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Armageddon

According to the Book of Revelation in the New Testament of the Christian Bible, Armageddon ( Late Latin: Armagedōn; from Hebrew: Har Məgīddō) is the prophesied location of a gathering of armies for a battle during the end times, which is variously interpreted as either a literal or a symbolic location. The term is also used in a generic sense to refer to any end-of-the-world scenario. In Islamic theology, Armageddon is also mentioned in Hadith as the Greatest Armageddon or Al-Malhama Al-Kubra (the great battle).

The "mount" of Megiddo in northern Israel is not actually a mountain, but a tell (a mound or hill created by many generations of people living and rebuilding at the same spot) on which ancient forts were built to guard the Via Maris, an ancient trade route linking Egypt with the northern empires of Syria, Anatolia and Mesopotamia. Megiddo was the location of various ancient battles, including one in the 15th century BC and one in 609 BC. The nearby modern Megiddo is a kibbutz in the Kishon River area.

Etymology
The word Armageddon appears only once in the Greek New Testament, in Revelation 16:16. The word is a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew har məgiddô (הר מגידו). Har means "a mountain or range of hills". This is a shortened form of harar meaning "to loom up; a mountain". Megiddo refers to a fortification made by King Ahab that dominated the Plain of Jezreel. Its name means "place of crowds".

Adam Clarke wrote in his Bible commentary (1817) on Revelation 16:16:"Armageddon - The original of this word has been variously formed, and variously translated. It is הר־מגדון har-megiddon, 'the mount of the assembly;' or חרמה גדהון chormah gedehon, 'the destruction of their army;' or it is הר־מגדו har-megiddo, 'Mount Megiddo,'"

Christianity

Megiddo is mentioned twelve times in the Old Testament, ten times in reference to the ancient city of Megiddo, and twice with reference to "the plain of Megiddo", most probably simply meaning "the plain next to the city". None of these Old Testament passages describes the city of Megiddo as being associated with any particular prophetic beliefs. The one New Testament reference to the city of Armageddon found in makes no specific mention of any armies being predicted to one day gather in this city, either, but instead seems to predict only that "they (will gather) the kings together to ... Armageddon". The text does however seem to imply, based on the text from the earlier passage of Revelation 16:14, that the purpose of this gathering of kings in the "place called Armageddon" is "for the war of the great day of God, the Almighty". Because of the seemingly highly symbolic and even cryptic language of this one New Testament passage, some Christian scholars conclude that Mount Armageddon must be an idealized location. R. J. Rushdoony says, "There are no mountains of Megiddo, only the Plains of Megiddo. This is a deliberate destruction of the vision of any literal reference to the place." Other scholars, including C. C. Torrey, Kline and Jordan, argue that the word is derived from the Hebrew moed (מועד), meaning "assembly". Thus, "Armageddon" would mean "Mountain of Assembly", which Jordan says is "a reference to the assembly at Mount Sinai, and to its replacement, Mount Zion".

Most traditions interpret this Bible prophecy to be symbolic of the progression of the world toward the "great day of God, the Almighty" in which God pours out his just and holy wrath against unrepentant sinners led by Satan, in a literal end-of-the-world final confrontation. 'Armageddon' is the symbolic name given to this event based on scripture references regarding divine obliteration of God's enemies. The hermeneutical method supports this position by referencing Judges 4 and 5 where God miraculously destroys the enemy of their elect, Israel, at Megiddo.

Christian scholar William Hendriksen writes: "For this cause, Har Magedon is the symbol of every battle in which, when the need is greatest and believers are oppressed, the Lord suddenly reveals His power in the interest of His distressed people and defeats the enemy. When Sennacherib's 185,000 are slain by the Angel of Jehovah, that is a shadow of the final Har-Magedon. When God grants a little handful of Maccabees a glorious victory over an enemy which far outnumbers it, that is a type of Har-Magedon. But the real, the great, the final Har Magedon coincides with the time of Satan’s little season. Then the world, under the leadership of Satan, anti-Christian government, and anti-Christian religion – the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet – is gathered against the Church for the final battle, and the need is greatest; when God's children, oppressed on every side, cry for help; then suddenly, Christ will appear on the clouds of glory to deliver his people; that is Har-Magedon."

