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Intel Faces Strong Challenge from AMD
Is the WinTel dominance over the PC universe crumbling at the edges? The synergistic combination of software and central processing chips forged so successfully by Microsoft and Intel is far from losing its place as king of the computer hill, but it is facing new challenges.
For Microsoft, of course, the main problem it faces is the legal one, the threat of being broken up into two separate companies. A lesser thorn in Bill Gates' side is the growth of Linux and other open source code, including Apache, which rivals NT in the Internet server arena.
In the case of Intel, the clear and present danger comes from AMD and its expanding impact on the central processing unit (CPU) market. AMD's current Athlon chips already have leapfrogged Intel offerings in some respects and a recently-announced cross-licensing deal with Motorola promises to result in high-performance copper-based chips running at more than twice the speed of today's fastest mainstream CPUs.
This could make AMD an even more formidable competitor for Intel, which has not yet announced plans for a similar copper interconnect technology.
Only a few years ago, AMD was strictly a minor league player. Its products were the poor relations of the CPU family, while Intel was Big Daddy, Big Mama and Big Brother, all rolled into one.
The K6 processor marked the beginning of AMD's rising fortunes, but a modest one. The chip was used only in lower-priced computers, and vague rumors surfaced that it might not be fully compatible with all Windows features and some applications. That was fully laid to rest with the advent of K6-2 chips, but the gurus advanced new doubts. Would AMD be able to produce the chips in adequate quantities to win respectable market share?
Then came the K7 chip. It attacked Intel right in the heart of its most lucrative product area: high-end, premium-priced, cutting-edge processors for power or work station users and other early adopters willing to pay top dollar for the latest and greatest in computerdom.
Better known as the Athlon, the K7 processor is totally different from that of the earlier K6 series. The processor has an internal architecture, which uses Digital Equipment Corporation's Alpha EV6 system interface technology. This gives it a system bus interface of 200 MHz, capable of delivering data transfer rates of up to 1.6 GB/sec. The EV6 can scale up to 400 MHz in future, as faster processors arrive. The Athlon has a 128 KB L1 cache broken into two 64 KB instruction and data caches each. It is a .25 micron chip with 22 million transistors
By contrast, the latest Pentium III (PIII) processors run have a 100 MHz system bus. The PIII has a 32 KB L1 cache. Both processors have a 512 KB L2 cache. It is also a .25 micron but with 9.5 million transistors
The Athlon employs enhanced 3DNow! technology. Instead of the original 21 instructions meant to improve the floating-point capabilities of the processor, the K7 has 45, or 24 new instructions. They are designed improve the processor's performance in speech-recognition and video processing, and to provide enhanced functionality for Internet browser plug-ins. They also add new digital signal processor (DSP) instructions, to enable better communication with soft modems, ADSL, and sound.
The PIII fits into a Slot 1 motherboard based on the Intel SE440BX-2 chipset. The Athlon fits into a Slot A motherboard based on the AMD-750 chipset. This chipset consists of two chips, namely the AMD-751 and AMD-756. The first controls the 200 MHz front-side bus, system memory, AGP, and the PCI bus. The second one controls the PCI-to-ISA bridge, USB interface, and EIDE interface for both UltraDMA/33 and UltraDMA/66.
What does all this mean in practical terms? Essentially there seems to be little difference between the K7, or Athlon, and equivalent PIII chips when it comes to running typical productivity programs: word processing, spreadsheets, presentation apps and the like.
Where the Athlon outpaces the PIII in most cases is in high-end tasks, such as CAD and other graphics-intensive processing where good fleeting point capability is important. This is a major improvement in an area where previous AMD processors were notably weak
(Continued on page 3)
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