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The AMD K6-III Processor
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The K6-III was the last and fastest of all Socket 7 processors. It achieved the distinction of being the fastest x86 processor on the market on release, and remained highly competitive for a considerable time afterwards.
In conception, the design was simple: it was a K6-2 with an additional L2 cache. The original K6-2 had a 64 KB primary cache and a much larger amount of motherboard-mounted cache (usually 512 KB or 1 MB but varying depending on the choice of main board). In contrast the competing Intel parts used 32 KB of L1 cache and either 128 KB of full-speed secondary cache integrated into the CPU itself (Celeron) or 512 KB of half-speed cache mounted on a processor daughter board (Pentium II, Pentium III). The K6-III, however, used both methods: it had 64 KB primary cache, a massive 256 KB on-chip, full-speed secondary cache (similar to the Celeron's but twice the size), and the variable size motherboard mounted cache on the Socket 7 main board became a tertiary level.
In execution, however, the design was not simple: with 21.4 million transistors, it was a very large chip to manufacture with early 1999 technology, and the K6 core design did not scale well past 500 MHz. Nevertheless, the K6-III 400 sold well, and the K6-III 450 was clearly the fastest x86 chip on the market on introduction, comfortably outperforming AMD's K6-2s and Intel's Pentium IIs.
References:
AMD K6-III Tech Docs |
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