AMD's Got Quads On Tap

摘要

If your interest was piqued by AMD's Phenom, its first desktop quad-core processors, you'll like what the scrappy semiconductor maker has up its sleeve. Three new processors are on the way next year, most notably a 3.0-GHz Phenom. The two devices just un-veiled-the 2.2-GHz Phenom X4 9500 and 2.3-GHz Phenom X4 9600 -will be joined by two faster cousins in the first quarter. Those will be the 2.4-GHz 9700 and the 2.6-GHz 9900. The 3.0-GHz processor is due in the second quarter. Enhancements in Phenom include new instructions, improved floating-point execution units, faster data transfer between floating-point and general-purpose registers, and 1-Gbyte memory paging. The devices include the new 10h architecture, which makes AMD's hardware-based virtual-ization run faster.