AMD Athlon/Thunderbird

[Richard_Cranium72]

Any thoughts on these new chips? "AMD's Thunderbird to debut Monday
By Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
June 1, 2000, 1:15 p.m. PT
A high-performance version of Advanced Micro Device's Athlon processor dubbed Thunderbird will make its debut Monday, according to sources close to the company.

The Thunderbird is essentially an enhanced version of the Athlon, a line of processors that has been credited with turning the company's fortunes around. Its release is expected to spark a new round of competitive battles with Intel.

To be incorporated into high-end consumer systems and business desktops, Thunderbird will run at speeds ranging from 750 MHz to 1 GHz and higher. Many of the new Thunderbirds will be made with copper, rather than aluminum, circuitry. Because copper conducts electricity better than aluminum, the chips run cooler. This gives AMD the opportunity to make faster versions in the future.
Copper Thunderbirds will come out of AMD's Dresden plant; aluminum Thunderbirds will be produced at its Austin, Texas, facility." =>> http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-1995226.html?tag=st.ne.1002.tgif.ni Makes me wonder why they don't use Silver? It's only $5.00/oz and is easy to work with compared to the very high temps required with copper. The small amount in a chip shouldn't affect the price much, hmmm.. DrVette

[rrick31]

being an amd lover i think its great.i had read some where that they held up the release of the duron,for the thunderbird, because the duron is going to be just as good as the thunderbird.its kind of strange to see intel triping over their on feet,i think they have something up their sleave.we will see.

[SDT]

I know that the use of copper in high density chips like a CPU was a great technological leap as the manufacturing process had to be refined significantly. Changing a high teck process like this is very expensive and becomes even more so if the number of chips that get rejected at the end of the process increases. It is my understanding that the lands on the layers of chips are silk screened (this info could be a little stale) onto the chip and that aluminum lends itself to this process. Until recently copper did not reliably lend itself to this and I'll bet that silver does not either.

While silver is fairly inexpensive by the ounce, I'll guess that if you purchase tons of it (as Intel & AMD must do for chip fab) then the cost delta becomes prohibitive.

Silver might be the metal of choice when we see a less than .18 micron process (say a .10 micron process). The fact that silver requires a lower temperature to refine may be the reason that it can not be easily adapted to the current (internally hot) cpu's. A smaller dye process should generate far less heat and may permit the use of silver as the conductor of choice. At the rate that we are going it might not be far off... although some other discovery (invention, change in design, whatever) may eclipse the current manufacturing process. Who knows ...maybe fiber optic interconnects. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by SDT (edited 06-03-2000).]

[tonym]

Can't use silver because it it a highly mobile metal, prone to electromigration at low currents and low fields. The movement of the silver causes opens and shorts on the circuit, particularly in the presence of moisture and contamination.

You need to have alloys of silver (Palladium-Silver, etc.) to correct this problem, but they're expensive and hard to use in a deposition system (like for IC's).

So, aluminum is used because it's easy to work with, but with recent breakthroughs, copper (more corrctly copper-tungsten) is king!!!


Tony

[This message has been edited by tonym (edited 06-03-2000).]

[rtyp3]

How will I know if I am getting Copper or Aluminum? I don't want to walk out paying the same price for an aluminum when I could get the copper! Will they sell and price them differently, or how will you know the difference before you buy?

[x35Agent]

Like I said before TONYM is the man he Knows his Shehottttttt

[Meat Puppet]

Read the press release today pretty impressive. A 10% increase over an equivalent P III doesn't seem like much but this is the tip of the iceberg In the AMD Intel Cpu battle.

One question though, why did they stop at a 266mhtz bus clock. Was this just a good round number, or is there some limitation that hasn't come out of the closet yet???

[CMonster]

Would you all just get off the fiberoptic fantasy for a minute (you know who you are); do you have any idea what is going to generate these light pulses????? At each end of the "fiber-demigod"???? How much F&!&&n circuitry are you going to add to ye-old chip??? ... AHh..I guess it is no problem if the warp plasma conduits hold..it it??

And as somewhat of an AMD enthusiast myself.. the benchmarks for the T-Bird are les than stellar aren't they?, I mean compared to the P3 (all hail the VIA 133 chipset!!) I guess price may be the only real area of competition... but if SMP chipsets come out for AMD K7 then it's over! sorry Intel..

[neo_otyugh]

i am not overly impressed with the benchmarks of the thunderbird...maybe a better mobo chipset would help it a lot though. from what i have read you will not know the diff between aluminum and copper core chips, as at the current speeds aluminum is not an impediment...the copper is being used in order to prepare the way for future chips that will need it.

[C5John]

My first thought with this announcement was:

Competition is Terrific.

I do not believe we would have seen this rapid technological progress if INTEL was the only company determining the timing of new processor releases.


My understanding is Copper from Dresden,
Aluminum from USA.

John