AMD pondering bus speed increase for next Athlon XP

A report that Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) will increase the front-side bus speed of its next Athlon XP processor was downplayed by the company Thursday, which said it is still evaluating its product plans. But those plans will need to take shape soon if the next Athlon XP is to avoid becoming the latest processor from AMD to be delayed past the expected launch date.

A story on the Taiwanese news Web site Digitimes.com Thursday claimed that AMD has told its motherboard and chipset partners inTaiwanthat it is planning to increase the speed of the Athlon XP's front-side bus from 333MHz to 400MHz for its next release, reportedly in May. The front-side bus acts as the main highway between the processor core and the memory module, and is a key component to overall processor performance.

AMD's next chip will be known as the Athlon XP 3200+, said John Crank, senior brand manager for AMD's Athlon product line, during an interview a few weeks ago about the release of the company's current performance leader, the Athlon XP 3000+. The new chip is expected to be released about the middle of the year, Crank said at the time.

When contacted about its plans for the front-side bus of the Athlon XP 3200+, AMD said that it does not currently have plans for a 400MHz front-side bus, but is evaluating the technology based on customer feedback.

While the final decision has not been made, AMD will likely include the faster front-side bus in a bid to remain competitive with rival Intel until AMD's Athlon64 is launched in September, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Intel plans to launch a Pentium 4 with an 800MHz front-side bus, as well as faster chipsets, before the launch ofPrescott, its first 90 nanometer chip, later this year.

Despite the differences in clock speed and bus speed, AMD says its processors perform equal to or better than Pentium 4 chips due to a more efficient processor core that does more work per clock cycle. Benchmarks and other independent tests show the chips have fairly comparable performance when measuring chips of equal speed grades, depending on the applications used in the testing process.

In order for the Athlon XP 3200+ to launch on time, partners of theSunnyvale, California, company will need two to three months of lead time to validate their chipsets and motherboards for the new front-side bus, analysts said.