AMD Hammer Processors and x86-64 Technology Preview

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Just got word that Xbitlabs.com have posted a AMD Hammer Processors and x86-64 Technology Preview! here's a snip.

Some time ago we got to know that AMD was preparing the launch of a new processor core, then called K8 (K7 - Athlon). Few people knew anything about the core then. Time brought about the details, one of which was quite shocking: K8 would be a 64-bit processor. The shock was due to the fact that the only 64-bit processor then was Intel Itanium. And that monster was made of a huge amount of transistors, had a non-x86 architecture and cost a fantastic sum. So, we asked if AMD was working on something like that?

In time we got the answer: absolutely not. The K8 processor, named Hammer afterwards, is actually similar to the existing Athlon XP, but at the same time there are striking differences. We also got to know the name of the architecture AMD implemented in Hammer. It's "x86-64", that is, 64-bit x86 (by analogy with x86-32). In this article we'll try to make it clear what x86-64 Hammer actually is and how it differs from Athlon, Pentium 4 and Itanium.

For more Info Warp2... Xbitlabs.com