AMD showcases dual-core Athlon 64 processors

AMD held a press conference in the first IDF day. This time — to announce dual-core Athlon 64 solutions. (Actually the company published the corresponding press release about dual-core Athlon 64 processors as far back as the last week). A simple flowchart of the novelty doesn´t differ from that of a dual-core Opteron:

Besides the SRI (System Request Interface) that handles data and instruction for two cores interconnected with memory and HyperTransport interface, there´s APIC (not shown) that synchronizes and adjusts signal levels of both cores.

A pilot sample of dual-core Athlon 64 is made using 90nm process in the Socket 939 package. The company claims that a simple BIOS upgrade will be enough to install such a novelty into older Socket 939 boards.

The new dual-core Athlon 64 solutions are to be shipping in H2 2005, however there are still some issues regarding the software. In particular, Pacifica technology called to provide compatibility with single-core CPU software is still in development and the deadline is not known yet.

Source: PC Watch

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