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Report: More competitive processors due from AMD

AMD will bring out processors by early next year that appear to be much more competitive with Intel offerings.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor
Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.
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Brooke Crothers
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Advanced Micro Devices will bring out processors early next year--at the latest--that appear to be much more competitive with Intel offerings, according to a report.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chipmaker has struggled of late competing with a crush of new 45-nanometer desktop processors from Intel. Typically, as geometries get smaller, processors become faster and more power efficient. AMD is currently shipping 65-nanometer processors.

AMD 45-nanometer quad-core die
AMD 45-nanometer quad-core die AMD

AMD will meet this challenge with the first desktop processors based on its own 45-nanometer process technology. Initial models are due go into production in the fourth quarter, according to Chinese-language Web Site HKEPC, which lists 10 new AMD processors expected to be released during the next three quarters.

The Web site cites motherboard manufacturers as its source.

Processor code names include Deneb and Propus. Two versions of the former will go into production in the fourth quarter of this year, according to the Web site. Deneb processors running from 2.6GHz to 3.0GHz will have a thermal envelope of 125 watts.

Other Deneb processors, with a thermal envelope of 95 watts, are due in the first quarter of 2009. These will have core clock speeds between 2.4GHz and 2.8GHz, according to HKEPC.

All Deneb processors will have prodigious amounts of cache memory to speed performance. Some are listed with 6MB of level-3 cache memory and 2MB of level-2 cache.

Processors dubbed Propus will have smaller amounts of cache memory: typically 2MB of level-2 cache only. The Propus EE processors will have thermal envelopes as low as 45 watts and 2MB level-3 cache memory, according to HKEPC. These will go into production in the first and second quarters, the Web site reported.