While Intel Corporation ran into very serious heat dissipation issues with its NetBurst architecture CPUs and 90nm strained silicon technology, looks like its arch rival AMD will also have some hot chips in future. Sources close to AMD's partners said the company is going to employ some new power requirements for mainboards designed to support future AMD64 processors, such as Athlon 64 4000+ and the Athlon 64 FX-55, both most probably to be made using 90nm technology.
According to currently available details, maximum current (IDD) of future 64-bit processors from AMD will be 80A, while maximum thermal power will be 105W. These are mandatory requirements for mainboards in the second half of the year. The requirements are only for Socket 939 mainboards, as 754-pin and 940-pin products have very limited future, as AMD roadmap for 2004 revealed. Apparently, AMD's 90nm chips will have Vcore at 1.20V – 1.35V, in contrast to current core voltage of 1.40 – 1.55V for 64-bit chips. The first 90nm chips are expected to hit 2.60GHz, but AMD currently does not specify the top speed bin for its new CPUs.
News source: X-bit labs
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