AMD sneaks out 90nm core in 130nm chip

AMD's 'Odessa' chip, originally planned to be the company's first 90nm mobile part, has come to market early, it has emerged.

But AMD watchers hoping for an early release of the chip maker's next-generation fabrication technology will be disappointed: Odessa is now a 130nm part.

AMD's public roadmap currently calls for Odessa to appear sometime during H2 2004. However, the low-power Mobile Athlon 64s released last week, the 2700+ and 2800+, are actually Odessa parts but fabbed at 130nm, a company spokesman revealed, according to a Silicon Strategies report.

AMD's roadmap also lists a new 130nm Mobile Athlon 64 for H1 2004 release, but that's believed to be the 'mainstream' 2800+, 3000+ and 3200+ AMD put out earlier this year.

The new part contain 512KB of L2 cache and are available in Socket 754 lidless packaging. Both have a power consumption rating of 35W - 44 per cent lower power than previous Mobile AMD Athlon 64 processors, AMD said. They also use a smaller, lidless packaging. The new Athlon 64s operate at 1.2V - previous models run at 1.4V.

All this is not to say that the 90nm Odessa is dead - "it will have a different name in our updated roadmap", an AMD spokesman said.

As it stands, AMD's public roadmap lists Odessa's successor as the 90nm 'Oakville', due during H1 2005, but the spokesman also noted that the company was in the process of rewriting this document.

During the next half of the year, AMD is also set to ship 'Dublin' a version of the 130nm mobile chips shipped under the Athlon XP-M brand. ®

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