Athlon is the brand name applied to a series of different x86 processors designed and manufactured by AMD. The original Athlon (now called Athlon Classic) was the first seventh-generation x86 processor and, in a first, retained the initial performance lead it had over Intel's competing processors for a significant period of time, being the first desktop processor to reach speeds of 1 GHz. AMD has continued the Athlon name with the Athlon 64, an e...
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Athlon is the brand name applied to a series of different x86 processors designed and manufactured by AMD. The original Athlon (now called Athlon Classic) was the first seventh-generation x86 processor and, in a first, retained the initial performance lead it had over Intel's competing processors for a significant period of time, being the first desktop processor to reach speeds of 1 GHz. AMD has continued the Athlon name with the Athlon 64, an eighth-generation processor featuring x86-64 (later renamed AMD64) technology.
The Athlon made its debut on June 23, 1999. Athlon is the ancient Greek word for "Champion/trophy of the games".
AMD ex-CEO and founder Jerry Sanders developed strategic partnerships during the late 1990s to improve AMD's presence in the PC market based on the success of the K6 architecture. One major partnership announced in 1998 paired AMD with semiconductor giant Motorola. In the announcement, Sanders referred to the partnership as creating a "virtual gorilla"...
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