Duron and Sempron: AMD's Celerons
CPU makers seem to like names that end in “on.” To compete with the Celeron and back up its Athlon, AMD released the Duron, later replaced by the Sempron. These two budget processors were generally slower than the Athlon and had less cache memory. AMD’s exclusive cache design enabled CPUs with an L2 cache that was smaller than the L1, since the latter was not mirrored in the L2 (unlike the inclusive architecture used by Intel). The Sempron is simply a re-named Athlon XP, with certain versions equipped with less cache memory (256 of 512 KB are disabled in the Thorton).
| Code name | Spitfire | Thorton |
| Date released | 2000 | 2004 |
| Architecture | 32-bits | 32-bits |
| Data bus | 32-bits | 32-bits |
| Address bus | 32-bits | 32-bits |
| Maximum memory | 4,096 MB | 4,096 MB |
| L1 cache | 64 KB + 64 KB | 64 KB + 64 KB |
| L2 cache | 64 KB (CPU frequency) | 256 KB (CPU frequency) |
| Clock frequency | 600-950 MHz | 1,500-2,000 MHz |
| FSB | 100 MHz (DDR) | 166 MHz (DDR) |
| FPU | built-in | built-in |
| SIMD | MMX, Enhanced 3DNow! | MMX, Enhanced 3DNow!, SSE |
| Fabrication process | 180 nm | 130 nm |
| Number of transistors | 25 million | 54.3 million |
| Power consumption | 27-41 W | 62 W |
| Voltage | 1.5–1.6 V | 1.6 V |
| Die surface area | 100 mm² | 100.99 mm² |
| Connector | Socket A | Socket A |
In addition to the Spitfire, AMD also released the Duron Morgan (based on the Athlon XP, with SSE support) and the Applebred (130 nm). The Sempron continued its career with the K8 Sempron 3400+, which is a 64-bit Sempron.
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Clone?
Like the intel article this feels a little rushed and could do with more detail or comments on supporting hardware at the time. Maybe even tracking the release/life cycle of cpus to the market share. Anything to make it actually feel like an article instead of a bunch of pictures with comments tacked on. For example this comment is probably equal to the amount of text for the first two processor types
this article is battey
I would like to have seen at least complete tables for each architecture. Its a bit cheap to have only 2-4x processor codes per architecture. My current AMD processors are not listed (AMD Opteron 248 : code "Troy"). Come on guys it is interesting to see the progression through the processor codes.
As for the text it is like the Abridged version of a summarised summary of the potted history of AMD processors (with the technical bits edited out).
Bob
I remember owning my first 1ghz athlon.Was fast
I remember owning a K6-III+ .. you could use them in desktop motherboards and they were very good (especially in servers). They also overclocked very well; it was not uncommon for 450MHz variants to top 600MHz..all that on a Socket 7 board. I miss the old days.