A Guide To The Amd Processor
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AMD stands for advanced micro devices Inc. They are a company that is now almost a household name because of the use of the personal computer and the services that they provide but that is not always been the case. The company itself was founded almost 40 years ago in 1969. The men that were founders of the organization were actually executives from a company that was called Fairchild semiconductor. They currently have their headquarters in Sunnyvale, California and employee almost 17,000 people. Although they manufacture a lot of different semiconductors for motherboards, they are best known for their AMD processor series.
They first began developing the AMD processor series in 1982 whenever they signed with Intel. It seems, however, that Intel canceled their contract with AMD and, as a result of this cancellation, AMD struck out on their own in producing these semi-conductors. With the release of the first AMD processor in 1991, it took little time for them to sell over a million units and they have been successfully creating these processors ever since.
The first AMD processors that were developed for the K5, K-6 and Avalon processors. The K actually stood for kryptonite, a material that was reported to harm Superman, a comic book superhero. By 1996, AMD had purchased NexGen in order to gain rights to their x86 compatible processors. Currently, the AMD processors that are in use include the Athlon 64 (K8), the dual core Athlon 64 X2, and the Phenom (K10) these processors are currently used in many major computers that are manufactured by such companies as Compaq. Here's a little bit of information about the current AMD processor units that are available.
Athlon 64 (K8) - This is actually a knockoff, or revision of the former K7 processor. One of the features is the 64 bit extension that was added to the x86 instruction set. Other things that this particular chip is noted for include a memory controller that is located on the chip and something that is called hyper transport. Hyper trans-point is actually a way for point-to-point interconnections to be streamlined. It was originally released as the Operon processor, found on servers but was eventually included in many PCs and branded as the Athlon 64.
Dual Core Athlon 64 X2 - This AMD processor surfaced in April of 2005 as the dual core Operon and was used as a server processor. Just as with the Athlon 64, the dual core Athlon was eventually used in the desktop PC as well. Within the first year, they dropped the dual core from the name and it simply was referred to as the Athlon 64. The change in name, however, was purely for marketing reasons.
Phenom (K10) - this is the most recent AMD processor to hit the scene and it is typically known as the AMD K10. This particular chip was released in September of 2007 and included nine Quad core third-generation operon processors. The AMD K10 will offer both triple core as well as quad core versions to the user.
AMD processors will continue to be developed for use both in the personal computer and on the server. As a company, they should see continued growth as the personal computer becomes more and more intertwined into our society.
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