Dispensationalism
In his discussion of Armageddon, J. Dwight Pentecost has devoted a chapter to the subject, "The Campaign of Armageddon", in which he discusses it as a campaign and not a specific battle, which will be fought in the Middle East. Pentecost writes: "It has been held commonly that the battle of Armageddon is an isolated event transpiring just prior to the second advent of Christ to the earth. The extent of this great movement in which God deals with 'the kings of the earth and of the whole world' will not be seen unless it is realized that the 'battle of that great day of God Almighty' is not an isolated battle, but rather a campaign that extends over the last half of the tribulation period. The Greek word 'polemo', translated 'battle' in Revelation 16:14, signifies a war or campaign, while 'machē' signifies a battle, and sometimes even single combat. This distinction is observed by Trench (see Richard C. Trench, New Testament Synonyms, pp. 301–32) and is followed by Thayer (see Joseph Henry Thayer, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, p. 528) and Vincent (see Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament, II, 541). The use of the word polemos (campaign) in Revelation 16:14 signifies that God views the events culminating in the gathering at Armageddon at the second advent as one connected campaign."

Pentecost then discusses the location of this campaign, and mentions the "hill of Megiddo" and other geographic locations such as "the valley of Jehoshaphat" and "the valley of the passengers", "Lord coming from Edom or Idumea, south of Jerusalem, when he returns from the judgment"; and Jerusalem itself.

Pentecost further describes the area involved: "This wide area would cover the entire land of Israel and this campaign, with all its parts, would confirm what Ezekiel pictures when he says the invaders will 'cover the land'. This area would conform to the extent pictured by John in Revelation 14:20."

Pentecost then outlines the biblical time period for this campaign to occur and with further arguments concludes that it must take place with the 70th week of Daniel. The invasion of Israel by the Northern Confederacy "will bring the Beast and his armies to the defense of Israel as her protector". He then uses Daniel to further clarify his thinking.

Again, events are listed by Pentecost in his book:
 * 1) "The movement of the campaign begins when the King of the South moves against the Beast–False Prophet coalition, which takes place 'at the time of the end'."
 * 2) The King of the South gets in battle with the North King and the Northern Confederacy. Jerusalem is destroyed as a result of this attack, and, in turn, the armies of the Northern Confederacy are destroyed.
 * 3) "The full armies of the Beast move into Israel and shall conquer all that territory. Edom, Moab, and Ammon alone escape."
 * 4) "... a report that causes alarm is brought to the Beast"
 * 5) "The Beast moves his headquarters into the land of Israel and assembles his armies there."
 * 6) "It is there that his destruction will come."

After the destruction of the Beast at the Second Coming of Jesus, the promised Kingdom is set up, in which Jesus and the saints will rule for a thousand years. Satan is then loosed "for a season" and goes out to deceive the nations, specifically Gog and Magog. The army mentioned attacks the saints in the New Jerusalem, they are defeated by a judgment of fire coming down from heaven, and then comes the Great White Throne judgment, which includes all of those through the ages and these are cast into the Lake of Fire, which event is also known as the "second death" and Gehenna, not to be confused with Hell, which is Satan's domain. Pentecost describes this as follows:

"The destiny of the lost is a place in the lake of fire. This lake of fire is described as everlasting fire and as unquenchable fire, emphasizing the eternal character of retribution of the lost."

Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Armageddon is the means by which God will fulfill his purpose for the Earth to be populated with happy healthy humans who will be free from sin and death. They teach that the armies of heaven will eradicate all who oppose the Kingdom of God, wiping out all wicked humans on Earth, only leaving righteous mankind.

