An Interview with the Product Manager of AMD (one of the worlds biggest microprocessor manufacturers) K-6, Mr. Michael Steele!! Q: A warm welcome to Mr. Michael Steele, Product Manager of AMD's K-6 microprocessor project! Q: AMD has been a growing company for many years. How does it feel to be one of the worlds major producer of raw computing power for PCs? Michael Steele > Well One of the reasons that we have been able to grow at such a rapid rate is because we have been dedicated to providing the best value for PC users in the x86 market place without sacrificing Quality. Today we are not only able to provide the best value but we are also able to do it at the leading edge of performance Q: Michael, AMD has been producing CPUs for many years now. What would you say has been the biggest development industry wide in the last 10 years? Michael Steele > Probably two things I would say that have had the most impact. One of those has been the rapid development of windows graphical interface and as that interface has been improved and placed higher and higher demands on the hardware platform its driven the need for faster and faster processors. That's one. The other is incredible growth of the web throughout the world I believe this is the killer ap of the 90s that will bring more and more mainstream household users to the PC market place Q: Research and Development must take along time. How long from beginning to end did the K-6 series take to create? Michael Steele > Well its really tied fairly closely to the technology that came from next generation the K-6 in its form today is based on a Original next generation design called the nx 586. While the nx 586 did not come to market in its original form it provided the backbone for the AMD K-6 to put things into perspective. I would have to step back even further the nx 686 actually leveraged much of the technology from Nexgen's nx 586 which was several years in the making Q: The Nexgen deal really did pay off!! The K-6 is a remarkable chip. Could you tell us a bit about the features of the K-6? And how exactly it will help the home PC user market? Michael Steele > from the 586 to the 686 to the K-6 each additional design effort as we progressed from to the other each successive effort was completed more quickly that any other. To make a long story short, it takes a long time to develop such a complex product but we are getting better and better and we expect to deliver even more compelling and exciting leading edge products in the near future. First of all it's a 6th generation processor which competes directly with the P2. It utilizes a advanced 6 issue RISC 86 super scaler micro architecture with 7 parallel execution units a large 64 k on chip L1 cache and a advanced 2 level branch prediction to deliver this level of performance. In addition the AMD K-6 enables industry standard MMX instructions for extended Multimedia performance Q: AMD has been a leader among the CPU makers for some time. What type of new microprocessors after the AMD K-6 are we to look forward to from your company in the near future? Michael Steele > We recently announced that we are sampling the 266mhz version of the AMD K-6 and we expect to follow that product with the 300 after. We will continue to compete at the high-end by delivering improvements in both performance and architectural advancements SirGan > I am thinking of upgrading my system I have a p166 and would like to upgrade to an AMD K-6 233mmx chip I have to change my motherboard and was recommended to use a board called a QDI board will this board work well with the chip? It has a tx Intel chip set. Also what motherboard would you recommend that will take the 233mmx chip and still not be obsolete for 266 or 300 in the future Michael Steele > The first thing I would do would be to go to http://www.amd.com and visit the K-6 section where there is a list of AMD approved Motherboards. This is a good starting point once you have chosen a few motherboards to look at, you should contact the motherboard manufacturers are working very close with all of the key motherboard venders to insure their designs are optimized for the AMD K-6. FoxMulder > I wanted to know how you felt on the performance the K-6 gives on Quake and the soon to be Quake2, John Carmack confirmed that it isn't good compared to Intel Michael Steele > Depending on the specific app you run you may get better performance from a K-6 or you may get better performance from a P2. Thee K-6 Overall provides performance competitive to the P2 on Main stream applications one of the bench marks we use extensively is Winstone 97 which provides a excellent est. of the kind of performance most end users will experience. I also would like to comment that I don't know of the specific performance measurement made via Quake however I do believe the AMD K-6 provides powerful performance not only on mainstream applications but also on today's newest games Kaye > Which companies currently have the K-6? Michael Steele > You can find the K-6 from a huge variety of PC venders including companies such as Acer, Digital, and Soon IBM. To see a more complete list of PC companies who currently ship a system with a K-6 please check http://www.amd.com/K-6 there you will find a complete where to buy WebPage. SwampGas > My system is run 24/7, has heavy CPU loads, many things inside the case that creates heat, and I overclock the chip. With power comes heat. Does the AMD K-6 offer any new advances in heat-reduction, and if not, are there plans to release a new design for heat-reduction and when? Michael Steele > Sounds like you are Quite a poweruser. All CPU's today have to deal with the power/heat factor K-6 is no different. In its current state the heat dissipated by the K-6 should create no unusual problems for any desktop user however that being said we will continue to improve the technology behind the K-6 and in the future those improvements will also reduce the power and heat of the processor Katrina` > How would you rate the speed of the K-6 to a Mac? as in 225mhz, 300mhz, etc.? Michael Steele > Unfortunately I'm not much of a Mac expert sorry I cant answer further. Displaced > how do you work around the CPU id flag that is used in several programs to identify the MMX extensions? Michael Steele > We use the industry standard CPU id instruction and we work very closely with all of the Major software developers to insure they understand the importance of using that instruction we make this information available through our developer and tech docs on the web. We found that the software community is very interested in making sure their software takes full advantage of the AMD K-6 and the MMX instructions set I_M_AK > how well do these chips run in a Dual processing environment? And how are they compared to Pentiums? And when is the die reduced chips suppose to hit the market? Michael Steele > ok the answer to the first is The AMD K-6 is designed for single processor environments. AMD is focused at this time on the mainstream market which is over 95% single processors We realize that dual processing is likely to become more important in the future and we will address this when the time is right that's the end to the first part. Your second question eluded to P2 comparisons. The best way for me to describe this is as follows for equally configured systems the AMD K-6 delivers performance that is competitive with the P2 but at a significantly lower system price for equally priced systems the AMD K-6 can be configured to deliver much faster performance, more compelling features and still be less expensive. Ashish > How does AMD plan to compete with the Slot CPU as presented by Intel? And is there a lot of merit in the AMD ground for the feature? Michael Steele > Our plan is to not force PC venders to radically change the infrastructure. What I mean by that is that the AMD K-6 provides 6th generation performance in the existing socket 7 environment. This allows PC manufacturers resellers and people like yourself to leverage today's mature cost effective infrastructure of Motherboards, chipsets, power supplies, and thermal designs The AMD K-6 provides the Easy solution for getting the best performance UltraWave > How many years away is AMD and Intel from making a processor that can even begin to compete with RISC processors like PowerPC and Alpha? Michael Steele > first of all its important to make a distinction between x86/windows compatible and RISC based processors. The RISC processors offer excellent performance for specific uses however they do not take advantage of the huge install base of Windows Compatible Software We will continue to deliver leading edge performance for the windows market place. Igeek > [1] In what way is AMD K-6 pr200 considered better than p200 MMX though Intel was first to introduce the MM. tech. into the processors (please tell me more bout the performance factor and not the COST factor) Michael Steele > First of all remember that the K-6 is a 6th generation processor which competes with the P2 this means that at a given clock rate it is faster than 5th generation Pentium with MMX. For detailed benchmark results please refer to the AMD website. Kaye > How does the K-6 price compare with Intel's equivalent? In a school situation, I must be concerned with cost. Q: Well Kaye, I think the AMD website has a very good benchmark and all the info you need... Michael Steele > I don't know anyone who's not concerned with cost. As you shop for a new PC regardless of whether its for the home, the office or school you will find that at a given price point. An AMD K-6 will provide better performance and better system features, one of the key advantages to the AMD K-6 is its ability to enable the best value of price and performance