AMD shows off quad core roadmap

STABILITY WAS the attribute which AMD seemed most keen to project at its recent Dresden press conference.

While simultaneously outlining its policy of sticking to the same core, AMD also promised to be only one step behind Intel in offering quad-core technology.

According to the company's latest roadmap for servers and workstations, it will be introducing quad-core technology in 2007. That's actually Q2 2007 as opposed to Intel which is due to offer quad-core in Q4 2006.

At Dresden, Armari's technical director, Dan Goldsmith, told journalists: "The AMD Opteron processor roadmap for servers features just one AMD64 core over a six year period, which means we don't have to make costly decisions choosing between different architectures."

The roadmap also outlines improvements in the chipset and platform support areas. However, Richard Baker, European channel marketing manager with AMD, was at pains to point out that the company's acquisition of ATI wasn't going to affect AMD's support for other manufacturers' offerings.

The company wasn't going to "hoist" the use of ATI graphic chips onto its channel partners, Baker said. It was going to claim, however, that AMD offers the best platform support for Windows Vista.

AMD also revealed that it intends to go big on its power management facility, which it calls PowerNow! This will enable the processor to operate in five power states - as opposed to Intel's three states - and fall back down to 32 watts as opposed to 95 watts when running at optimum speed. µ

AMD quad core roadmap slide