They believe that the gathering of all of the nations of the earth refers to the uniting of the world's political powers, as a gradual process which began in 1914 and was later seen in manifestations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations following the First and Second World Wars. These political powers are said to be influenced by Satan and his demons in opposition to God's kingdom. Babylon the Great is interpreted as being the world empire of false religions, and it will be destroyed by the beast just prior to Armageddon. Witnesses believe that after all other religions have been destroyed, the governments of the world will begin persecuting Witnesses, and God will then intervene, precipitating Armageddon.

Jehovah's Witnesses teach that the armies of heaven, led by Jesus, will then destroy all forms of human government and then Jesus, along with a selected 144,000 humans, will rule Earth for 1,000 years. They believe that Satan and his demons will be bound for that period, unable to influence mankind. After the 1,000 years are ended, and the second resurrection has taken place, Satan is released and allowed to tempt the perfect human race one last time. Those who follow Satan will be destroyed, along with him, leaving the earth, and humankind at peace with God forever, free from sin and death.

The religion's current teaching on Armageddon originated in 1925 with former Watch Tower Society president J. F. Rutherford, who based his interpretations on passages that are found in the books of Exodus, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Psalms as well as additional passages that are found in the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles. The doctrine marked a further break from the teachings of the Watch Tower Society's founder Charles Taze Russell, who for decades had taught that the final war would be an anarchistic struggle for domination on earth. Tony Wills, the author of a historical study of Jehovah's Witnesses, wrote that Rutherford seemed to relish his descriptions of how completely the wicked would be destroyed at Armageddon, dwelling at great length on prophecies of destruction. He stated that towards the close of his ministry, Rutherford allocated about half the space that was available in The Watchtower magazines to discussions about Armageddon.

Seventh-day Adventist
The teachings of the Seventh-day Adventist Church state that the terms "Armageddon", "Day of the Lord" and "The Second Coming of Christ" all describe the same event. Seventh-day Adventists further teach that the current religious movements taking place in the world are setting the stage for Armageddon, and they are concerned by an anticipated unity between spiritualism, American Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. A further teaching in Seventh-day Adventist theology is that the events of Armageddon will leave the earth desolate for the duration of the millennium. They teach that the righteous will be taken to heaven while the rest of humanity will be destroyed, leaving Satan with no one to tempt and effectively "bound". The final re-creation of a "new heaven and a new earth"; then follows the millennium.

Christadelphians
For Christadelphians, Armageddon marks the "great climax of history when the nations would be gathered together 'into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon', and the judgment on them would herald the setting up of the Kingdom of God."

Baháʼí Faith
From Baháʼí literature, a number of interpretations of the expectations surrounding the Battle of Armageddon may be inferred, three of them being associated with events surrounding the World Wars.

The first interpretation deals with a series of tablets written by Bahá'u'lláh, founder of the Baháʼí Faith, to be sent to various kings and rulers. The second, and best-known one, relates to events near the end of World War I involving General Allenby and the Battle of Megiddo (1918) wherein World Powers are said to have drawn soldiers from many parts of the world to engage in battle at Megiddo. In winning this battle Allenby also prevented the Ottomans from killing 'Abdu'l-Baha, then head of the Baháʼí Faith, whom they had intended to crucify. A third interpretation reviews the overall progress of the World Wars, and the situation in the world before and after.

title: Armageddon


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Athlon

Athlon is the brand name applied to a series of x86-compatible microprocessors designed and manufactured by AMD. The original Athlon (now called Athlon Classic) was the first seventh-generation x86 processor and the first desktop processor to reach speeds of one gigahertz (GHz). It made its debut as AMD's high-end processor brand on June 23, 1999. Over the years AMD has used the Athlon name with the 64-bit Athlon 64 architecture, the Athlon II, and Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) chips targeting the Socket AM1 desktop SoC architecture, and Socket AM4 Zen (microarchitecture). The modern Zen-based Athlon with a Radeon Graphics processor was introduced in 2019 as AMD's highest-performance entry-level processor.

