AMD's stellar codename sequence for its upcoming K8L desktop processor family continues with 'Antares', 'Arcturus' and 'Spica', reports coming out of Taiwan allege. These chips will join 'Altair', which we reported on earlier this week, in AMD's constellation of next-generation 65nm processors.

According to a Chinese-language report on HKEPC, Antares will contain just two cores to Altair's four, each with 512KB of L2 cache and connected to 2MB of shared L3 cache. Antares will support HyperTransport 3.0 clocked at up to 4.2GHz, as per Altair. It's scheduled to ship in Q3 2007.

Arcturus is essentially the same chip as Antares, but with lower core and bus clocks and no L3 cache - either that or AMD plans to disable the shared cache. The HT 3.0 bus will run at up to 3.4GHz, which the core will be set at between 2.1GHz and 2.3GHz, compared to 2-2.9GHz for Antares, if the HKEPC report is to be believed. Arcturus will be a 65W part, while Antares will be offered as 35W, 65W and 89W SKUs.

Acturus is set to ship Q4 2007, the same quarter in which the mono-core Spica will debut, presumably targeting the bottom end of the Sempron line - it's the only K8L we know of whose codename begins with an 's'. Its core and bus speeds remain unknown, as is its TDP. But it too is a HT 3.0 part and like all the other K8L chips with the exception of the version of Altair designed for the Athlon 65 FX family, will sit on AMD's Socket AM2+ interconnect. ®