AMD demonstrates Phenom with 45 nanometer technology

AMD has publicly demonstrated its first quad-core processor using 45nm fabrication at CeBIT. A test sample of a 45nm Phenom, on a 780G chipset motherboard running Windows Vista, was shown transcoding a movie with Windows Movie Maker. AMD says it can also demonstrate fully functional 45nm server processors.

AMD's Leslie Sobon had on hand a 45nm quad-core from the Dresden AMD Fab, where AMD – like a number of other chip manufacturers, except for Intel – are ramping up 45 nm production technology based on immersion lithography. Serial production is expected to begin in Q3 or Q4 of 2008. Ms Sobon promised that AMD would begin shipping 45nm quad-core processors this year. They are expected to have up to 6MB of L3 cache; the current 65nm quad-cores (K10/Barcelona/Agena) have 2MB of L3 cache.

In its current roadmaps, AMD plans to begin 45nm production of the Shanghai server processor core for its Opteron series before moving on to desktop PC processors, which will be called Deneb and Propus. In May of 2007, AMD's CTO Phil Hester presented the first wafer with 45nm test structures.

In the next few months, AMD will also be presenting 65nm Phenoms with greater clock rates; the triple-cores from the Phenom 8000 series, codenamed Toliman, will initially only be sold to OEM customers such as Dell. In a conversation with heise online's German sister publication c't Magazine, Ms Sobon confirmed that dual-core processors with K10 technology will later be sold under the name Athlon.

(trk)