Athlon comes from the Ancient Greek ἆθλον (athlon), meaning "(sport) contest", or "prize of a contest", or "place of a contest; arena". With the Athlon name originally used for AMD's high-end processors, AMD currently uses Athlon for budget APUs with integrated graphics. AMD positions the Athlon against its rival, the Intel Pentium.

K7 design and development
The first Athlon processor was a result of AMD's development of K7 processors in the 1990s. AMD founder and then-CEO Jerry Sanders aggressively pursued strategic partnerships and engineering talent in the late 1990s, working to build on earlier successes in the PC market with the AMD K6 processor line. One major partnership announced in 1998 paired AMD with semiconductor giant Motorola to co-develop copper-based semiconductor technology, resulting in the K7 project being the first commercial processor to utilize copper fabrication technology. In the announcement, Sanders referred to the partnership as creating a "virtual gorilla" that would enable AMD to compete with Intel on fabrication capacity while limiting AMD's financial outlay for new facilities. The K7 design team was led by Dirk Meyer, who had previously worked as a lead engineer at DEC on multiple Alpha microprocessors. When DEC was sold to Compaq in 1998 and discontinued Alpha processor development, Sanders brought most of the Alpha design team to the K7 project. This added to the previously acquired NexGen K6 team, which already included engineers such as Vinod Dham.

Original release
The AMD Athlon processor launched on June 23, 1999, with general availability by August 1999. Subsequently, from August 1999 until January 2002, this initial K7 processor was the fastest x86 chip in the world. Wrote the Los Angeles Times on October 5, 1999: "AMD has historically trailed Intel’s fastest processors, but has overtaken the industry leader with the new Athlon. Analysts say the Athlon, which will be used by Compaq, IBM and other manufacturers in their most powerful PCs, is significantly faster than Intel’s flagship Pentium III, which runs at a top speed of 600MHz." A number of features helped the chips compete with Intel. By working with Motorola, AMD had been able to refine copper interconnect manufacturing about one year before Intel, with the revised process permitting 180-nanometer processor production. The accompanying die-shrink resulted in lower power consumption, permitting AMD to increase Athlon clock speeds to the 1 GHz range. The Athlon architecture also used the EV6 bus licensed from DEC as its main system bus, allowing AMD to develop its own products without needing to license Intel's GTL+ bus. By the summer of 2000, AMD was shipping Athlons at high volume, and the chips were being used in systems by Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, and Fujitsu Siemens Computers among others.

Later Athlon iterations
The second-generation Athlon, the Thunderbird, debuted in 2000. AMD released the Athlon XP the following year, and the Athlon XP's immediate successor, the Athlon 64, was an AMD64-architecture microprocessor released in 2003. After the 2007 launch of the Phenom processors, the Athlon name was also used for mid-range processors, positioned above brands such as Sempron. The Athlon 64 X2 was released in 2005 as the first native dual-core desktop CPU designed by AMD, and the Athlon X2 was a subsequent family based on the Athlon 64 X2. Introduced in 2009, Athlon II was a dual-core family of Athlon chips.

A USD$55 low-power Athlon 200GE with a Radeon graphics processor was introduced in September 2018, sitting under the Ryzen 3 2200G. This iteration of Athlon used AMD's Zen-based Raven Ridge core, which in turn had debuted in Ryzen with Radeon graphics processors. With the release, AMD began using the Athlon brand name to refer to "low-cost, high-volume products", in a situation similar to both Intel's Celeron and Pentium Gold. The modern Athlon 3000G was introduced in 2019 and was positioned as AMD's highest-performance entry-level processor. AMD positions the Athlon against its rival, the Intel Pentium. While CPU processing performance is in the same ballpark, the Athlon 3000G uses Radeon Vega graphics, which are rated as more powerful than the Pentium's Intel UHD Graphics.

