AMD Readies For Intel Battle

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April 30, 1998 (4:42 PM EDT)

By Kelly Spang,

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) will go head-to-head with Intel's Pentium II starting May 28, when AMD rolls out its next-generation K6 chip.

Previously called the K6-3D, AMD (company profile) Thursday renamed the processor the K6-2, but still plans to incorporate the company's 3-D NOW technology.

At its May debut, the K6-2 will be running at around 300 MHz and increase in speed in the second half of the year, according to a product road map chart presented at Thursday's annual shareholder meeting.

According to benchmark results presented at the meeting, a 300-MHz K6-2 will outperform the speed of Pentium II and will deliver performance comparable to a 400-MHz Pentium II, according to Jerry Sanders, AMD chairman and CEO, who promised the K6-2 will be AMD's first "differentiated offering."

The K6-2 is based on the 100-MHz system bus. At launch time, chipset companies, including Acer Laboratories and others, will have adequate supplies to support the K6-2 in the second half of the year, according to Sanders. "Basically, it's is our intention to sell the K6-2 in the second half as our major volume item," he said.

By the fourth quarter, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD will deliver its third-generation K6 -- the K6-3D, code-named Sharptooth -- running at 400 MHz, with 265 kbytes of backside Level-2 cache.

Addressing the recent Federal Trade Commission (FTC) decision to approve Intel's (company profile) acquisition of Digital Equipment's semiconductor operations, Sanders said discussions were under way with Digital regarding a technology license of its Alpha chip, but he would not comment on specifics. The FTC ruling does not impact AMD's use of the EV-6 Alpha bus for AMD's K7 product, slated for introduction in the first half of 1999, Sanders said.

At Thursday's meeting, shareholders defeated a proposal to create separate chairman and CEO positions, which would have meant seeking an outside chairman. Shareholders also shot down a proposal that would make the company's compensation committee more independent.