Dan´s Data has posted a review on the AMD Slot A "Thunderbird" 700MHz Athlon CPU.
The Thunderbird is, officially, called the "AMD Athlon(tm) processor featuring performance-enhancing on-chip L2 cache memory". Now, I´m not at all averse to using 11 words when one will do, but for the sake of Web page download speed I´ll just call it the Thunderbird. That was its during-development code-name, just as Coppermine was the code-name for the new model P-IIIs.Read more
Because the Thunderbird CPUs don´t need the separate Level 2 cache chips of the earlier Athlons, they don´t need to be built in a big slot-connector cartridge, with a circuit board inside it that´s got room for the extra chips. They can, instead, come in the new "Socket A" form factor, which at a glance looks not unlike the Socket 370 that Intel use for their newer CPUs, but has more pins.
