AMD will sample K6 in December

The Californian chip maker said the part is expected to match or outperform Intel's much-hyped 'Klamath' MMX-enabled Pentium Pro chip, and will ship in first half of 1997.

Richard Baker, regional marketing manager for PC products, also took aim at Cyrix which has said it will develop its own MMX clone. "[The K6] will have the full MMX instruction set licensed from Intel, not the Cyrix let's-see-if-we-can-get-it-working approach."

AMD hopes to attract vendors who don't want to stock too many motherboard configurations. While Klamath requires a new chipset, the K6 will slot into the P55C slot that Intel will use for MMX Pentium CPUs. "Not everybody will want to stock so many SKUs," Baker said.

AMD recently started sampling versions of its 5K86 processor line that match the performance of 120MHz, 133MHz and 150MHz Pentium CPUs.