AMD to ship 65nm Athlon 64 and FX CPUs 'H1 07'

Roadmap AMD's first 65nm Athlon 64 and FX processors will debut early next year, followed by 65nm Semprons in the second-half of 2007, according to alleged company roadmap presentation slides that have popped up on Chinese-language website HKEPC.

Coming sooner, though, is the next incarnation of AMD's Athlon 64 FX gaming processor, the FX-62, due in June alongside dual-core Athlon 64 X2 5000+ and 5200+ parts, the documents indicate.

According to the slides, the 65nm Athlon 64 is codenamed 'Brisbane' - though whether for the Australian city or the San Francisco suburb of the same name isn't clear. The 65nm Sempron has an altogether more bellicose codename: 'Sparta'. Both are simply listed as 65nm parts supporting AMD's Socket AM2 interconnect.

Unlike Sparta, Brisbane is a dual-core chip and will form the basis for future Athlon 64s and Athlon 64 FXs. The slides suggest the upcoming 'Windsor' core, which will bring dual-channel DDR 2 and AM2 support to the FX family, will survive through 2007, presumably as dual-core Brisbane's single-core sibling. Today's FX core is not expected to last past Brisbane's introduction.

The roadmap also indicates today's single-core Athlon 64s will be culled at the end of 2006, while the upcoming 'Orleans' core - again, bringing DDR 2 to the single-core Athlon 64 - may be phased out during H1 2007.

Socket AM2 will be launched in June 2006, at the Computex show in Taiwan, HKEPC's correspondent claims. At that time, AMD will introduce the 2.8GHz, dual-core FX-62, along with the X2 5000+ and the X2 5200+ both clocked at 2.6GHz, but with 1MB and 2MB of L2 cache, respectively. The X2s have a power envelope of 89W; the FX-62, 125W. In line with recent AMD pronouncements, these chips will feature the company's virtualisation system, 'Pacifica'.

AMD will also introduce Windsor-based X2s at today's 3800+, 4200+, 4400+, 4600+ and 4800+ speed grades, the slides claim. ®