Voor de echte techies onder ons: Ars Technica heeft een artikel gebouwd over de de technische kant van AMD's nieuwe CPU, de Athlon. Termen als FPU, Pipelining en dergelijke worden behandeld en zo gebruikersvriendelijk (met plaatjes) uitgelegd. Als je hierin geinteresseerd bent, ga dan zeker even kijken.
I’ve been getting a steady stream of emails over the past few months from readers who not only want to know what’s up with the K7, but who also want an explanation that’s a bit more accessible than what’s currently out there. To this end, I’ve prepared what I hope will be a user-friendly synthesis and translation of information that is, by now, widely available from a variety of sources. No breaking news here, or even original conclusions. Just a look at the information that’s been released so far, some discussion of why the K7’s designers made the decisions that they did, and how these decisions set the K7 apart from Intel’s P6-based CPUs. I’ll be going into detail on some of the most talked-about features, like the FPU and the EV6 bus, but I’ll also discuss some of the not-so-glamorous features that will contribute to enhancing the K7’s performance. Additionally, I'll be adding Part II to the line-up within a matter of days, building on what I've completed here.Lastly, in my effort to make this technical article as approachable as possible, I've also, inadvertently perhaps, developed what I think is a useful introduction to several basic CPU-related concepts. As such, you can look at this as much more than a K7 technical preview.
Het tweede deel over de Athlon's front end komt volgende week...
