AMD K10.5 Hydra to challenge Nehalem

Posted on Thursday, May 08 2008 @ 0:05 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
FUD Zilla says AMD will push its K10.5 Hydra processor to challenge Intel's upcoming Nehalem processor. Hydra will be made on a 45nm high-K SOI process and should feature clockspeeds of 3GHz and more.
After Deneb and Propus 45nm K10.5 Quad-cores AMD plans to change the process and improve the existing K10.5 cores. The new process is called 45nm K10.5 Rev. D and it will bring high K to 45nm SOI cores. K10.5 Rev. C is the 45nm SOI process that AMD plans to use for Deneb and Propus 45nm cores. AMD calls Rev D cores Hydra and these are the chips that will really go against Nehalem.

The test production of these rather interesting cores will start in Q1 2009, but we expect to see the production cores by the middle of 2009 or a bit later.

The new K10.5 Rev. D supports 1MB L2 per core, which is twice as much as in current K10 CPUs and 6MB L3 cache memory. The most important feature is that it will be able to get you eight cores and we believe this is eight-core native design and not MCM (Multi Chip Module), as many have suggested before. This confirms our earlier story that AMD’s eight cores are native and you can read it here.
The first high-end Nehalem processors are expected in late 2008 and mainstream models are expected in early 2009.


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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