AMD confirms Sempron model number changes

CHIP FIRM AMD said that pressure from its customers caused it to introduce its "value" Sempron chips at the end of July, and not the 17th of August, which was its original intention, as we reported some while back.

And the firm also confirmed our earlier reports that the model numbers used for its Sempron processors use a different system than before. Ryan Crouch, desktop business development manager at AMD Austin, described those as a "subset" of the existing numbers - only including suitable applications geared to the value rather than performance end of the market.

Crouch said some people had asked why AMD did not use the Athlon XP to launch its attack on Celeron Ds, which he confirmed was the target of the Sempr0n introductions. The basic answer to that was die cost, he said. Sempron chips will gradually displace Athlon XPs, but will target Celeron Ds on both price and performance.

He said: "Each [AMD] brand is associated with a computing style. For each brand we have a different benchmarketing scenario"

He said that his competitor's model number scheme - that's Intel as you know - was ultimately based on a feature set unique to a processor, that is to say frequency, front side bus and cache.

"We're trying to offer a way for people to compare the performance," he said.

Here, for example, is how AMD compares the Sempron to Intel's Celeron D, using the subset performance models Crouch mentioned.

The processors have already entered the distribution channel, and Crouch confirmed other model numbers will gradually be phased in during the course of this year. µ