AMD's Hammer Architecture - Making Sense of it All

Final Words

This was a fun article to write because the architecture behind Hammer is truly very interesting. It's refreshing to see another approach to the problem of improving performance. The sharp contrast that the Hammer makes with Intel's NetBurst architecture that is behind the Pentium 4 doesn't make it better; it just means that AMD will have a different set of problems to face going forward.

We refrained from making any direct comparisons to other processors in this article other than on an architectural level simply because it's far too early to make any assumptions about the real world performance of Hammer or the processors it will be competing against. The two Hammer based processors we do know about that are codenamed SledgeHammer and ClawHammer (server and performance desktop respectively) should begin sampling in the second half of 2002. You can equate this sampling to the limited quantities of Athlons that were in the market towards the end of 1999, but hopefully we won't have to endure the same motherboard fiasco with the Hammer line. The real ramp of the Hammer architecture will occur in 2003 where the Athlon will begin to fade out of the picture.

AMD is clearly not the company it was a few years ago. They are constantly making steps towards becoming more of an industry leader as opposed to the follower they have been criticized of being for so long; the Hammer architecture is the most vivid depiction of what sort of an industry leader AMD is capable of being.

At the same time we shouldn't discount Intel as they still hold the majority of the market and they do have the potential to take their technology very far. What AMD's recent gains do prove however is that there won't be a return to domination for Intel anytime soon; this two man race will be continuing for some time to come. Both AMD and Intel have had their slipups; while Intel's have been more recently, AMD is far from immune to them.

The technology behind Hammer is there, as is the potential for it to succeed. But AMD has a lot of work to do between now and its release in the next 12 months. Many forget that until the Athlon, AMD didn't have the best execution track record. It's a long road ahead for the Hammer design team, good luck guys.