AMD Rumoured to Unveil AMD Phenom X3 with Three Cores

maroon1

maroon1

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Advanced Micro Devices may not be in position to release its new dual-processor enthusiast-class platform this year, however, it may be thinking about a different product, according to some unofficial information. Apparently, the company may be mulling about a triple-core microprocessor for desktops.

According to a news-story at Hard Tecs 4U web-site, AMD is working on a processor that would have three processing engines. The company reportedly told its partners about the AMD Phenom X3 chip at a closed meeting, explaining that the chipmaker plans to release such a product because of “market demand”.

The new triple-core microprocessors will feature its own design and will not be quad-core chips with one core disabled, according to the web-site. Nevertheless, the chips will still include 2MB of shared L3 cache and will take advantage of other K10 micro-architecture features, such as SSE4A instruction set, 128-bit floating point units (FPU) and so on. Obviously, the chips will also have advanced power management capabilities.

According to estimates by X-bit labs, each processing engine of quad-core AMD Opteron/Phenom processors takes about 13% of the die size. Given the whole die size of approximately 285mm² and about 218 chip candidates obtained from every 300mm wafer, X-bit labs believes that it is highly unlikely that AMD had decided to develop a separate tripe-core design with about 247mm² die size and 250 chip candidates obtained from a 300mm wafer unless the yields of the new chips are so low that the company needs a redundant third processing engine to create a dual-core product with sufficient yield.

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Technically AMD can easily make microprocessors with odd amount of processing engines thanks to its DirectConnect architecture. However, it is not completely clear how AMD plans to position such chips, considering that it will have to fight both dual-core and quad-core Intel Core 2 processors with its AMD Phenom and AMD Athlon 64 X2 offerings.

AMD did not comment on the news-story.


http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20070914212726.html
 
I see what they are up to... Anyone else think of this? While Intel is improving quad cores, maybe AMD can slip in a CPU with 6 cores... Seeing as how the core numbers double....
 
By the way, this is unofficial information. Personally, I don't think AMD will ever make a triple-core processor.
 
I dont know, they really might do it. Since it a native quad core and if it has 1 unstable core you have three ways you can do it.
1. Disable 2 cores and call it a X2
2. Disable 1 core and call it a X3
3. Throw it in the trash can
AMD being in a money crunch I would say 1 or 2 would be a better idea.
 
So this may be showing my on ignorance, but a 3 core CPU might be useful in some applications.

With most software not currently written to utilize multiple cores, quad core CPUs may be underutilized for now; only really shining in the few programs that can take advantage of all 4 cores or when running several programs at once.

If a 3 core processor was available, that had 3 slightly faster cores that a quad of the same power usage, heat etc. that triple core could outperform the quad in single applications not written for multi-core CPUs.

Just a theory, which may just be showing my own lack of knowledge.
 
I can see why they would want to sell them, if you have a native quad core and one core is bad. But I dont know how they will price them, if there close to a quad in price why not just buy a quad but if there close to X2, why buy the X2. The only way I can see them fitting in is if the X2 is going to be pretty cheap.
 
I suppose we'll have to wait for benchmarks! if its comparable to dual core intels, and at similar price etc, what would you go for? 2 or three? I'd go for three
 
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