AMD readies Castle, Snowmass and Dragonfly

SOURCES CLAIMED chip company AMD has several X86-based Geode products on the boil, codenamed Castle, Snowmass and Dragonfly.

AMD appears to be making a real effort to bring the Geode chips - originally developed by NatSemi courtesy of Cyrix, to fruition.

The Geode Castle, the sources said, will be built by TSMC on a .13µ (micron), support two DIMMs using DDR 400 memory, include an 128-bit random number generator, and clock up to 1GHz at less than one watt. Quite an achievement, if AMD pulls it off. The chip will support 66MHz PCI, and include 64K of L1 and 128K of L2 cache.

Snowmass could operate at between 0.9 volts and 1.3 volts, support proper operating systems rather than CE, and include a series of inbuilt functions on one chip with very low power consumption. It may even support PCI Express, USB 2.0, and include support for cameras as well.

The Dragonfly's plans seem more advanced. This 90 nanometre processor will clock at 1.3GHz at four watts, 1.1GHz at two watts, and 800MHz at 1.3 watts.

It will support SSE1, SSE2, MMX, the NX bit, and the much vaunted Microsoft Longhorn security. It will also have an integrated DDR-2 memory controller, supporting 533 and 666MHz speeds, four PCI Express controllers, and even boot from NAND.

AMD may well position some of these chips, when they come off the drawing board, against low cost and low powered processors from Intel belonging to the cut down Centrino family, it appears.

We have no information on time scales for these processors. µ