SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Advanced Micro Devices Inc. announced Thursday (May 6) the existence of two so-called 'low-power' mobile Athlon 64 64-bit processors with model numbers 2800+ and 2700+.
The silicon die of these devices are the same as each other but differ from the Athlon 64 3200+ and 3000+ introduced in January. The newer devices, are specified for lower performance at a lower operating voltage and a lower clock frequency and are powered by the 'Odessa' core, a company spokesperson said.
AMD has used number suffixes for processors to indicate computing performance and the Odessa core has a cache memory of 512-kbyte, half the size of the Clawhammer core used in the higher performance devices.
"The process technology and packaging are the same for all the available mobile AMD Athlon 64 processors," the AMD spokesperson said. The process technology is AMD's 130-nanometer SOI and the packaging is a 754-pin lidless micro pin grid array.
The Odessa core was previously scheduled for introduction in a 90-nm maufacturing process but the spokesperson said: "We revise our product roadmap to reflect changing technologies and customer needs. We are in the process of updating our public roadmap at this time. The 90nm core to which you are referring is on track; it will have a different name in our updated roadmap."
The 'low-power' mobile Athlon 64's are specified to operate at 1.2-V in contrast to the Clawhammer core based devices specified at 1.4-V, the spokesperson said.
The 2800+ is specified to operate at a clock frequency of 1.8-GHz and the 2700+ at 1.6-GHz. However, the previously introduced Mobile Athlon 64 3200+ equated to a clock frequency of 2.0-GHz and the Mobile Athlon 64 3000+ to a clock frequency of 1.8-GHz.
As a result of these changes the so-called 'thermal design power' or the system-level maximum power budget is 35 watts for the the newer Athlon 64s compared to 62-W in the older devices.
AMD said the mobile Athlon 64 2800+ and 2700+ were suitable for mobile PC designs due to "reduced thermal design power and smaller, lidless packaging", but as stated above the packaging is the same across the range of mobile Athlon 64 processors.
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