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Rumor: AMD is having trouble with 65nm processor voltages

Rumors have finally hit the web about what AMD's problems are at 65nm, rather than the nebulous 'they have issues' comments that have been out for months. It seems they are having voltage issues with the core and are using far more power than they want to be using. It should be interesting to see how this one pans out. With Intel Core 2 Duo processors becoming the new benchmarking leader the last thing AMD needs is a delayed launch.

A bird has been singing to us that AMD is having problems getting the speeds they need out of the stock voltages. This is forcing AMD to pump things as high as 1.4V. If you do the math, (1.4^2)/(1.1^2) = 1.62, so AMD is forced to use 60+% more power than they wanted to. This kind of skews the performance per watt leadership they are claiming, so I guess there is still work to be done. That said, there is a bit more than three months to go before any deadlines are missed, and the wafers going in today are still not the ones you may end up buying, so there is time. Barely

The Inquirer

Posted by | Sat, Aug 26, 2006 - 08:51 AM