AMD announced the very powerful K6-3 for quite a long time. It
was delayed quite a while, should have been released February 22nd 1999. During
the delay Intel had time establish its Socket 370 version of Celeron. But
finally it arrived in the summer of 1999.
Using the next version of this chip - model 9 code name "Sharptooth" - you
may have three levels of cache!
In the K6-3 you find:
A slightly improved K6-2 unit.
An in-chip L2 cache of 256 KB.
TriLevel Cache design.
New 133 MHz Front side bus.
Clock speeds of 400 MHz and 450 MHz.
TriLevel Cache design
Both the 64 KB L1 cache and the 256 KB L2 cache are integrated
with the chip. This L2 on-die cache works at full processor speed just like it
did in the Pentium Pro, and as it does in the Celeron A and in the Xeon
processors from Intel. This will definitely speed up the K6 quite a bit!
Since the K6-3 is to be used in a Super 7 motherboard there is room for
another level of cache, the L3 cache. The TriLevel Cache design is constructed
to use the existing motherboards with up to 2 MB of cache on-board. This
used-to-be L2 cache (on the motherboard) is used as the third level of cache.
This happens automatically, and the bigger cache seems to increase performance a
lot!
High performance
Tests show performance from the K6-3 450 MHz comparable
to the Pentium III 500 MHz processor. This is coming from a Socket 7
motherboard! My prediction is that the K6-3 will be an excellent CPU at a very
good price. The problem was to find it, the K6-3 never became very popular.
Still weaknesses in the FPU
Traditionally only Intel can produce a
powerful FPU
(Floating Point Unit). Test confirms that the K6-3 has the same FPU as
the K6-2 does. At same clock frequencies it performs 40% under the Pentium III.
However the 3DNow! technology, which is supported by the Microsoft DirectX software layer,
makes up for the weak traditional FP-performance. In test it ends up 15% under
the equaling Pentium III.
The die size
The K6-3 obviously is bigger than the K6-2, due to the
integrated L2 cache. However it is a lot smaller than the Athlons :
Chip
Die size
K6-2
81 mm2
K6-3
118 mm2
K7 Athlon 0.25 micron
184 mm2
K7 Athlon 0.18 micron
100 mm2
Intel Pentium III Cumine
106 mm2
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K6-2+
In 2000 the K6-3 is expected to disappear from the market. It
never became a success. However, the K6-2 has been a great seller, so AMD will
launche new versions of the K6-3 as K6-2+.
This new chip will have following features:
0.18 micron process technology
Integrated 256 KB L2 cache
Additional 3DNow! instructions (from Athlon)
550 MHz
The maximum speed from this design is expected to be 750 MHz. Hence one can
expect the Socket7 platform soon to die out.
