Pacifica push

In 2007, AMD plans to further beef up its technology to permit more parallel processing capability with larger cache memory and virtualization of I/O, Syeter added.

Senior AMD Fellow Chuck Moore added that the industry's emphasis in recent years on raising operating frequency to improve performance was reaching physical limits because of power handling limitations. He said AMD was seeking to improve power handling by partitioning power processing on the chip, as well as increasing usage of multithreading and floating-point architectures and on-chip coprocessors.

Ian Morris, senior vice president of digital media and pervasive computing, said AMD was bolstering development of processors for the embedded market, which is expected to grow from $4.8 billion in 2005 to $8 billion by 2008. He cited the example of the company's Geode LX800 processor, designed to provide full-scale Linux or Windows XP capability on a portable device.

On the manufacturing front, AMD reiterated it was on schedule to ramp up 65-nm process production at its 300-mm fab in Dresden, Germany, in 2006, according to Daryl Ostrander, senior vice president of logic technology and manufacturing, Microprocessor Solutions Sector.

Ostrander did not elaborate on the 65-nm process ramp-up. He said, however, that AMD was investigating the use of depleted silicon-on-insulator technology for 45-nm process development.