Sender: jur AT rz DOT hu-berlin DOT de
Message-ID: <374515C1.A9DDD353@informatik.hu-berlin.de>
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 08:13:53 +0000
From: Jens-Uwe Rumstich <rumstich AT informatik DOT hu-berlin DOT de>
Organization: TUSCON
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To: pgcc AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: K7 potentials
References: <374331C4 DOT CA20644C AT lycosmail DOT com>
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Reply-To: pgcc AT delorie DOT com

Hi!

> I was wondering if there is any speculation, q's, etc about what the K7
> may be capable of.
> 
> For example:
>     Will the K7 be less "register starved" than the rest of the x86
> archictecture, or was this simply not possible while maintaining x86
> compatibility????

It would break the x86-compatibility. The x86 only has 3 bit for the
registers, so you canīt have more than 8 registers without heavy
changes in the instruction set :-(

>     Anybody know when K7's will be available at a decent price (yes,
> this is probably near to impossible to determine, but it could make an
> interesting point for discussion.)


I donīt know, what you mean with decent price. But I would suggest to
wait
until October/November before purchasing a K7.
AMD will be using 0.18 technologie than, so you can expect higher
frequencies
and cheaper prices then. Then I expect, that VIA/SiS/ALi wonīt be able
to
release their K7 chipsets until june, and I expect their offerings to be
better than AMDs.

> Anyway, I'm bringing this up due to the (hopefully) soon release of the
> AMD K7 in June or July (I hope so, really I do)

I am quite sure, that AMD will be able to release the K7 in June as
promised. Atleast a few to make magazines, web sites and some OEMs
happy. 
Higher volumes will probably be a 1 or 2 monthes later, because of the
usual
starting problems at AMD ;-)
In Q3 the number of chip will increase because of the shrink to 0.18 and
the start of the second fab in Dresden.

cu
	Jens-Uwe