Socket AM3 Delayed Until 2008
Industry sources have informed DigiTimes that AMD will be delaying the launch of the company's AM3 processors until mid 2008. With the first quad-core K8L processors slated to launch in the third quarter of 2007, the change to mid 2008 is a rather significant delay. To avoid the situation where Intel is the only quad-core processor on the market for the period of time until AM3 is ready, AMD will introduce a new AM2+ socket. This variant of the current AM2 socket will differ mainly in the support of HyperTransport 3.0 standard versus the current use of the HyperTransport 1.0 specification. Shipments of this new socket should begin in the third quarter of 2007.
Socket AM3 CPUs can only be compatible with Socket AM2- and Socket AM3-based motherboards, but Socket AM3-based motherboards cannot support any previous-generation processors, including Socket AM2 CPUs, the makers noted. Consequently, AMD has decided to postpone the adoption of DDR3 until the middle of 2008, when its first Socket AM3 processor manufactured on 45nm process technology will be announced, according to the makers.
