AMD cuts chips down, paves way for only dual-core processors
07.02.06 - 04:02pm
I’ve been looking over the news lately and it seems like AMD and Intel have lately been focusing their efforts on undercutting each other in prices. Intel fired the first shot with the Pentium D 805 with a $130 price tag was nearly unbeatable. Then AMD announced upcoming price cuts on its entire line with up to 47% off current prices. Intel countered this move with similar price cuts which will put the majority of the Pentium D processors under $200. The latest shot from AMD is the introduction of a new Athlon, the X2 3600+.
The current budget dual-core processor from AMD is the x2 3800+. Featuring a 2GHz clock and 512KB of cache per core, this chip comes rather well equipped for the price. The new X2 3600+ will run with the same 2GHz clock however it will only contain 256KB of cache per core. Traditionally Athlons have had 512KB per core while the budget Semprons have had 256KB per core. With this round of price cuts coming up the 3800+ will retail for $169 while the 3600+ is estimated to retail around $120 or so to compete with Intel’s budget Pentium D’s. Now to be honest I would really consider this chip to be a Sempron in everything but name, so what does this mean for AMD’s future?
Dual Core Budget Chips?
When AMD moved their FX line of chips to dual-core chips this began a trend that has slowly trickled down AMD’s product line. Now the high and middle range processors are all dual-core while just a few single-core processors remain in the low range Athlon line. AMD is currently in the process of phasing out nearly every single-core Athlon on the s939 platform while the low range AM2 single-core Athlons will survive till the beginging of 2007. Now when you put all of this together, it starts to look like AMD is trying to ditch all single-core processors. With the nature of processor manufacturing and speed testing and binning, as their main cash cow becomes the dual-core processor, it makes sense for them to drop their single-core processors and focus on a single processor die.
Most of the current single-core processors have a final ship date in the range of the next 6 months or so and there aren’t any announcements for new single-core processors. I would be willing to bet that by this time next year AMD will have cut down all single-core production to two or three Athlons and then just Semprons. I’d also be willing to bet that there might be a dual-core Sempron ready for the market when AMD decides to introduce it’s 65nm manufacturing process. Either way, it looks like AMD has started to make the move to dump its single-core operations and I wouldn’t be surprised if we never see a single-core processor from AMD on the new 65nm process.
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