AMD's Athlon gets down to business

The California company AMD is concocting a two-tiered strategy to make its new chip that much more attractive for corporations, which still comprise a huge hunk of the computer market. As part of the initiative, AMD will launch two Athlon brands -- Athlon Ultra and Athlon Professional -- in this year's fourth quarter.

The Athlon Ultra version of its new chip will come in clock speeds of up 700 MHz. What's more, it will be able to spirit data between the chip and memory at 400 MHz -- or double current bus speeds. And it will come with up to 8MB of Level 2 cache, the capability to work in multi-processor systems and features that will make it for a company's IT department to manage the systems.

Athlon Professional, which will consist of AMD's fastest Athlon desktop chips, will be aimed at the corporate desktop. There, AMD will offer features that appeal to IT managers, including security and the cost of maintaining a machine throughout its lifecyle.