AMD Goes 0.13-micron

Not long ago, AMD made a big technological leap in their manufacturing process with their latest Thoroughbred processors. These new processors are now manufactured with the latest 0.13-micron technology and will represent AMD's latest line of processors which will extend the lifespan of the Athlon XP until ClawHammer comes into the picture some time late this year or Q1 of 2003.

The Thoroughbred retains the same design and build of the Athlon XP core. The only difference is the shrink in manufacturing process which brings about a smaller die size. Reducing the Athlon XP die to the size of current AMD Duron processors, you can tell that AMD is making an active effort in reducing the cost of their processors while increasing their output to meet market demands. For a while, AMD has been plagued with shortage, especially with parts rated at higher speeds. With Thoroughbred, AMD did not only shrank the die, but reduced the voltage, lowered the power consumption and most importantly, gave it a much needed speed bump.

The new Athlon XP 2200+ processor now consumes only 62.1W of power, approximately 13.5% lower than its previous 2100+ processor which is based on the 0.18-micron manufacturing technology. Although they have managed to lower the voltage, they are still behind Intel in terms of technological supremacy as the Pentium 4 at 2.53GHz actually runs a lot cooler than the Athlon XP. This means that AMD still have lots of room for improvement.

Although AMD shrank the die for the Athlon XP, they did not increase their Level 2 cache to 512KB like what Intel did to their Pentium 4 processors. It still contains the same 256KB of Level 2 cache and it will stay this way until AMD introduces the Barton which we think would have a vast impact on overall performance. However, AMD is still very much into their ClawHammer (K8) project and so far, we have not heard anything about Barton at all.