The list of new features for AMD's Palomino is pretty short; in fact, it is virtually non-existent. Like the Thunderbird before it, Palomino will be manufactured on a .18-micron process and sport 256KB of on-die level 2 cache. According to AMD, the Palomino will be a re-worked Thunderbird core optimized for minimal power consumption. Of course, diminished power requirements mean less heat output so we would expect a Palomino to consume between 20 and 30% less power than a comparably clocked Thunderbird.

Last month at Comdex we saw a working Palomino running at 1.5GHz, so there is no question that AMD's next of kin is nearly ready for prime time. While a 1.2GHz Athlon outperforms Intel's 1.5GHz Pentium 4 in many situations, AMD probably doesn't feel much pressure to ramp up production on higher frequency processors. Since Intel is already at 1.5GHz with a very scalable architecture, there is no way AMD could possibly win a frequency war, or a race to 2GHz for that matter. If Intel begins surpassing the Athlon in performance, there is a good chance we might see the Palomino before the second quarter of 2001.

AMD is hoping that the re-worked core will bring the Athlon to at least 1.7GHz by the second half of 2001. By this time the 1.2GHz Athlon CPU on 266MHz front side bus will occupy the lowest rung on AMD's performance ladder. Once the Palomino runs out of headroom, the next horse will escape from the barn.

Not much is known about the fifth generation core in the Athlon family other than it will be the first processor from AMD on a 130nm manufacturing process. Of course the switch from 180 to 130nm manufacturing means a smaller die (if no additional core logic is added), less power consumption (meaning less heat output), and greater scalability. Expect Thoroughbred to debut between 1.7 and 2GHz. For the time being, AMD estimates sampling will begin in Q4 2001 with production to commence during the first quarter of 2002.