What's your opinion on Mustang? General speculation welcome :)

[Noriaki]

Me and a friend of mine are having a (friendly) argument about the upcoming Mustang core from AMD.

There is the Corvette variant that is for mobile.
There is a version for high end, the "Athlon Ultra" I believe.

I've read somewhere that the layout of the pieces is optimized so it will use less power or some such thing. Or maybe run at higher clock speeds due to shorter traces or la la la la. But the big question is this:

The Mustang will have versions to replace the Duron and Athlon.

What will a desktop Mustang core have over the Thunderbird core.

Maybe 512k on die cache instead of 256? Perhaps it will be 256bit cache instead of 64? Maybe it's just tweaked for better peformance, but no major differences.

I think that because it's got a version that is targetted at the WS/Server market it will have faster cache.
So I'm guessing for 128 or 256bit bus.

What do you guys think ?

Like I said general speculation welcome

 

[Sephiroth_IX]

Definitely a 256bit L2 Bus.

Beyond that, i do not see much that can truly be done without a core redesign.

 

[Soccerman]

the Mustang will probably include a whole pile of core tweaks that have been piling up since they first released the Athlon. Why haven't they included them right away?

it's called marketing. They don't NEED a product that annihilates the competition, just one that competes well, beating it in most tests is preferable. this way they can get more money out of the same core, by adding tweaks that keep it up to snuff for the competition.

The mustang IMHO will be what the Athlon was truly meant to be, becuase it's the last athlon CPU in their roadmap, which also happens to compete with Intel's insane mhz, but low power/mhz CPU. they need that power to compete, and they will add it.

The tweaks given to the Athlon currently have been .18, Copper, and on Die cache, I personally don't think they did anything special to the core when they released the 1 ghz chip, they might have called the core a different name (becuase it went to 1 ghz), but that doesn't mean they really did anything to it.

Corvette on the otherhand.. well that core to me is kindof mysterious. they don't mention the Speed ranges, cache size or anything. it's what they are working on right now if I remember correctly. Their problem with it, is just that it eats power like we breath air. which is partly where PowerNow! comes in. The Corvette will be a very good performer, and will last long on battery life, if they can get it to consume less power. the K6-2+ Series also includes PowerNow!, which will IMHO increase battery life a fair amount, and the K6-2 is a great CPU for notebooks, becuase it has a good amount of performance.

 

[Zeroumus[DH]]

I have no solid info, but some athlon core modifications have already been made is my understanding. something to do with reducing the cellular design bottle necks, a few of them