X-bit labs

AMD Sempron Specifications Get Disclosed.

Category: CPU

by Anton Shilov

[ 07/21/2004 | 01:33 AM ]

As introduction of AMD Sempron processors comes closer, specifications of initial flavours of the chip transpired at a mainboard maker's web-site. Despite of earlier assumptions, peculiarities of the AMD Sempron processors do not match those of AMD Athlon XP chips.

AMD positions its Sempron microprocessors for value segment and will act against Intel’s Celeron on the market. AMD Sempron is a product family that will live on for quite a while and will be compatible with various infrastructures. All chips will feature different specifications, performance and price and will not be compatible with each other in terms of packaging. Mobile AMD Sempron central processing units are likely to feature similar packaging with desktop products.

AMD Sempron for Socket A – Shortly!

The initial AMD Sempron microprocessors will be designed for Socket A infrastructure and will contain cores used in the current AMD Athlon XP microprocessors. The Sunnyvale, California-based chipmaker plans to replace AMD Athlon XP processors with AMD Sempron chips in the third quarter of the year, some sources said. The first Sempron processors will extend life of Socket A mainboards with new SKUs and are likely to be available on the market for quite some time.

The introduction of Socket A Sempron processors will happen shortly and mainboard makers are already preparing to support the new chips.

The Sempron processors for Socket A will use 333MHz EV-6 processor system bus and will integrate 256KB of L2 cache. The chips will require 1.6V Vcore support from the mainboard and are likely to be compatible with existing infrastructure for AMD Athlon XP products.

AMD Sempron processors are likely to be slower compared to the AMD Athlon XP processors with the same model number. Despite of the fact that some Sempron chips got a boost of processor system bus, their clock-speed was decreased compared to the Athlon XP processors.

AMD has always said it names model numbers of its central processing units relatively to performance of AMD Athlon “Thunderbird” processor that was marked with real clock-speed. However, it is generally believed that AMD tried to match Intel Pentium 4 chips with its model numbers for the Athlon XP product line.

Initially AMD Athlon XP processors were positioned against Intel Pentium 4 chips with 533MHz Quad Pumped Bus and 512KB of cache, while the Sempron chips will compete with Celeron D chips with 533MHz PSB and 256KB of cache.

AMD Sempron for Socket 754 – Later in Q3 2004

Later in the third quarter AMD is expected to launch Socket 754 flavour of AMD Sempron processors. Unofficial sources said that AMD Sempron processors for the Socket 754 infrastructure are likely to feature AMD Athlon 64 core, but with disabled 64-bit capability. Formerly such chips were code-named Paris and Victoria. “Paris” will be made using 130nm process and is expected to have 256KB of L2 cache, whereas the size of L2 of the code-named “Victoria” processor produced using 90nm technology is not known.

AMD Sempron for Socket 939 – in Q1 2005

In early 2005 AMD is likely to release another version of Sempron chips for Socket 939 mainboards. Currently there are no details about such chips except some obvious suggestions. It is not clear whether PGA939 value central processing units from AMD feature dual-channel memory controller.

Among advantages of the AMD Sempron microprocessors in PGA754 and PGA939 packaging integrated single-channel PC3200 memory controller, SSE2 technology, better pre-fetch mechanism and generally revamped architecture over AMD Athlon XP chips should be mentioned.

AMD did not comment for the news-story.