As we’ve earlier reported the next generation of processors from AMD will not be named locally’ like the ones today (Brisbane, Winchester, etc.) but instead get names from stars. The coming series of processors will be called Agena (quad), Kuma (dual, mainstream), Rana (dual, entry) and Spica (single-core). Some of the improvements AMD has done with the new architecture are as follows: “Hyper-Transport 3.0 (from 2GT/s to 5.2GT/s), 32B Instruction Fetch, more precise Branch Prediction and Out-of-Order Load Execution, 4 Double Precision FLOPS/Cycle, Dual 128Bit SSE calculation, and Load per Cycle.” There is also a big load of SSE4 instructions which are expected to be added, which in the end means significantly improved performance.
As AMD has earlier told us there will be compatibility between AM2 and AM2+ as processors will work in either type of motherboard, but AM2+ processors will of course not be able to make use of the +-features on a AM2 board, and vice versa. AM3 will be postponed since AMD believes that DDR3 will not become a regularity until 2009.
At the same time, AMD is working on getting JEDEC (the memory standard organization) to accept DDR2-1066 as a standard on top of DDR2-800 so that it can include this with its coming star series.
