Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
AMD Athlon
The Athlon is AMD's successor to the K6 series. It was designed as a new chip from the
groundupanddoesnotinterfaceviatheSocket7orSuper7socketslikeitspreviouschips.
In the initial Athlon versions, AMD used a cartridge design, called Slot A, almost exactly
like that of the Intel Pentium II and III (see
Figure 3.33
). This was because the original
Athlons used 512KB of external L2 cache, which was mounted on the processor cartridge
board. The external cache ran at one-half core, two-fifths core, or one-third core, depend-
ing on which speed processor you had.
Figure 3.33
AMD Athlon processor for Slot A (cartridge form factor).
InJune2000,AMDintroducedarevisedversionoftheAthlon(code-namedThunderbird)
that incorporates 256KB of L2 cache directly on the processor die. This on-die cache runs
at full-core speed and eliminates a bottleneck in the original Athlon systems. Along with
the change to on-die L2 cache, the Athlon was also introduced in a version for AMD's
ownSocketA(Socket462),whichreplacedtheSlotAcartridgeversion(see
Figure3.34
)
.
Figure 3.34
AMD Athlon XP 0.13-micron processor for Socket A (PGA form factor).
