There hasn’t been much controversy that has surfaced in the
computing industry between Microsoft, AMD, Intel, and the others in
the past few weeks.  Maybe it’s because it’s the beginning of
summer, where people tend to spend more time outside, and thus, less
time on their computers, and buying things for their computers. 
Whatever the cause, there’s a lack of news.  Because of this,
I’ll just throw out some random tidbits and see what happens.

Intel’s Willamette
Recently, Intel announced that they plan on introducing the
Willamette, which is their first processor to feature a new core since
1995 with the Pentium Pro/P6 core, in 1.4GHz and 1.3GHz samples. 
They plan to do so in the fourth quarter of 2000, around
October.  They will then introduce a 1.5GHz Willamette in early
2001.

It seems that Intel finally found a
fire under their caboose and ramped up production to where it could
always be.  My theory behind the the ramping in production is the
competition.  AMD finally was able to keep up with Intel for the
first extended time ever. 
Therefore, instead of just making sure they were comfortably in front
of their closest competitor, they are now having to play catch up, and
somehow get back in front of AMD.  And, as always, the advantages
are for the consumer.  Better technology, faster, and at lower
prices.  This is all thanks to the AMD Athlon Processor, who’s
core beats the P6 core of the Pentium iii.

Now, don’t forget, that if it weren’t
for the i820/i840 problems, we wouldn’t be seeing Willamette so
soon.  RAMBUS DRAM prices are also to blame.  If I820 would
have been a success, and RAMBUS’s prices weren’t so high, Intel would
still be top dog, because, as tests have shown, the new Intel Pentium
iii .18 core beats the Athlon on a i820/Rambus test bed in over 50% of
tests.

Thunderbird
Let’s put AMD in the spot light.  Take the 256KB of L2 Cache
that has been standard since the Pentium came out around 1994, along
with the onboard cache that made the Celeron a hit, and put it
together with the amazing Athlon K7 core.  You’ll get one hell of
a thunder-chicken.  The Thunderbird, if you haven’t guessed yet,
is AMD’s answer to Intel’s Pentium iii .18 Coppermine CPUs that took
the cache in half, and put it on the CPU.  Because the Athlon
core beats the Pentium iii core, and because both CPUs will have the
same L2 cache, the Athlon + L1 (128KB) will beat the Pentium iii + L1
(32KB).

Expect this loud flyer to be on the
market soon, probably with the original Athlon name, as Intel did with
the P3 Coppermine.  If you’re looking to buy a new motherboard
and chip, wait for AMD to put out it’s sibling processors to the
Athlon.