Socket F to debut in July

THE TIME OF Rev. F is approaching rapidly. Since Intel used the last two weeks to invite highly-ranked journalists to test WoodCrest processors in a secret bunker in Oregon, AMD hasn't been sleeping lightly.

The performance level of WoodCrest may be putting the smiles back on the faces of Intellers, but those smiles tend to disappear when you mention four or eight-socket platforms. WoodCrest has a ticket to ride in the single and dual-socket arena, but anything more than that ends in tears and bottlenecked system bus, which just can't keep up with coherent HyperTransport links in-between the cores.

AMD's first-hand response was the briefing on the impressive K8L architecture, which our own Charlie has thoroughly dissected over the past couple of months. But first, the time for the DDR-II 400/533/667/800 supporting, 1207-golden dot K8-based processor is scheduled to begin in the coming weeks.

New packaging puts it on the same level as Intel and, of course, we're talking about the Land Grid Array packaging. The New Opterons bring several improvements to the table, with the most notable one being an improved memory controller. The purpose of new memory controller is solving that nasty 1GB/s read and write speed lag that company experienced when it introduced dual-cores to the product line.

We heard that the platform will be out the door with all the supporting products on 11th of July, but you can expect a lot more info at Computex, a month ahead of the official introduction. Intel had a lot of Conroes Core 2 Duos shown at the E3 show, a month ahead of the official launch.

Of course, you can expect our detailed coverage from Computex, which is scheduled to open on June the 6th, just a mere three weeks from now. µ