AMD unveils K6-MMX MPU

Electronic News, April 7, 1997 by Jim DeTar, Crista Hardie

In addition, some key questions that were expected to be answered at AMD's K6 kickoff event went unanswered, while at the same time AMD provided some technology surprises.

The K6-MMX debuts initially at 166-, 200- and 233MHz operating frequency speeds, and AMD plans to move to 266MHz by 2H97 and to 300MHz by the end of the year. AMD has already shipped 10,000 evaluation units into the market this quarter and expects to be shipping hundreds of thousands a quarter later this year.

The 8.8-million-transistor AMD-K6 is manufactured using AMD's 0.35-micron, five-layer-metal (5LM) CS34 process at its Fab 25 facility in Austin, Texas.

At the K6 kickoff event, AMD chairman/CEO Jerry Sanders said the company will immediately launch a campaign using the MMX moniker, including television ads slated to start running this week. Commenting on the Intel legal action, he said, "We thought it was reasonable that the 57 instruction set be called MMX. If we had lost, we would have had to put 'AMD with MMX Intel instruction set' or something bulky like that on our chips."

Mr. Sanders also speculated that Intel may take legal action with regards to its Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) technology as well, saying, "We expect Intel is going to try to co-opt AGP as well." Mr. Sanders said AMD plans to add AGP capability to the K6 by the end of this year.

AMD VP and general counsel Tom McCoy said, "We believe the term MMX belongs to the public domain and that it is commonly understood to be a shorthand reference to multimedia extensions. Our intent all along has been to communicate that the AMD-K6 MMX processor directly executes the multimedia extensions to the x86 instruction set known as MMX. Today's ruling leaves us free to continue to do so." However, the matter is not over yet. A court hearing has been set for later this month on the matter.

Cyrix, on the other hand, chose to settle with Intel, rather than wait for the court to decide its fate with regard to MMX. Lew Paceley, Cyrix VP of marketing, said, "This is not a superficial issue--AMD did not win yesterday."

What AMD got, he indicated, amounts to a temporary stay of execution. "There are 129 countries with intellectual property and trademark laws," he said. "AMD lost the temporary restraining order in Germany. (Intel's) not getting the TRO in the U.S. is not such an important milestone." Meanwhile, back in Delaware, a hearing on the MMX trademark issue is set to begin April 29.

Without disclosing details of the settlement terms, Cyrix said it is now free to market its products using the letters MMX, provided promotional materials acknowledge MMX is a trademark of Intel.

Intel is apparently happy to have the matter settled with Cyrix as well. "This agreement is the result of several months of discussion between the two companies," said Peter Detkin, director of litigation for Intel. "We are gratified that both Cyrix and Intel have been able to reach an agreement which serves both our interests and ultimately benefits our customers and consumers."

Meanwhile, AMD said it capable of meeting 30 percent of the market's requirements for x86 microprocessors and said it is looking to garner up to 30 percent market share within a couple of years.

Industry observers said that could prove a formidable task. John Lazlo, a principal analyst with PaineWebber, commented, "Although the company has made tremendous progress in developing the K6, there are still a number of factors which could affect the company's goal of 30 percent market share.

"First, the company has not officially announced any specific K6 customers, and has admitted that its greatest challenge will be to attract the top-tier OEM players. Second, there is the issue of socket compatibility on the motherboard. Although the AMD K6 will be able to plug into existing Pentium motherboards, it will not be design compatible (with) slot 1 on Intel's sixth-generation motherboard that will be designed for the Pentium II (due for release in May)."

Mr. Sanders acknowledged the lack of initial enthusiasm on the part of the PC OEM community and said his top priority now is to land a major PC customer for the new K6 line, while initially selling to the lower-tier PC OEMs.

"Forty percent of the (microprocessor) business is outside of the top 20 PC companies. Our initial customers will be in those 40 percent," Mr. Sander said, adding, "Most of the top 20 have been our customers, with the exception of the direct marketers, like Dell."

At least one company, Tatung, immediately announced plans to use the K6. Tatung said it will use all three speed grades of the new K6-MMX to power its TCS-5970 desktop computers. The TCS-5970, which has a suggested price starting at $1,900, is expected to be available in May.

Additional support for the K6 came from VIA Technologies, which announced the Apollo VP2/97 core logic chipset for the K6; Opti, which said it has begun shipping the Vendetta and FireStar desktop and notebook 64-bit single-chip core logic products in support of the K6; and ITE, which said it will offer versions of its single-chip chipset to work with AMD-K6 on notebook (IT8331G) and desktop (IT8329G) PCs.