AMD K8 family is the eighth and the latest generation of AMD
microprocessors. The first members of this family, server-class
Opteron processors, were introduced on April 22, 2003. Shortly after
that the company released Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX high-performance
desktop processors. Mobile Athlon 64 and mobile K8-based Semprons
K8 processors were announced in 2004. Like the AMD K7 family, as well as Intel
microprocessors, the family consists of desktop and mobile processors
targeting different markets:
- Opteron - server class processors.
- Athlon 64 and
Athlon 64 FX -
high-performance desktop processors.
- Sempron 64 (Sempron) - budget
desktop processors.
- mobile Athlon 64, mobile Turion and mobile Turion 64 X2 - high-performance
mobile processors.
- Mobile Sempron - budget mobile processors
The major new feature in K8 CPU family is 64-bit mode. In this mode
the processor operates as 64-bit processor, while still able to
execute older 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit x86 applications. It's worth
to mention two other enhancements included in all K8 microprocessors:
- HyperTransport technology (originally called Lightning Data Transport)
implements high-speed link between the processor and other I/O
devices.
- Integrated memory controller provides dedicated access to memory.
|
|
| At a glance |
|---|
Introduction: Apr 22, 2003 L2 cache size (KB): 128 - 2048 | |
|