amdplanet.it

A questo indirizzo, è stata pubblicata un'interessante analisti tecnica e commerciale delle architetture AMD Quantispeed ed Intel NetBurst. Nello stesso articolo si parla del nuovo Athlon XP 2000+ e del rivale Northwood 2.2GHz.

With the Athlon XP, AMD has a core that has more execution units than the P4Â’s and a pipeline that is only half as deep as IntelÂ’s chip. Consequently, the Athlon XP does not need to reach high clock rates to produce equivalent performance levels. With a smaller, simpler, more efficient design the Athlon XP is not as susceptible to regionalized overheating, and while the Pentium 4 has by far the more sophisticated thermal regulation circuitry, arguably it needs it.

However, adopting Intel’s level of clock gating would likely help AMD’s chips attain higher speeds. More aggressive clock gating is likely in AMD’s future design. Interestingly, the Athlon XP’s much shallower pipeline does not appear to be the limiting factor to the chip’s clock speed ramping. Rather, heat is. Likewise, thermal issues will likely prevent the Northwood from reaching the full potential of its deep pipeline – unless voltage transients stop it first.