Sources said that AMD will formally introduce its K7 processor on the 28th of June and will have one processor running at 600MHz. There will also be 500MHz and 550MHz flavours, as previously revealed. Processors will ship to system integrators on the 3rd of August. In the first two weeks of August, there will be volume shipments of the product, and at introduction time, AMD will also have tier one vendors demoing machines based on the K7. As you might expect, the K7 will not be called the K7. It could be called the Alereon (see earlier story), but we hope to have more details on this later. The reference design specifies Nvidia TNT. In August, distributors will be carrying stocks of the product, we can confirm. The ramp will be sufficient to supply some end user needs. The K7 at 600MHz will be the first time AMD has ever introduced a processor which beats an Intel chip. The significance of this will not be lost on OEMs and PC manufacturers, who are likely to queue up to use the processor. Gateway is a definite, and it is likely Compaq will not be far behind. Yesterday, AMD tried to persuade us to sign a non-disclosure agreement but instead we decided to take the K7 challenge and accumulate info elsewhere. AMD will not comment on the details above. ®