AMD K7
A main focus of AMD's engineering
specialists at the new Far East Infrastructure Organisation (FEIO) facility in Taipei will
be to provide technical assistance to allow the company's Taiwanese partners to shorten
the time-to-market cycle for chip sets and motherboards for the K7. Due to the high costs
of developing the initial chip set designs for the K7, which will use a new processor
interface dubbed Slot A, AMD will introduce an in-house developed, fully functional chip
set when the processor is launched, but will make the technology available free to
third-party vendors.
Slot A will be mechanically identical to
the Slot 1 interface that Intel uses for its Celeron and Pentium II processors, but will
be based on a different system bus architecture which means that the two companies chips
will not be able to run on the same motherboards. The K7 will use the EV-6 bus technology
AMD has licensed from Digital Equipment Corp, while Intel relies on its proprietary P6 bus
architecture.
How could it then be that I might buy the
more expensive Katmai before the K7 then? If AMD's attempt at creating their own open,
different standard fails, Intel could put them out of the market. However, the
microprocessor market has grown to the extent that it can profitably support different
manufacturers with different standards.
For example, end users like us are looking for a market which offers sub-$1000 based
computers ( like the Media GX
) with parts soldered directly on the board. If you need any more evidence, look to
AMD's main competitor, Cyrix. Their future plans and current plans converge - the
Cyrix MXi is
going to be cheap and powerful in its prime at the price of exapandability.
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