AMD confirms QuantiSpeed marchitecture slogan

'Peed in Squat'

By Tony Smith • Get more from this author

Posted in Channel, 4th October 2001 15:07 GMT

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We can confirm AMD's attempt to prevent punters from assuming that its chips are much slower than Intel's because its Athlon XP clock speeds are rather lower than Pentium 4 megahertz ratings will indeed be called QuantiSpeed.

Don't take our word for it, take's AMD's. The company has registered QuantiSpeed as trademark, and lists the name on its Web site as one of its many words it owns.

This dire example of marchitecture - the way some IT companies try to disguise empty marketing slogans as real technology - will be unveiled next Tuesday (9 October) when AMD launches its Athlon XP processor, the long-awaited successor to the current desktop Athlon based on the Palomino core that also powers the mobile Athlon 4 and the server-oriented Athlon MP.

What exactly does QuantiSpeed mean? Essentially that, say, a Athlon XP 1800+, which runs at 1.53GHz, is equivalent to a Pentium 4 running at just over 1.8GHz. Of course, all this will mean nothing to computer consumers, unless AMD fills up its advertising with small-print explaining what '1800+' actually means, how it makes and justifies the comparison - all in language carefully constructed to ensure Intel can't run and complain to the Federal Trade Commission.

We can see why AMD feels it needs to stress that it's chips are faster than they seem from reading only their clock speed, but coming up with specious terminology isn't going to solve the problem one little bit. ®

Bootnote

'QuantiSpeed' is, oddly enough, an anagram of 'Peed in squat'.