Athlon 64 with DDR2 and Socket M2

Athlon 64 is the cornerstone of AMD’s processor series and the K8-based series has had quite a success in its fairly short lifespan. The latest months there have been quite a lot of discussions regarding the future of the Athlon 64 and at PC Perspective they’ve taken the task to clear out the rumours from the facts upon themself. What they’ve managed to clarify that AMD will introduce a new Socket next year, Socket M2, and that it will support the new memory technology DDR2.

 

Among others they’ve gotten their hands on a document that tells of a processor design called AMD Dual Core Processor Design (Rev F). This design seems to be a dual-core model of Athlon 64 very much similar to the one we’ve seen earlier, the big difference is that the integrated controller supports DDR2-667. Appearantly this is the new processor for Socket M2 and it seems to get a few new technologies to rely on.

“We are told that this processor will use the M2 socket and that the processors will be AMD’s first to support Microsoft’s virtualization and security technologies called Presidio and Pacifica.[…] Also, there is indication of something called a AMDSI or AMD Serial Interface and is called a “simple way to access core temperatures.” Also there is something refered to as a PROCHOT, an “external device that can initial thermal throttling.” Might these two new features enable AMD to support individual core down-clocking and thermal throttling?”

This is quite interesting information but at the same time in now way official so you might want to take the information with a pinch of salt.

:: Read the entire article at PC Perspective