AMD ships Sempron

'Son of Duron' to challenge Celeron... again

Updated AMD today rolled out its budget 32-bit processor range, Sempron, just ahead of the arrival of Intel's 64-bit 'Prescott' Pentium 4s on 1 August.

The chip maker introduced a range of Semprons, some pitched at desktop roles, other at the mobile space. The desktop parts, ranging from the 2200+ to the 3100+, are available immediately, while the mobile chips will ship in August. The 2600+, 2800+ and 3000+ are aimed at desktop replacement laptops, while separate 2600+ and 2800+ mobiles have been designed for thin'n'light notebooks. The DTR chips consume 62W, the TNL parts 25W.

The mobile 2600+ and 2800+ chips all operate at 1.6GHz, so the 2800+ must offer a larger cache, though AMD declined to specify what - presumably it feels the high performance rating is sufficient. The mobile 3000+ runs at 1.8GHz.

The desktop Sempron processor are clocked as follows: 3100+ = 1.8GHz, 2800+ = 2.0GHz, 2600+ = 1.83GHz, 2500+ = 1.75GHz, 2400+ = 1.67GHz, 2300+ 1.58GHz and 2200+ 1.5GHz.

While AMD didn't announce such a product today, it will ship a desktop Sempron 3000+ in Q4.

As expected some Semprons use Socket 754, others Socket A. As yet, AMD has not said publicly which chip has which interface.

All of the chips are position head-to-head with Intel's Celeron and are being touted as the ideal solution for homes and business who want a powerful PC for the kind of apps they run - typically tasks that don't require a top-of-the-range chip.

Certainly in Europe, Celeron has been making big in-roads into the market of late, particularly in the mobile desktop replacement segment, thus far to AMD's detriment. AMD hopes that Sempron - essentially to the Athlon 64 what the old Duron line was to the Athlon XP range - will reverse that trend.

It has already signed up some big names to take the new chip family: HP, Lenovo, Acer, Twinhead and Medion. Duron was never a great success, but perhaps it's time was not right - nowadays there are a number of mainstream apps that will run happily on a 'low-end' CPU.

Soon to oppose Sempron will be a Socket T-equipped line of Celerons capable of working with Intel's media-rich i915P and i915G chipsets, which Intel is expected to ship next month. ®

AMD's Sempron Line-up
Processor	Price
Desktop
3100+	$126
3000+	TBA
2800+	$109
2600+	$85
2500+	$74
2400+	$61
2300+	$45
2200+	$39
Mobile - Desktop Replacement
3000+	$120
2800+	$108
2600+	$84
Mobile - Thin'n'light notebooks
2800+	$99
2600+	$85

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