Quad-core AMD K8L Tapes Out

Mathew Everett 15 Aug, 2006 at 10:20am ET Article published in Tech

According to AMD, its Fabs are taping out the first Quad-core CPU’s based on their new K8L architecture. Now don’t get too excited as a CPU usually takes a good 18 months from this stage to hit the mainstream. But we can always hope AMD will keep being aggressive and push these chips out sooner than later.

For new designs, it usually means about a year from tape-out to availability, but a lot can go wrong between now and then.

For server chips, you add a little time to that, but for chips going into existing platforms, you can shave a little off. Add in that the tape out probably happened a while ago, and it is just being released now for PR reasons, and you have a rough timeline for release.

In this case, the Q2/07 target looks a like a stretch, early Q3 is more of a safer bet.

Source: The Inquirer

Comments

15 Aug 2006 ~ 12:27pm airbornflght I like the idea of quadcore. I dont see how they are not runnning into size constraint by putting 4 processors on one die.
15 Aug 2006 ~ 3:38pm deicist

airbornflght wrote:

I like the idea of quadcore. I dont see how they are not runnning into size constraint by putting 4 processors on one die.

They're moving to a 65nm process. Smaller process size means they can fit more into the same amount of space.
15 Aug 2006 ~ 3:42pm Thrax 65nm process, and shared L2 caches. Cache is the largest component of any modern die.
15 Aug 2006 ~ 4:03pm Sledgehammer70 from the sounds of it AMD is going to higher L3 cache and also beefing up the L2.. but nothing is really known yet of the K8L architecture... only speculation
15 Aug 2006 ~ 10:18pm WuGgaRoO i hope they take a while with this and not screw it up or anything..i qould rather wait another half ayear than get sumthing thats lack luster at best
16 Aug 2006 ~ 10:13am Sledgehammer70 AMD is known for making things perfect since the launch of the Athlon 64 CPU's I highly doubt they will push a 80% perfect product... It isn't in their blood, they want to crush Intel not give it back what they already took.
19 Aug 2006 ~ 2:25am Thrax Meanwhile, word on the street is that the quad-core 'Kentsfield' CPU from Intel is in the wild, and in the hands of IT firms. Hmmm..