AMD in IBM PC and the x86 architecture and its Processor

k5,k6,Athlon,Duron and Sempron

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. an American multinational semiconductor company based in Sunnyvale, California, United States, that develops computer processors and related technologies for commercial and consumer markets. Products: microprocessors motherboard chipsets embedded processors and graphics processors for servers workstations and personal computers embedded systems applications.

AMD is the second-largest global supplier of microprocessors based on the x86 architecture and also one of the largest suppliers of graphics processing units. AMD is the only significant rival to Intel in the central processor (CPU) market for (x86 based) personal computers.

CORPORATE HISTORY

founded on May 1, 1969, by a group of former executives from Fairchild Semiconductor, including Jerry Sanders III, Ed Turney, John Carey, Sven Simonsen, Jack Gifford and three members from Gifford's team, Frank Botte, Jim Giles, and Larry Stenger. The company began as a producer of logic chips, then entered the RAM chip business in 1975.

That same year, it introduced a reverseengineered clone of the Intel 8080 microprocessor.

IBM PC

The IBM Personal Computer is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform.

It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981 and was created by a team of engineers and designers under the direction of Don Estridge of the IBM Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, Florida.
Alongside "microcomputer" and "home computer", the term "personal computer" was already in use before 1981. It was used as early as 1972 to characterize Xerox PARC's Alto. However, because of the success of the IBM Personal Computer, the term PC came to mean more specifically a microcomputer compatible with IBM's PC products.

IBM PC Compatible

IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT.

Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones.

They duplicated almost exactly all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to reverse engineer the BIOS using a "clean room design" technique. Columbia Data Products built the first clone of the IBM personal computer by a clean room implementation of its BIOS. The term "IBM PC compatible" is now a historical description only, since IBM has ended its personal computer sales.

x86 architecture

x86 denotes a family of backward compatible instruction set architectures based on the Intel 8086 CPU. The 8086 was introduced in 1978 as a fully 16-bit extension of Intel's 8-bit based 8080 microprocessor, with memory segmentation as a solution for addressing more memory than can be covered by a plain 16-bit address. The term x86 derived from the fact that early successors to the 8086 also had names ending in "86". Many additions and extensions have been added to the x86 instruction set over the years, almost consistently with full backward compatibility. The architecture has been implemented in processors from Intel, Cyrix, AMD, VIA and many other companies.

IBM PC and the x86 architecture

February 1982 - AMD signed a contract with Intel, becoming a licensed second-source manufacturer of 8086 and 8088 processors.

IBM wanted to use the Intel 8088 in its IBM PC, but IBM's policy at the time was to require at least two sources for its chips.
AMD later produced the Am286 under the same arrangement, but Intel canceled the agreement in 1986 and refused to convey technical details of the i386 part. AMD challenged Intel's decision to cancel the agreement and won in arbitration, but Intel disputed this decision. A long legal dispute followed, ending in 1994 when the Supreme Court of California sided with AMD. Subsequent legal disputes centered on whether AMD had legal rights to use derivatives of Intel's microcode. In the face of uncertainty, AMD was forced to develop clean room designed versions of Intel code.

K5 Microprocessor

AMD's first x86 processor to be developed entirely inhouse. Introduced in March 1996, its primary competition was Intel's Pentium microprocessor. The K5 was based upon an internal highly parallel 29k RISC processor architecture with an x86 decoding front-end. The K5 offered good x86 compatibility.

K5 Microprocessor

K5 Models SS/A5

Sold as 5K86 P75 to P100, later as K5 PR75 to PR100 4.3 million Transistors in 500 or 350 nm

L1-Cache: 8 + 16 KB (Data + Instructions)

Socket 5 and Socket 7 VCore: 3.52V Front side bus: 50 (PR75), 60 (PR90), 66 MHz (PR100) First release: March 27, 1996

Clock rate: 75, 90, 100 MHz

K6

The K6 microprocessor was launched by AMD in 1997. The main advantage is that it was designed to fit into existing desktop designs for Pentium branded CPUs. It was marketed as a product which could perform as well as its Intel Pentium II equivalent but at a significantly lower price. The K6 had a considerable impact on the PC market and presented Intel with serious competition

K6 Models Model 6

8.8 million transistors in 350 nm L1-Cache: 32 + 32 KB (Data + Instructions)

MMX
Socket 7 Front side bus: 66 MHz First release: April 2, 1997 VCore: 2.9 V (166/200) 3.2/3.3 V (233)

Clockrate: 166, 200, 233 MHz

Model 7

8.8 million transistors in 250 nm L1-Cache: 32 + 32 KB (Data + Instructions)

MMX
Socket 7 Front side bus: 66 MHz First release: January 6, 1998 VCore: 2.2 V

Clockrate: 200, 233, 266, 300 MHz

K6-2

The K6-2 was an x86 microprocessor introduced by AMD on May 28, 1998, and available in speeds ranging from 266 to 550 MHz. An enhancement of the original K6, the K6-2 introduced AMD's 3D-Now!

SIMD instruction set, featured a larger 64 KiB Level 1 cache (32 KiB instruction and 32 KiB data), and an upgraded system-bus interface called Super Socket 7, which was backward compatible with older Socket 7 motherboards.

K6-2

It was manufactured using a 0.25 micrometre process, ran at 2.2 volts, and had 9.3 million transistors.

K6-III

a K6-2 with on-die L2 cache.

In execution, however, the design was not simple; with 21.4 million transistors.
The pipeline was short compared to that of the Pentium III and thus the design did not scale well past 500 MHz. Nevertheless, the K6-III 400 sold well, and the AMD K6-III 450 was clearly the fastest x86 chip on the market on introduction, comfortably outperforming AMD K6-2s and Intel Pentium IIs

K6-III

AMD Athlon

Athlon is the name of a family of CPUs designed by AMD, targeted mostly at the desktop market. It has been largely unused as just "Athlon" since 2001 when AMD started naming its processors Athlon XP, but in 2008 began referring to single core 64-bit processors from the AMD Athlon X2 and AMD Phenom product lines.

Athlon (Model 1,K7 "Argon", 250 nm)

Athlon (Model 2, K75 "Pluto/Orion", 180 nm)

Athlon (Model 4, "Thunderbird", 180 nm)

AMD Duron

AMD Duron processor is a low-cost CPU based on the K7 architecture. The first generation of Duron processors used Spitfire core, which is similar to the Athlon Thunderbird core with the exception of L2 cache - the Duron had 64 KB L2 cache while the Athlon had 256 KB cache. Having larger L1 cache, faster bus speed and more powerful FPU unit, the Duron Spitfire processors significantly outperformed their competitors - Intel Celeron processors with 66 Mhz FSB. Even after the bus speed on Celeron processors was increased to 100 MHz, they were still lagging behind the Duron CPUs.

AMD Sempron

Sempron has been the marketing name used by AMD for several different budget desktop CPUs, using several different technologies and CPU socket formats. The Sempron replaced the AMD Duron processor and competes against Intel's Celeron series of processors. AMD coined the name from the Latin semper, which means "always", to suggest the Sempron is suitable for "daily use, practical, and part of everyday life".

AMD Sempron