There's an interview with AMD CEO Jerry Sanders on Forbes.

Not content with releasing the Thunderbird and Duron CPUs next month, it looks like AMD is planning one more for the gipper!

TheRegister is carrying an interesting story about AMD and their reluctance to show off anything using Rambus memory. There is also mention of SMP AMD systems this Autumn.

A little more Thunderbird action for you guys. EBNS has an excellent article on the upcoming AMD CPUs (10 of them!)   that should be released early next month. Most interestingly there is discussion about the economics of pricing the chips and the cache locations etc. If you're a chip-head it is well worth a look.

But the performance the Athlon core produces could also make the Thunderbird more expensive to manufacture than the Coppermine. [snip] Adding 256 Kbytes of cache to the Athlon die would boost its cost by about 25%, according to Keith Diefendorff, an analyst with MicroDesign Resources.

AMD has pretty consistently undercut Intel in the price/mhz war, things might get a little hairy with the Thunderbird and Duron chips though.

An update on AnandTech this morning has Anand himself talking about the new products from AMD. He has a Thunderbird in house himself and here's what he's saying

It's getting very close to Duron/Thunderbird time, and AMD is going to get a nice boost to the Athlon's ego as the performance throne will once again shift over into AMD's arena. Between the Athlon (Thunderbird), Athlon (K75) and Duron, it is going to be very difficult to recommend the Pentium III and/or Celeron over the next few months. Intel's only hope between now and the release of the Willamette is that the Pentium III and Celeron parts are priced lower than their TBird/Duron counterparts or that the Thunderbird has motherboard/platform issues; the latter doesn't seem likely since the design is relatively similar to the current Athlon design with a few exceptions regarding timings.

And while on the subject, chip-architect has a performance analysis in PDF format and Tech Extreme has a Willamette vs Next Gen Athlon article.

It looks like good news for everyone out there using a CPU. (Yeah, you) AMD is planning to launch 10 new cpus as early as June 5th. They will be launching the Duron (as noted earlier) in 600 to 700mhz versions, as well as the new Thunderbird CPU sporting 700mhz to 1GHz range. The Thunderbird has been speculated as being about 20-25% faster than the current Athlon chips. Here is part of the reason why: (Thanks AMDZone)

Thunderbird also marks an important milestone for AMD, as the company will begin shipping versions of the chip based on its 0.18-micron copper process from its Dresden, Germany, processor fabrication plant.

CNet has word that the Celeron-killer chip from AMD called the Duron is looking towards a release in the middle of next month. They will start out with 600mhz to 700mhz chips.

For the Athlon overclockers, a new version of FixL2Cache is out, the util that lets you change the L2 cache speed of an Athlon through software.

Tech Report has some more info on the compatibility problem with AMD's upcoming Thunderbird processor and VIA's KX133 chipset. Some people might be able to upgrade without replacing their motherboard it seems.

The Register is reporting that AMD has hit a motherboard problem with the Athlon follow-up, the Thunderbird. Apparently it's incompatible with the VIA KX-133 chipset. More than 30 Slot A mobos use this chipset, so you might wanna check your manual if you're gonna need a motherboard upgrade for the Thunderbird :( The upcoming KZ-133 and AMD's own Irongate work fine with the new CPU.

AMD's 2000 Roadmap - The Facts is a new article on AnandTech this morning, looking at AMD's plans for the rest of this year.

Sharky's Weekly CPU Price guide has been updated, showing that it's pretty uneventful for CPU prices right now. Athlon 1Ghz still a freakin fortune.

Silicon Investor (thanks Tweakers) has a report from investing company Merrill Lynch (from Monday, but I didn't see it before). They met with AMD management to see how things were going, financially. Besides all kinds of numbers on how AMD will be peforming and such, there was also this part on chip production

We were somewhat surprised to hear that AMD has already stopped all wafer starts of the older Athlon product. That means that all of the older Athlon products will be gone from AMD's sales mix by the end of the current quarter - AMD told us that all of the products in production have already been spoken for. If the production ramp of the new products goes well, AMD's product mix will be substantially more competitive a quarter from now than it is now. If there are any problems, the financial impact will be substantial. Our talk with AMD Friday revealed no problems - indeed, the early yields on Thunderbird at both the Austin fab and the copper interconnect fab in Dresden have been encouraging <snip>

So they already stopped with the production of the current Athlon cores, quite the risk for AMD. Hope it works out for them, or neither Intel or AMD will be able to actually sell us their processors heh.

SiliconNews is carrying an interview with AMD covering Slot-A, the Duron (SpitFire) in retail, and a few other quick questions.

AMD has announced their Duron line of processors, to go head to head with Intel's Celeron processor. Previously this CPU was known as the Spitfire. They will start shipping in June, but I don't see any mention in the PR or on the Duron website how much on-die cache it will have. It does feature a 200MHz front side system bus, and enhanced 3DNow tech.

Ace's Hardware is reporting that the Thunderbird will just be called the Athlon, like the current Athlon. They may add an "E" for easier distinction though. The Spitfire however, will have a different name and should be announced at the next shareholdersmeeting on April the 27th.

Also on The Register this morning is news that AMD's Mustang (new Athlon, with a large amount of on-die cache) will be shipping by the end of this year, according to this roadmap on a Japanese site covering the WinHEC show. There's also word of a mobile Athlon processor codenamed "Corvette". TR also mentions volume shipping of the 1.5Ghz Mustang will happen in January of 2001.

AMD Zone has an AMD press release, announcing their demoing of a prototype Athlon supporting DDR memory. The actual supporting chipset and memory modules are scheduled to be released in the second half of 2000.

Uh-oh, looks like AMD doesn't have an unlimited amount of chips supply either, as CNN Financial is reporting that the AMD Athlon and K6-2 have sold out until the end of the 2nd quarter, which ends in June. I wouldn't expect any new price drops soon with this news

Advanced Micro Devices, the number two maker of microprocessors used in PCs, said on Friday that it has sold out of both its microprocessor lines for the current quarter, a sign of serious capacity constraints in the industry that could crimp PC makers. A spokesman for Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD said that the company's high-end Athlon processors and its value-priced K6-2 chips are sold out for the second quarter, which ends in June. "There's either a shortage going on because of manufacturing constraints at Intel or incredible demand," the AMD spokesman said.
<snip>

HardOCP has two photos of the Thunderbird CPU that was used for the benchmarks they published yesterday.