AMD to roll out 45nm Phenoms, Semprons H2 '08?

Single-core Athlons for the chop sooner, it's claimed

By Tony Smith • Get more from this author

25th June 2007 10:00 GMT

AMD looks set to introduce Socket AM3 processors in the second half of 2008, reports coming out of Asia suggest. Sooner, though, it will begin phasing out single-core Athlon-branded chips, the moles also allege.

AMD currently offers four 90nm, one-core Athlon 64 CPUs: the 3200+, 3500+, 3800+ and 4000+, along with "energy efficient" versions of the 3500+ and 3800+, both fabbed at 65nm. Chinese-language site HKEPC claims the 65nm parts are no longer being offered to customers, while the 90nm chips are in very short supply.

In their place, it's said, AMD will release a raft of 45W Semprons using the chip maker's new numbering scheme: the 1.9GHz LE-1100, the 2GHz LE-1150, the 2.1GHz LE-1200, the 2.2GHz LE-1250 and the 2.3GHz LE-1300. All but the first two have 512KB of L2 cache the LE-1100 and LE-1150 have 256KB-sized caches.

Single-core Sempron and Athlon chips are expected to become up to 15 per cent cheaper early in July, AMD has already indicated.

The Sempron line's next update will apparently come in H1 2008 with the arrival of 'Spica', a single-core, 512KB L2, HyperTransport 3, Socket AM2+ generation of chips fabbed at 65nm.

During the latter half of next year, AMD will introduce 'Sargas', the reports claim, which introduces Socket AM3 and the ability to use DDR 3 memory to the Sempron series.

The Socket AM3 chips - said to be compatible with Socket AM2+ motherboards - will all be fabbed at 45nm, and we should expect versions for the dual-core Phenom X2 - 'Regor' and 'Propus' - and for the quad-core Phenom X4 and FX - 'Deneb' and 'Deneb FX', the latter incorporating Socket 1207+ backward compatibility.

The Denebs and Propus all feature shared L3 cache as per their upcoming 65nm equivlents: respectivelt, 'Agena FX', 'Agena' and 'Kuma', many of which are now expected to appear later than previously anticipated.