Athlon Classic (1999)
The AMD Athlon processor launched on June 23, 1999, with general availability by August 1999. Subsequently, from August 1999 until January 2002, this initial K7 processor was the fastest x86 chip in the world. At launch it was, on average, 10% faster than the Pentium III at the same clock for business applications and 20% faster for gaming workloads. In commercial terms, the Athlon "Classic" was an enormous success.

 * Features

The Athlon Classic is a cartridge-based processor, named Slot A and similar to Intel's cartridge Slot 1 used for Pentium II and Pentium III. It used the same, commonly available, physical 242-pin connector used by Intel Slot 1 processors but rotated by 180 degrees to connect the processor to the motherboard. The cartridge assembly allowed the use of higher-speed cache memory modules than could be put on (or reasonably bundled with) motherboards at the time. Similar to the Pentium II and the Katmai-based Pentium III, the Athlon Classic contained 512 KB of L2 cache. This high-speed SRAM cache was run at a divisor of the processor clock and was accessed via its own 64-bit back-side bus, allowing the processor to service both front-side bus requests and cache accesses simultaneously, as compared to pushing everything through the front-side bus.

The Argon-based Athlon contained 22 million transistors and measured 184 mm2. It was fabricated by AMD in a version of their CS44E process, a 250 nm complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) process with six levels of aluminium interconnect. "Pluto" and "Orion" Athlons were fabricated in a 180 nm process.

The Athlon's CPU cache consisted of the typical two levels. Athlon was the first x86 processor with a 128 KB split level-1 cache; a 2-way associative cache separated into 2×64 KB for data and instructions (a concept from Harvard architecture). SRAM cache designs at the time were incapable of keeping up with the Athlon's clock scalability, resulting in compromised CPU performance in some computers. With later Athlon models, AMD would integrate the L2 cache onto the processor itself, removing dependence on external cache chips. The Slot-A Athlons were the first multiplier-locked CPUs from AMD, preventing users from setting their own desired clock speed. This was done by AMD in part to hinder CPU remarking and overclocking by resellers, which could result in inconsistent performance. Eventually a product called the "Goldfingers device" was created that could unlock the CPU.

AMD designed the CPU with more robust x86 instruction decoding capabilities than that of K6, to enhance its ability to keep more data in-flight at once. The critical branch-predictor unit was enhanced compared to the K6. Deeper pipelining with more stages allowed higher clock speeds to be attained. Like the AMD K5 and K6, the Athlon dynamically buffered internal micro-instructions at runtime resulting from parallel x86 instruction decoding. The CPU is an out-of-order design, again like previous post-5x86 AMD CPUs. The Athlon utilizes the Alpha 21264's EV6 bus architecture with double data rate (DDR) technology.

AMD ended its long-time handicap with floating point x87 performance by designing a super-pipelined, out-of-order, triple-issue floating-point unit (FPU). Each of its three units could independently calculate an optimal type of instructions with some redundancy, making it possible to operate on more than one floating-point instruction at once. This FPU was a huge step forward for AMD, helping compete with Intel's P6 FPU. The 3DNow! floating-point SIMD technology, again present, received some revisions and was renamed "Enhanced 3DNow!" Additions included DSP instructions and the extended MMX subset of Intel SSE.

 * Specifications
 * L1-cache: 64 + 64 KB (data + instructions)
 * L2-cache: 512 KB, external chips on CPU module with 50%, 40% or 33% of CPU speed
 * MMX, 3DNow!
 * Slot A (EV6)
 * Front-side bus:100 MHz (200MT/s)
 * Vcore: 1.6 V (K7), 1.6–1.8 V (K75)
 * First release: June 23, 1999 (K7), November 29, 1999 (K75)
 * Clock-rate: 500–700 MHz (K7), 550–1000 MHz (K75)

Athlon Thunderbird (2000–2001)

