AMD K5

AMD K5

nm
Cores	1
Sockets	Socket 5 Socket 7
Products, models, variants
Model	SSA/5 Series 5k86 Series
History
Predecessor	Am5x86
Successor	K6

The K5 is

. The K5 was an ambitious design, closer to a Pentium Pro than a Pentium regarding technical solutions and internal architecture. However, the final product was closer to the Pentium regarding performance, although faster clock-for-clock compared to the Pentium.

Technical details

The K5 was based upon an internal highly parallel

The floating-point transcendental instructions were implemented in hardware and were faithful to true mathematical results for all operands.[5]

Performance

The K5 project represented an early chance for AMD to take technical leadership from Intel. Although the chip addressed the right design concepts, the actual engineering implementation had its issues. The low clock rates were, in part, due to AMD's limitations as a "cutting edge" manufacturing company at the time, and in part due to the design itself, which had many levels of logic for the process technology of the day, hampering clock scaling. Additionally, while the K5's floating-point performance was regarded as superior to that of the Cyrix 6x86,^{[clarification needed]} it was slower than that of the Pentium, although offering more reliable transcendental function results. Because it was late to market and did not meet performance expectations, the K5 never gained the acceptance among large computer manufacturers that the earlier Am486 and later AMD K6 enjoyed.

Features

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Models

There were two revisions of the K5 architecture, internally called the SSA/5 and the 5k86, both released with the K5 label. The original set of "SSA/5" CPUs had its branch prediction unit disabled and additional internal waitstates added; these issues were remedied with the "5k86", resulting in up to 30% better performance clock for clock.

, or performance rating, to label the chips according to their suggested equivalence in integer performance to a Pentium of that clock speed. Thus, a 116 MHz chip from the second line was marketed as the "K5 PR166". Manufacturing delays caused the PR200's arrival to nearly align with the release of K6. Since AMD did not want the two chips competing, the K5-PR200 only arrived in small numbers.

SSA/5

• Sold as 5K86 P75 to P100, later as K5 PR75 to PR100
• 4.3 million transistors in 500 or 350 nm
• L1-Cache: 8 + 16 KB (data + instructions)
• Socket 5 and Socket 7
• VCore: 3.52 V
• Front side bus
  : 50 (PR75), 60 (PR90), 66 MHz (PR100)
• First release: March 27, 1996
• Clockrate: 75, 90, 100 MHz

5k86

• Sold as K5 PR120 to PR166; later PR200
• 4.3 million transistors in 350 nm
• L1-Cache: 8 + 16 KB (data + instructions)
• Socket 5 and Socket 7
• VCore: 3.52 V
• Front side bus
  : 60 (PR120/150), 66 MHz
• First release: October 7, 1996
• Clockrate: 90 (PR120), 100 (PR133), 105 (PR150), 116.6 (PR166), 133 MHz (PR200)

References

Further reading

• Gwennap, Linley (25 March 1996). "AMD Ships Pentium Competitor". Microprocessor Report.
• Slater, Michael (24 October 1994). "AMD's K5 Designed to Outrun Pentium". Microprocessor Report.
• Slater, Michael (8 May 1995). "AMD K5 Volume Slips into 1996". Microprocessor Report.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to AMD K5.

• AMD: AMD-K5 Processor Overview
• Technical overview of the K5 series
• Pictures of K5 chips at CPUShack.com
• The AMD K5, a much underrated chip
• AMD K5 technical specifications