The map (See link below) shows the following Opteron cored tracks:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/V...04_608,00.html

The sledges give way to "Athens," and sledges are 4-8 ways with multiple subversions based on scaling capacity.

There are (see map for why I say ARE) two variants of Athlon64's, the desktop version and the mobile Athlon64. Both will first be released as will be what was coded "Clawhammer," and claw was a 1-2 way code. The desktop "claw" will give way to SanDiego, the mobile will give way to "Odessa." Odessa is likely to speed step, as a competitive move against the P4-Mobile, which does NOW, and might also be a lower voltage core so as to gen less heat.

The May map says that they will be 90nm cores, ALL of them, sometime in about the first half of 2004. I am thinking that this might get accellerated.

I also do not know that AMD might not make a dual-cored desktop processor in the Athlon64 line.

That would fit engineerings def of "Clawhammer."

I also do not know if the 1-2 way Opterons will not simply be renamed as Athlon64's(In so far as the core used), and possibly the one-way depiped as you say(If it was in fact ever piped, AFAIK 1-way was only a single pipe out, the 2-way claw was talked about as being one or the other (1 or 2 out), and the Sledges were talked of as 2-3 output pipes.

So although I was a tib vague, it was because I heard contrary things over the passage of a year's time from reputable journalists who were interviewing AMD high level folks. But at present, AMD, in their online virtual pressroom, is indicating that all the opterons and the Athlon64's will be 90 nm cores during 2004 at the latest.

One reason I say at the latest is that Linux devs have folks in AMD engineering helping them, and those folks said to dev on Opteron bases and helped get the Linux folks sample platforms to dev on. And that relates with the timing of the Athlon64 subversion of Linux by two distros.

I would almost bet my remaining eye tooth that the cores of the Opteron 1 and 2 ways will get transplanted onto packages that fit the new forthcoming socket that does not take the 4-8 ways and that those CPUs will get called Athlon64's--and that this will happen about the time the cores are transitioned to 90 nm production.

Similar to the way the new Celerons have essentially the old P4 core, and similar to the way someone stuck a 1.8 GHz Willamette core(product code BX80531NK180GSL5UK-- from a saved box end panel label) on a 478 package P4 die to go with Brookdale chipsets(Soyo Fire Dragon), and similar to the way that the newest Durons use the old ATHLON core. History has this habit of repeating itself,and Iexpect a "do it again"pattern.

I would expect the Opteron 8-way implementations to indeed compete in the market with the Itanium 2's. The 2 ways cannot. The 4-ways would probably lose. Since it is too soon to tell exactly what will be decided on before it happens,and since things like Opteron are not engineering's names but are marketting's line name for what Engineering considers multiple cores, I try not to get too specific too early.

Just amplifying a bit.

John Danielson.