AMD's dual core Toledo to sample first half 2005

AMD ROADMAPS seen by the INQUIRER at the now famous Porcupine pub show that AMD will release its desktop Toledo dual core 939 pin chip at 90 nanometres and using SOI in the second half of next year.

The desktop Toledo was broadly hinted at by AMD CEO Hector Ruiz at a conference call a few days ago.

You have to understand where this chip comes in AMD's plans. It's a successor to the San Diego chip, with 1MB L2 cache, which samples in the second half of this year and will be produced in the first half of next year. That's a successor to the Clawhammer 939 pin with 1MB cache that forms the flagship of AMD's Athlon FX family.

Winchester, the Athlon 64 939 pin 512K chip at 90 nanometres will ship in the second half of this year.

So to reprise, in Q2 05 we'll see the FX57, which follows the FX55, which in turn is the successor to the FX53. The FX55 is slated to emerge around Q4 of this year. AMD will continue to position the FX* family against Intel's Extreme Edition - so price changes will probably march in step.

And the Sempron, originally based on the Thoroughbred core, will move to the Paris 754 pin core soon at 130 nanometres, to be displaced in Q3 by Mr Palermo, who will make an offer you can't refuse in Q4 of this year at 90 nanometres.

AMD is telling its customers its long term strategy is to split Sempr0ns and Athlon 64 as completely different brands, an interesting proposition indeed. Why not just sell the Sempr0n brand to Via? µ