edition parts.

At any rate, AMD is not expected to get much above 2.8GHz on 90nm, and 65nm is still up in the air. AMD at the same process node may compete quite well in frequency, but Conroe should lead quite well in performance/watt of the micro-architecture, at least until we know more about AMD's 2007 core.