I probably should know better than to cite The Inquirer as a source, but in this instance there is, or has been, a certain amount of corroboration. On the 15th of August, AMD officially announced that they had taped out their first quad-core Opteron chip. The press announcement is here:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~111541,00.html
However, you will note that there's no mention of "K8L" in this, nor any mention of dramatically improved Floating Point performance, which (according to some) is K8L's identifying characteristic.
Now, according to The Inq, what taped out (and is promised for Q2/2007) is not K8L, it is simply a quad-core version of the existing Opteron archtitecture.
Reference: http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33906
Ordinarily I don't pay much attention to the Inq, but in this instance it makes some sense. A while back it emerged that AMD had told the Taiwanese motherboard makers that we wouldn't see K8L any time before Q1/08. And there was also talk at one stage of AMD producing another chip, (some said a non-K8L quad-core, some said a dual-core K8L) in Q2/07. When the quad-core tape-out announcement appeared, everyone (including The Inquirer!) leaped to the conclusion that this was K8L. But I think it makes more sense to assume that what we thought we knew a month ago was actually correct, namely that we will not see K8L or any other new core architecture from AMD until Q1/08.
Who's up for some ill-informed speculation on this point?
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~111541,00.html
However, you will note that there's no mention of "K8L" in this, nor any mention of dramatically improved Floating Point performance, which (according to some) is K8L's identifying characteristic.
Now, according to The Inq, what taped out (and is promised for Q2/2007) is not K8L, it is simply a quad-core version of the existing Opteron archtitecture.
Reference: http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33906
Ordinarily I don't pay much attention to the Inq, but in this instance it makes some sense. A while back it emerged that AMD had told the Taiwanese motherboard makers that we wouldn't see K8L any time before Q1/08. And there was also talk at one stage of AMD producing another chip, (some said a non-K8L quad-core, some said a dual-core K8L) in Q2/07. When the quad-core tape-out announcement appeared, everyone (including The Inquirer!) leaped to the conclusion that this was K8L. But I think it makes more sense to assume that what we thought we knew a month ago was actually correct, namely that we will not see K8L or any other new core architecture from AMD until Q1/08.
Who's up for some ill-informed speculation on this point?
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