AMD demos 1GHz-plus Athlon

AMD has beaten rival chip maker Intel to the punch by showing off an upcoming 1GHz-plus next-generation Athlon processor.

The 1.1GHz chip with its Thunderbird processor core was demonstrated at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuit Conference in San Francisco in a system built with off-the-shelf parts, including an AMD 750 chip set with a 200MHz system bus.

While AMD would not say when the chip would ship, the company has said it will have a 1GHz Athlon by the fourth quarter of this year.

Intel plans to show off its own 1-gig-plus chip, code-named Willamette, at its Intel Developer Forum next week.

A complete report is posted online at www.zdnn.com.