The AMD Phenom

The second component of the AMD Spider platform is the new AMD Phenom quad-core desktop processor. Like the AMD Quad-Core Opteron (Barcelona) processor, the AMD Phenom is a true quad-core design. What that really means is the quad-core processor is built on a monolithic (single) die, as opposed to Intel's method of combining two dual-core dies onto a multi-chip module. According to AMD, this monolithic design delivers higher performance, although it has come at the expense of poorer yields and higher costs.

AMD proudly declares that the Phenom trumps Intel on many technical aspects. It is the first quad-core processor to feature an L3 cache and as well as an integrated DDR2-1066 controller (albeit the DDR2-1066 standard is still pending JEDEC approval).

However, these technical achievements came at a cost. As mentioned earlier, a monolithic design is more costly and results in a poorer yield. Although AMD has denied this on numerous occasions, we were informed by vendors that the processors are hard to come by. Even if they are lying, taking a look at the two AMD Phenom SKUs launched recently, we can tell that the AMD Phenom is not quite achieving the clock rates that AMD promised it would be capable of.

At launch, AMD only managed to deliver Phenoms at speed grades of 2.2GHz and 2.3GHz. Of course, AMD says they will hit 3 GHz in early 2008, but we will believe it when we see it.