The second-generation Athlon, the Thunderbird or T-Bird, debuted on June 4, 2000. This version of the Athlon was available in a traditional pin-grid array (PGA) format that plugged into a socket ("Socket A") on the motherboard, or packaged as a Slot A cartridge. The major difference between it and the Athlon Classic was cache design, with AMD adding in 256 KB of on-chip, full-speed exclusive cache. In moving to an exclusive cache design, the L1 cache's contents were not duplicated in the L2, increasing total cache size and functionally creating a large L1 cache with a slower region (the L2) and a fast region (the L1), making the L2 cache into basically a victim cache. With the new cache design, need for high L2 performance and size was lessened, and the simpler L2 cache was less likely to cause clock scaling and yield issues. Thunderbird also moved to a 16-way associative layout.

The Thunderbird was "cherished by many for its overclockability" and proved commercially successful, as AMD's most successful product since the Am386DX-40 ten years earlier. AMD's new fab facility in Dresden increased production for AMD overall and put out Thunderbirds at a fast rate, with the process technology improved by a switch to copper interconnects. After several versions were released in 2000 and 2001 of the Thunderbird, the last Athlon processor using the Thunderbird core was released in 2001 in the summer, at which point speeds were at 1.4 GHz.

The locked multipliers of Socket A Thunderbirds could often be disabled through adding conductive bridges on the surface on the chip, a practice widely known as "the pencil trick".

 * Specifications
 * L1-cache: 64 + 64 KB (data + instructions)
 * L2-cache: 256 KB, full speed
 * MMX, 3DNow!
 * Slot A & Socket A (EV6)
 * Front-side bus: 100 MHz (Slot-A, B-models), 133 MHz (C-models) (200 MT/s, 266 MT/s)
 * Vcore: 1.70–1.75 V
 * First release: June 4, 2000
 * Transistor count: 37 million
 * Manufacturing process: /180 nm
 * Clock rate:
 * Slot A: 650–1000 MHz
 * Socket A, 100 MHz FSB (B-models): 600–1400 MHz
 * Socket A, 133 MHz FSB (C-models): 1000–1400 MHz

 Athlon XP (2001–2003)
Overall, there are four main variants of the Athlon XP desktop CPU: the Palomino, the Thoroughbred, the Thorton, and the Barton. A number of mobile processors were also released, including the Corvette models, and the Dublin model among others.

Palomino

On May 14, 2001, AMD released the Athlon XP processor. It debuted as the Mobile Athlon 4, a mobile version codenamed Corvette, with the desktop Athlon XP released in the fall. The third-generation Athlon, code-named Palomino, came out on October 9, 2001, as the Athlon XP, with the suffix signifying extreme performance and unofficially referencing Windows XP. Palomino's design used 180 nm fabrication process size. The Athlon XP was marketed using a performance rating (PR) system comparing it to the Thunderbird predecessor core. Among other changes, Palomino consumed 20% less power than the Thunderbird, comparatively reducing heat output, and was roughly 10% faster than Thunderbird. Palomino also had enhanced K7's TLB architecture and included a hardware data prefetch mechanism to take better advantage of memory bandwidth. Palomino was the first K7 core to include the full SSE instruction set from the Intel Pentium III, as well as AMD's 3DNow! Professional. Palomino was also the first socketed Athlon officially supporting dual processing, with chips certified for that purpose branded as the Athlon MP (multi processing), which had different specifications. According to HardwareZone, it was possible to modify the Athlon XP to function as an MP.

