AMD Announces K6III Chip

( 2/23/99; 10:00 AM EST)
By Kristen Kenedy, Computer Retail Week

AMD hopes to gain more ground in the mid- to high-end desktop market with the new K6III, aimed at PC enthusiasts and business users.

Officials at the company announced 400MHz and 450MHz versions of the processor today and said the first K6III-based systems will be available by the end of the month. Initial systems will be offered through Compaq's retail build-to-order program at 400MHz, according to an AMD presentation. Additional OEMs are expected to offer systems based on the K6III 450MHz by the end of March, said Steve Lapinski, director of product marketing for AMD's computational product group.

Lapinski said build to order will be a focus for the CPU because of its target customers. "Business users and enthusiasts tend to be more a build-to-order type of sale," he said.

AMD will promote a redesigned K6III CPU that uses the existing K6-2 core but integrates L2 cache for the first time, and adds an efficient communications pipe between the core L1 cache and the L2 cache for better performance.

The K6III will house 256KB of internal L2 cache and will also be able to support 512KB to 2MB of what AMD is calling Level 3 cache, which resides on the motherboard. Lapinski expects most OEMs will add the additional L3 cache to the system designs because memory components are currently inexpensive.

Pricing for the CPUs is $284 for 400MHz and $476 for 450MHz, in 1,000-unit quantities.

Integrating L2 cache into the processor tends to increase performance significantly, lab tests show. In previous tests, CRW Labs found that a 300MHz Celeron processor with 128KB of integrated L2 cache performs almost as well as a Pentium II processor with 512KB of off-chip L2 cache at the same clock speeds.

The improvements can be attributed to the faster cache speeds -- integrated cache runs at the full speed of the processor. (For example, L2 cache in a 400MHz processor runs at 400MHz.) Cache on a Slot 1 Pentium II processor runs at half the speed of the processor, and cache on the Super Socket 7 motherboard, which is used for AMD processors, runs at 100MHz.

Integrated L2 cache also has the benefit of being on the processor for immediate access, rather than being close to the processor on a Slot 1 module in the case of the PII or on the motherboard for the Super Socket 7 configuration.

Nevertheless, retailers should be wary of placing too much emphasis on cache during a system sale. Cache sizes of 1MB and up on the motherboard is overkill for consumer applications, said Keith Diefendorff senior analyst at Microdesign Resources, a chip analyst firm. "Putting 256KB of L2 cache onto the CPU is going to be very effective," he said. "I'd be surprised if L3 cache gave much additional advantage over the L2 cache."

AMD said the integrated L2 cache plus the L3 cache will increase the CPU's performance. Lapinski said AMD tests show a 4 percent improvement in the K6III with 512KB L3 cache, 6 percent with 1MB of L3 cache and 8 percent with 2MB of L3 cache on typical consumer applications. Lapinski added that the K6III performs particularly well on Windows NT systems, something the company was hoping to achieve with this next-generation processor.

© 1998 CMP Media, Inc.