AMD's Athlon XP 2100+ (1.73GHz)

Author : Martyn Date : 13th March '02

...Product	AMD Athlon XP 2100+
...Manufacturer	AMD
...Supplier	AMD
...Price	TBC

 

 

* Quoted from AMD's Web-Site :

QuantiSpeed™ architecture allows the AMD Athlon™ XP processor to accomplish more instructions per clock cycle (IPC).

Improved IPC is a result of the following technological advances: -
Nine-issue, superscalar, fully pipelined microarchitecture:
Provides more pathways to feed application instructions into the execution engines of the core, allowing the processor to complete more work in a given clock cycle (high IPC). The delicate balance between the depth of the pathways and clock speed of the processor produces high levels of performance.

Superscalar, fully pipelined Floating Point Unit (FPU):
Completes more floating point operations per clock cycle than competitive x86 processors and permits high operating frequencies. The end result is a processor with the computing power to tackle the most computation-intensive software applications.

Hardware data prefetch:
Prefetches data from system memory to the processor's Level 1 cache, which reduces the time it takes to feed the processor critical data, increasing work throughput and therefore overall performance.

Exclusive and speculative Translation Look-aside Buffers (TLBs):
Keep the maps to critical data close to the processor, which helps prevent the processor from stalling or waiting when future data is requested. These TLB structures are now larger, exclusive between caches, and speculative. Larger TLB's give the AMD Athlon XP processor access to additional data maps. Exclusivity removes the duplication of information, freeing up more space in the Level 2 cache for other useful data to be used by the processor. And the speculative nature of these structures allows the processor to generate future maps of critical data quickly.
These four key advances allow QuantiSpeed architecture to perform more calculations per second, boosting overall productivity and enabling an ultimate computing experience.

QuantiSpeed has helped the XP models more than keep up with Intel's P4 and thus it's importance should not be understated. If you would like more information on these technologies you can download the full .PDF White Paper from AMD here. (Adobe Acrobat required)

Part Four: A Final Revision?

To ensure no one is confused at all, I have been placing this table in my AMD reviews. This update might very well be it's last, we shall simply have to wait and see what choices AMD make in the near future...

-- Athlon XP - Model Number & GHz --

 

Futher resources exisit upon this very site in the form of our 1800+, 1900+ and 2000+ reviews. Our 1800+ & 2000+ reports contain excellent technology overviews of the Athlon XP range.
The XP 2100+ goes head to head with it's older brother the 2000+ in our benchmarks. Lets move on to the next section to see how this CPU fairs...

<<< Back to page one | Page Four: The Test Setup >>>

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