AMD to Announce Enhanced Version of Athlon Processor

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. will announce an enhanced version of its Athlon processor today that it hopes will help it gain ground on industry leader Intel Corp. in providing chips for the high-performance computer business.

The new chips will improve processing speed over the earlier Athlon design by adding 256 kilobytes of high-speed memory (called cache) to the processor itself. Earlier Athlons use a separate cache chip. The new version also features a faster circuitry pathway, or “bus,” connecting the processor to other PC components. Chips based on the new design will operate at clock speeds of up to 1 gigahertz.

After years of missteps, the Sunnyvale, Calif., company has recently grabbed a sizable share of the market supplying processors for about 30% of the economy PC sector, and about 7% of the performance PC sector, according to Ashok Kumar, an analyst with U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis. But Kumar doubts the changes will accelerate AMD’s progress because it doesn’t offer a sufficient advantage over Intel’s offerings to budge corporate buyers, who still drive sales of the higher-end PCs.

“Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM, and the same applies to Intel,” he said. AMD also announced availability of the Duron processor for low-cost PCs.