AMD goes triple-core

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AMD has announced the first ever triple-core x86 processor, part of its upcoming Phenom range, to complement its dual and quad-core chips.

The chips are expected in the first quarter of 2008, and will be the first triple-core processors on the market.

AMD claims that because many applications and games are now designed with dual-core processors in mind, a third core could be beneficial by taking care of background tasks, such as virus scanning. This could be a boon for gaming, where a scheduled background task can temporarily slow gameplay.

The chips won't be a true triple-core design, but a quad-core chip with one core disabled and only three functioning sets of L2 cache. This removes the need to set up a new production line, and will help to keep costs to a minimum.

A financial benefit for AMD is the fact that defective quad-core processors can now potentially be sold as triple-core, if the defects are confined only to one of the four cores.

While it may seem counter-intuitive to create a chip that has its performance deliberately crippled, it will create a wider product range for AMD - customers will be able to choose between a range of single, double, triple or quad cores at various price points. The practise of selling 'defective' CPUs at a lower price point is hardly new; Intel's 486SX processor, sold in the 1990s, was a 486DX part with the maths co-processor disabled.

AMD isn't making any specific claims about performance, except to say that the new chips will provide a significant boost over dual-core offerings, and appeal to a broader audience.

There's been no comment on pricing, but it will have to be very competitive to prevent customers opting for lower-end quad-core options instead.

AMD and Intel currently sell processors with a single, double and quadruple, or quad, cores, the central computing engines found in computers. With AMD's Phenom triple-core chip, AMD hopes to speed the adoption of multi-core chips, since sales of PCs with quad-core chips have been lacklustre.

In the second quarter of 2007, fewer than two per cent of desktop PCs sold used quad-core processors, according to consultancy Mercury Research.

By regulating the speed at which each core operates, AMD could conceivably sell a triple-core chip that has higher performance metrics than one of its own quad-core chips, said Insight 64 analyst Nathan Brookwood.

"If they can get three cores that are higher performing than a quad-core, that will be a really fascinating trade-off," Brookwood said.

But AMD would need to tread carefully in how it sells the chips to consumers, Brookwood said.

Both AMD and Intel sell single, dual- and quad-core chips to consumers in the desktop market, with different amounts of memory and varying performance metrics.

AMD last month launched its quad-core Opteron chip, which had been code-named Barcelona and was about six months late to market. Barcelona boasts faster performance, is more energy efficient, and makes it easier to run multiple kinds of operating system software at the same time, a feature known as virtualization.

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