In San Jose today Intel and AMD will set out their rival stalls for next year’s Katmai versus K7 needle match, with AMD taking the offensive for the first time in many a year. So far this year AMD has managed to carve out a better share for itself at the low end of the market, but it’s now tooling-up for an assault further up the PC food chain, and with the K7 is planning a spring offensive which it feels could at last pull it ahead of Intel. The new K7 will be out in the first half of 1998, and will run initially at speeds in excess of 500 MHz. AMD will be pushing 3D graphics capabilities heavily, and will be supporting Direct Rambus memory technology with the chip. Intel’s counter will be the Tanner chip using the new Katmai instruction set. Tanner too will debut at 500MHz, and while Intel is trailing the prospect of a 1GHz version by the end of the year, AMD will be moving K7 production to a copper process over the year, so the competitors promise to be closer than ever before. That means competition on price will be a major factor, but AMD itself thinks graphics could be its secret weapon. The company feels that 3D technology has been important in the recent success of the K6-2, and has recently told The Register it felt Katmai would be too new, and the part too expensive, to command the interest of developers. Intel itself last week fleshed-out a roadmap taking the company into the next century, and making it clear that Tanner and the other forthcoming members of its IA-32 line would remain major revenue sources for Intel up to and beyond next year’s Merced rollout. Related Stories: Katmai out of the bagAMD claims gamesters not interested in Katmai Intel maps out future of IA-32 with 1 Ghz CPU, Katmai and friends Click for more stories