AMD fanfares new Sempron chip range

Posted on 7 Jun 2004 at 15:40

AMD has announced that the replacement for its ageing Duron range is going to be named the Sempron. The company says that it will start shipping the new range, aimed at the budget-conscious user, in the second half of this year.

The company says that for desktop and notebook computing, it sees the 64-bit Athlon processors filling the top of the range with the Athlon XP and Mobile AMD Athlon XP-M 32-bit chips filling the mid range. Thus the new Sempron will be taking on Intel's own 'value' Celeron range at the lower end of the market.

AMD itself is long on the market for the new chip and short on the detail. The company says that the target customers for the Sempron are 'about downloading and playing music, or sending pictures to family and friends.' A home user then, but one with a broadband connection and one for whom the computer is more for entertainment than business tasks.

Although AMD is keeping quiet about what the design and features of the Sempron are likely to be, it is almost certainly going to be a 32-bit processor. Reports suggest that it will be available in Socket A, Socket 754 and the recently announced Socket 939 versions with dual channel memory support. Finally, as is the fashion today, it is likely to support the NX (no execute) instruction to guard against buffer overflows and other software design flaws which can be exploited by virus authors.

Author: Steve Malone

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