We can tell you for sure which CPUs are going to come this year or in the quarter since we constantly seek for the roadmaps CPU provide. However, in the roadmaps sent for press and some design partners nothing is usually said about longer-term plans of companies. As you all probably know, hardware developers extremely dislike talking about longer-terms intentions in details because almost every quarter firms have to adjust their roadmaps in order to meet the market requirements and there is always enough space for such adjustments. Nevertheless, it does not mean that there are absolutely no more or less detailed plans for two, three or even more years from now.

Today we managed to get our long hands on AMD’s plans for 2003 and 2004 years and now I am going to share with you what I have just seen on the papers.

As you know, AMD’s Athlon 64 chip will come in September this year and will be equipped with 1MB of L2 cache. Since AMD unveils Athlon XP “Barton” processors with 3200+ and maybe even 3400+ model numbers, the x86-64 newcomers’ ratings should start from something close to the predecessor’s. I doubt that AMD will be able to ramp mass-production of its 90nm chips in the first quarter 2004 (as it is indicated in the most recent official roadmap), so, the ClawHammer core should live and boost its performance, at least, until Q3 2004. Therefore, expect the following products to come during the next 12 to 16 months:

• Athlon 64 3400+ 2.00GHz (ClawHammer)
• Athlon 64 3600+ 2.20GHz (ClawHammer)
• Athlon 64 3800+ 2.40GHz (ClawHammer)
• Athlon 64 4000+ 2.60GHz (ClawHammer)
• Athlon 64 4200+ 2.80GHz (ClawHammer)
• Athlon 64 4400+ 3.00GHz (ClawHammer)

When the code-named San Diego cores are available next year, the Athlon 64 family will be able to show quite high performance. As always, there will be both lower- as well as higher-end models:

• Athlon 64 4000+ 2.60GHz (San Diego)
• Athlon 64 4200+ 2.80GHz (San Diego)
• Athlon 64 4400+ 3.00GHz (San Diego)
• Athlon 64 4600+ 3.20GHz (San Diego)
• Athlon 64 4800+ 3.40GHz (San Diego)

We definitely should expect even faster AMD x86-64 processors sometimes in very late 2004 or possible early 2005. But that is another story, I think.

See also: Intel Unofficial CPU Roadmap for 2003 – 2006