 * Specifications
 * L1-cache: 64 + 64 KB (data + instructions)
 * L2-cache: 256 KB, full speed
 * MMX, 3DNow!, SSE
 * Socket A (EV6)
 * Front-side bus: 133 MHz (266 MT/s)
 * Vcore: 1.50 to 1.75 V
 * Power consumption: 68 W
 * First release: October 9, 2001
 * Clock-rate:
 * Athlon 4: 850–1400 MHz
 * Athlon XP: 1333–1733 MHz (1500+ to 2100+)
 * Athlon MP: 1000–1733 MHz

Thoroughbred

The fourth-generation of Athlon was introduced with the Thoroughbred core, or T-Bred, on April 17, 2002. The Thoroughbred core marked AMD's first production 130 nm silicon, with smaller die size than its predecessor. There came to be two steppings (revisions) of this core commonly referred to as Tbred-A and Tbred-B. Introduced in June 2002, the initial A version was mostly a direct die shrink of the preceding Palomino core, but did not significantly increase clock speeds over the Palomino. A revised Thoroughbred core, Thoroughbred-B, added a ninth "metal layer" to the eight-layered Thoroughbred-A, offering improvement in headroom over the A and making it popular for overclocking.

 * Specifications
 * L1-cache: 64 + 64 KB (data + instructions)
 * L2-cache: 256 KB, full speed
 * MMX, 3DNow!, SSE
 * Socket A (EV6)
 * Front-side bus: 133/166 MHz (266/333 MT/s)
 * Vcore: 1.50–1.65 V
 * First release: June 10, 2002 (A), August 21, 2002 (B)
 * Clock-rate:
 * Thoroughbred "A": 1400–1800 MHz (1600+ to 2200+)
 * Thoroughbred "B": 1400–2250 MHz (1600+ to 2800+)
 * 133 MHz FSB: 1400–2133 MHz (1600+ to 2600+)
 * 166 MHz FSB: 2083–2250 MHz (2600+ to 2800+)

Barton / Thorton

Fifth-generation Athlon Barton-core processors were released in early 2003. While not operating at higher clock rates than Thoroughbred-core processors, they featured an increased L2 cache, and later models had an increased 200 MHz (400 MT/s) front side bus. The Thorton core, a blend of thoroughbred and Barton, was a later variant of the Barton with half of the L2 cache disabled. The Barton was used to officially introduce a higher 400 MT/s bus clock for the Socket A platform, which was used to gain some Barton models more efficiency. By this point with the Barton, the four-year-old Athlon EV6 bus architecture had scaled to its limit and required a redesign to exceed the performance of newer Intel processors. By 2003, the Pentium 4 had become more than competitive with AMD's processors, and Barton only saw a small performance increase over the Thoroughbred-B it derived from, insufficient to outperform the Pentium 4. The K7-derived Athlons such as Barton were replaced in September 2003 by the Athlon 64 family, which featured an on-chip memory controller and a new HyperTransport bus.

Notably, the 2500+ Barton with 11× multiplier was effectively identical to the 3200+ part other than the FSB speed it was binned for, meaning that seamless overclocking was possible more often than not. Early Thortons could be restored to the full Barton specification with the enabling of the other half of the L2 cache from a slight CPU surface modification, but the result was not always reliable.

Barton (130 nm)
 * Specifications:
 * L1-cache: 64 + 64 KB (data + instructions)
 * L2-cache: 512 KB, full speed
 * MMX, 3DNow!, SSE
 * Socket A (EV6)
 * Front-side bus: 166/200 MHz (333/400 MT/s)
 * Vcore: 1.65 V
 * First release: February 10, 2003
 * Clock rate: 1833–2333 MHz (2500+ to 3200+)
 * 133 MHz FSB: 1867–2133 MHz (2500+ to 2800+); uncommon
 * 166 MHz FSB: 1833–2333 MHz (2500+ to 3200+)
 * 200 MHz FSB: 2100, 2200 MHz (3000+, 3200+)

Thorton (130 nm)
 * L1-cache: 64 + 64 KB (Data + Instructions)
 * L2-cache: 256 KB, full speed
 * MMX, 3DNow!, SSE
 * Socket A (EV6)
 * Front-side bus: 133/166/200 MHz (266/333/400 MT/s)
 * Vcore: 1.50–1.65 V
 * First release: September 2003
 * Clock rate: 1667–2200 MHz (2000+ to 3100+)
 * 133 MHz FSB: 1600–2133 MHz (2000+ to 2600+)
 * 166 MHz FSB: 2083 MHz (2600+)
 * 200 MHz FSB: 2200 MHz (3100+)

