During a press conference for financial analysts, AMD gave the broad outlines of the 2006 and 2007 roadmaps.
Three main innovations will take place in 2006 additionally to the usual frequency increases. First; the DDR2 support then the Presidio and Pacifica technologies.
Presidio technology is the equivalent of the LaGrande for Intel. This function increases the security level, but could have unpleasant consequences as it’s based on the Palladium technology, already the subject of many articles about possible misuses.
Pacifica is the equivalent of the Virtual Technology (VT) for Intel also known as VanderPool. Pacifica permits the dissociation of the OS from the hardware and allows the operation of several OSs on a single computer.
Biggest changes will however take place in 2007. For servers, the release of multi core processors (4 cores apparently) has been brought up with the possibility to include 32 or more processors. These processors will require a cache L3 additionally to a “X GHz” HyperTransport bus, which will be at least two times faster than the current 1 “GHz”.
Desktop processors won’t be left out in 2007 with the release of new cores. AMD hasn’t specified whether if they will be dual or quadri cores. These cores will feature bigger cache, a new HT bus and will support DDR3 memory. If AMD plans to launch dual core processors for laptops in 2006, in 2007 they will feature bigger but shared cache and will support DDR3 memory. According to AMD’s plan, DDR2 memory will be quickly replaced by the DRR3. For long term, AMD mentioned FPU extensions for the AMD64, a new architecture, coprocessors integrated to processor, HyperTransport 4, DDR4 … but didn’t give any details. It is nice to let us imagine what will happen, but we would have appreciated a couple of information.
For fabrication, the first silicon wafer engraving tests started in March in the FAB36 and AMD announced to be on schedule to start mass production in 2006. This production will have a 65 nm fabrication process. This technology development is going well, according to AMD, and the FAB36 will be also used later for 45 and then 32 nm fabrication process.
