AMD Announces New Low-End Processor Line

beaverbrother points out these articles at CoolTechZone and PC Magazine, writing "AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) is slated to launch a new Sempron line of processors this summer, to compete with Intel's Celeron line. The processors are designed to perform basic tasks, such as word processing, and more advanced tasks, like playing video, with ease."

Re:Whats up with these names??

[jamesdood]

Actually if I remember correctly, this is from a pretty funny Woody Allen movie, Sleeper [moviefolio.com]

Re:I don't get this

[athakur999]

That's not the "real" price, it's one of those limited quantity specials to get people in the door. The regular asking price of the XP 2500+ was, I believe, close to $90 for the retail version when I was there this weekend.

Duron = 32bit, Semperon = 64bit?

[Unit3]

Actually, I believe that the Duron name refers to the lower-end 32-bit chips, whereas Semperon will be lower-end 64-bit chips.

Feel free to correct me, though.

Re:Yes but...

[plj]

Well, system halting is good, but or produce error noice? If the heatsink has fallen completely off you've hardly started to hear that error beep when the CPU core has already permanently damaged.

It'd be really interesting to know, what option applies in which case!

look elsewhere

[GunFodder]

Via already makes a line of small integrated motherboards with most of those requirements, called EPIA. They use their own Eden processor. It's pretty gutless, but it would make a fine file server or I/O device.

Re:Sempron...

[mrjb]

Absolutely sure -- semPron is Portuguese/Spanish -- 'sem' means 'without'

Re:Yes but...

[drinkypoo]

It's typically a BIOS setting whether the system halts or just buzzes. Sometimes you can set one threshold for alarms, and another for shutoff.

Re:Yes but...

[mog007]

Actully the new line of Athlon 64's have a built in protection mechanism for just this sort of calamity. AMD learns from the past.

Re:Centrino correction

[Silverlancer]

The Centrino is any system that uses the following: 1. An Intel Pentium-M processor, which is NOT a Celeron and has NO releation to the Pentium 4. The new "Dothan" Pentium-M, overclocked to 2.4Ghz in a recent review competed with the Athlon 64 3400+ in many tests and defeated the 3.4Ghz P4EE in SuperPi. This chip may be where Intel goes next, as it uses only 21 watts yet is faster than the Prescott and can clock high with hardly any cooling. 2. An Intel 850 motherboard (I'm pretty sure about this, can't guarantee it though). 3. And that board has to have integrated wireless. If the notebook has the above three, its a Centrino. Just a fancy name for a Pentium-M high-battery-life machine with wireless.

Re:Why this new line?

[Anonymous Coward]

But a Duron 1.6GHz already kills a Celeron 2.6GHz?? Same applies for Duron 1.8GHz and Celeron 2.8GHz.

Budget CPU Shootout: Clash of the 'rons
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i =1927

Re:Yes but...

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"Well, system halting is good, but or produce error noice? If the heatsink has fallen completely off you've hardly started to hear that error beep when the CPU core has already permanently damaged.

It'd be really interesting to know, what option applies in which case."

I improperly installed the CPU cooler in a Shuttle SFF Athlon system (with an NForce2 chipset), and it refused to boot and blinked the "CPU" LED on the motherboard. No damage was done to the CPU, after removing the (defective) shim the CPU worked fine.

The whole "thermal death" issue was really a farse. Since Athlon XP, there has been a thermal diode in the CPU. Implementing the $.25 circuit which monitors the diode and cuts the power was left to the motherboard manufacturer. Unfortunately, most manufacturers left the circuit off to save money. Fortunately, every modern board has thermal protection.

Not to mention the fact that, with a properly installed heatsink (remember, 95% of the people with Athlon systems got them professionally assembled and tested by an OEM), the Athlon should *never* have such a problem. Trust me, it takes a lot more than a sudden shock to unseat the heatsink.

Wrong. Centrino core is a whole new mobile design.

[Glasswire]

...the "Pentium M" processor in Centrino is not a Celeron or any other Pentium 4 Willamette or Northwood or Prescott core derivative.

It was designed from the ground up to perform well at lower clock speeds to lower power consumption and increase battery life.

Re:Yes but...

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"Given that, unlike AMD processors, Intel CPUs have a thermal regulator in them, I dont get the joke. I've seen Athlon chips barf their guts out across a motherboard when the heatsink fell off (plastic clip broke off in a tower), but a Celeron should just crash in that case or a P4 will just reduce its clock speed. In fact even the newer 64 bit AMD chips lack a thermal cut out on the chip, but at least (at LONG last) they have it on the motherboard."

Sorry, you're wrong.

All AMD CPUs since the Palomino (Athlon XP) have had a thermal diode *embedded in the CPU*. This includes the Athlon 64.

Early Athlon XP boards lacked the functionality to cut power.

"I just wish that AMD would spend more time on things like this and clock locking rather then pushing for higher speeds."

Why? ALL modern AMD boards have the proper functionality and will shut down when the thermal solution fails. Why should they focus on fixing something which hasn't been broken since 2002?

Re:Yes but...

[Dr. Spork]

Hey, update your FUD. The last Athlon that had the burn-up problem you describe was the 1400MHz... that's right, way back when they actually used the freqency as the model number. Now they just shut down.

Since then, the Pentium4's have also been running considerably hotter than Athlons.

Re:How Less = More

[aka1nas]

You do realize that the sempron will be a regular athlon64 with features disabled? I.E. some of the L2 cache or the "64-bitness".

Ding ding ding!

[Ayanami Rei]

You are our new Slashdot champion. Lets' break down your +5 score:

+1 for mentioning Linux.
+1 for introducing it in a clever, offhand way (a link to kernel.org which will associate the linking phrase in google, YOU SLY DOG YOU!)
+1 for advocating a return to client/server computing in some form
+1 for using "open" and "hardware" in the same sentence.

Good job! I'd shake your hand if I could reach it.
Now for the bad news:

You don't know what the FUCK are you talking about.
The Sempron is going to be 100% like the Duron. Is the Duron in ANY way more suited then any other processor for thin client computing? AMD's new server line of Opterons with lower voltage cores might be a starting point. The Pentium-M might be a starting point. The Sempron is NOT a starting point.

Oh wait, AMD already sells an embedded x86-compatible processor Am5x86 [amd.com]! And, WHAT'S THIS?!?! It even sells a miniature integrated platform, called Elan [amd.com].

Well tie me up and violate me with a spoon. Do you enjoy being such a karma whore or are you just that ignorant?

Re:Sempron...

[beeblebrox87]

Duron is being phased out, to be replaced by Sempron. AMD will thus still only have two consumer CPU names, Athlon64/Sempron.

Re:Wrong. Centrino core is a whole new mobile desi

[dcam]

Take a look at this article [arstechnica.com]

Basically a P3, with more cache and some of the features of a P4 (improved branch sheduler) and none of the crud (long pipelines).

Re:Sempron...

[pe1rxq]

Likely overkill?
Unless you have a gigabit pipe thats a lot of overkill.
Both tasks could easily be done by a single 486.
I have a 200Mhz pentium at my house doing the same and act as a fileserver too. The only reason its that fast is that I didn't have anything slower with an usb port (for the wlan interface)

Jeroen