AMD's Response to New Celeron (Willamette-128)

[NFS4]

http://xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1017814067


<< It has been no secret for anyone for a long time already that Intel is going to move the entire value Celeron family to a new Willamette-128 processor core. The new Celeron processors, which are to be announced so time after May 20 will have Pentium 4 architecture with smaller 128KB L2 cache, will work in Socket478 and feature the initial core clock frequency of 1.7GHz. This will be no happy turning for AMD, because Celeron (Willamette-128) will work at much higher clock frequencies than the budget solutions from AMD Duron family.

Therefore AMD has to undertake something in response. Luckily, a new 0.13micron Appaloosa core is to come soon, and it is intended exactly for Duron processors. However, Appaloosa, which is a direct successor to the currently used Morgan core doesn?t have any architectural differences from its predecessor and feature 64KB L2 cache. It means that by simply shifting the whole Duron family to a new 0.13micron Appaloosa core AMD will not solve the problem.
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[Priit]

Considering lackluster performance of Willamette with 256Kb L2, I wouldn't worry too much. Looking how much P4 gained from extra L2, it seems to be rather sensitive about cache size. Castrating it with 128Kb L2 may turn it into total dog...

 

[giocopiano]

The way the basic news is wrapped I find unwelcome. The news is: Intel will release a new Pentium 4 in a miserable state, since the design is so dependent on bandwidth. Why post the news implications of market share. This is not a forum for market analysts and those who fool themselves these chip companies are a hot investment.
AMD will simply use the PR rating for Durons.
AMD seem unconcerned with developing their x86 chips further, they have bigger things on their mind for the end of the year. Frankly, I've got bigger things on my mind too.

 

[Athlon4all]

I will add that NFS4 left out in his auote one key bit of info. Appolasa like the Inquirer has reported before, will be using the same 133MHz DDR fsb that the Athlon XP uses, which is really what has been holding the Duron back for a while now and really AMD has got nothing to worry about. The "slowest" Duron 1600+ Model (1.4GHz) could compete with a Williamette-128 clocked as high as 2GHz, and it'll spank anything lower than that (that's very important 'cause the Willy-128 is supposed to be debuting at 1.7GHz). AMD's got control here for now. We'll see though how quickly Intel Ramps up the clock speed.