Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced yesterday that they would be driving forward plans to develop their 130-nm technology, also known as 0.13µ (micron). They have moved the deployment of this forward by one quarter and this will allow the development of processors based on this technology to progress quicker. This was announced at a technology conference sponsored by Co. Inc. in San Francisco, and it means that AMD will be deploying the technology across all its processor range in the third quarter of this year.
The 32 and 64-bit Hammer chips which have been in development for a while should now see the light of day sooner than expected and rumours that AMD have been having trouble with the technology can now be quietened. Last week Intel claimed that AMD were having problems with their chip yields involving this manufacturing technique but an AMD executive replied saying this wasn"t true.
This move is also important in the AMD-Intel chip war which has been at the forefront of microprocessor development for the last few years, as Intel have been deploying their 130-nm technology since they released their "Northwood" processor. The first of AMD"s chips based on this technology were announced recently, in the form of Athlon processors for notebooks based on their "Thoroughbred" core.
Later this year will see the emergence of the new processors from AMD – Athlons based on the "Clawhammer" technology. They also will be releasing their high end chip, now renamed to Opteron (from "Sledgehammer") – see the story below. 2003 has even more in store for processor technology as AMD plans to move to 90-nm (0.09µ) technology.