While Intel Corporation ran into very serious heat dissipation issues with its NetBurst architecture CPUs and 90nm strained silicon technology, looks like its arch rival AMD will also have some hot chips in future.

Sources close to AMD’s partners said the company is going to employ some new power requirements for mainboards designed to support future AMD64 processors, such as Athlon 64 4000+ and the Athlon 64 FX-55, both most probably to be made using 90nm technology. Changes are necessary for mainboards set to come in the second half of 2004.

According to currently available details, maximum current (IDD) of future 64-bit processors from AMD will be 80A, while maximum thermal power will be 105W. These are mandatory requirements for mainboards in the second half of the year. The requirements are only for Socket 939 mainboards, as 754-pin and 940-pin products have very limited future, as AMD roadmap for 2004 revealed.

Apparently, AMD’s 90nm chips will have Vcore at 1.20V – 1.35V, in contrast to current core voltage of 1.40 – 1.55V for 64-bit chips. The first 90nm chips are expected to hit 2.60GHz, but AMD currently does not specify the top speed bin for its new CPUs.

Intel's Prescott 3.60GHz processors are expected to dissipate up to 103W of heat early next year.

Before its 90nm chips emerge, AMD will bring out some new versions of its current 0.13 micron chips. The new CG revision targeted to be in production in late Q1 2004 will resolve some issues with current AMD64 performance-mainstream and high-end processors, such as 2T DRAM timing enhancements to enable desktop customers to achieve higher density and/or higher speed memory (the change may be adored by overclockers) and removal of requirement for use of identical DIMMs for the 2^nd and the 3^rd DIMMs in 3-DIMM mainboards. There will be CPUID change to “00000F4AH” as well as OPN change for the new processors.

Representatives for Advanced Micro Devices do not usually comment on future products.