Mobile Athlon XP

The Palomino core debuted in the mobile market before the PC market in May 2001, where it was branded as Mobile Athlon 4 with the codename "Corvette". It distinctively used a ceramic interposer much like the Thunderbird instead of the organic pin grid array package used on all later Palomino processors. In November 2001, AMD released a 1.2 GHz Athlon 4 and a 950 MHz Duron. The Mobile Athlon 4 processors included the PowerNow! function, which controlled a laptop's "level of processor performance by dynamically adjusting its operating frequency and voltage according to the task at hand", thus extending "battery life by reducing processor power when it isn't needed by applications". Duron chips also included PowerNow! In 2002, AMD released a version of PowerNow! called Cool'n'Quiet, implemented on the Athlon XP but only adjusting clock speed instead of voltage.

In 2002 the Athlon XP-M (Mobile Athlon XP) replaced the Mobile Athlon 4 using the newer Thoroughbred core, with Barton cores for full-size notebooks. The Athlon XP-M was also offered in a compact microPGA socket 563 version. Mobile XPs were not multiplier-locked, making them popular with desktop overclockers.

Athlon 64 (2003–2009)
The immediate successor to the Athlon XP, the Athlon 64 is an AMD64-architecture microprocessor produced by AMD, released on September 23, 2003. A number of variations, all named after cities, were released with 90 nm architecture in 2004 and 2005. Versions released in 2007 and 2009 utilized 65 nm architecture.

Athlon 64 X2 (2005–2009)
The Athlon 64 X2 was released in 2005 as the first native dual-core desktop CPU designed by AMD using an Athlon 64. The Athlon X2 was a subsequent family of microprocessors based on the Athlon 64 X2. The original Brisbane Athlon X2 models used 65 nm architecture and were released in 2007.

Athlon II (2009–2012)
Athlon II is a family of central processing units. Initially a dual-core version of the Athlon II, the K-10-based Regor was released in June 2009 with 45-nanometer architecture. This was followed by a single-core version Sargas, followed by the quad-core Propus, the triple-core Rana in November 2009, and the Llano 32 nm version released in 2011.

Piledriver and Steamroller-based Athlon X4 (2013–2016)
Various Steamroller-based Athlon X4 and X2 FM2+ socketed processors were released in 2014 and the years after. The preceding Piledriver-based Athlon X4 and X2 processors were released before 2014, and are socket compatible with both FM2+ and FM2 mainboards.

Excavator-based Athlon X4 (2017)
The Bristol Ridge Athlon X4 lineup was released in 2017. It is based on the Excavator microarchitecture and uses 2 Excavator modules totalling 4 cores. It has a dual-channel DDR4-2400 memory controller with clock speeds up to 4.0 GHz. It runs on the new Socket AM4 platform that was later used for Zen 1 to Zen 3 CPUs.

Zen-based Athlon (2018–present)
The Zen-based Athlon with Radeon graphics processors was launched in September 2018 with the Athlon 200GE. Based on AMD's Raven Ridge core previously used in variants of the Ryzen 3 and Ryzen 5, the Athlon 200GE had half of the cores but left SMT enabled. It also kept the same 4 MiB L3 cache, but the L2 cache was halved to 1 MiB.

In addition, the number of graphics compute units was limited to 3 in the Athlon 200GE, and the chip was multiplier-locked. Despite its limitations, the Athlon 200GE performed competitively against the 5000-series Intel Pentium-G, displaying similar CPU performance but an advantage in GPU performance.

On November 19, 2019, AMD released the Athlon 3000G, with a higher 3.5 GHz core clock and 1100 MHz graphics clock compared to the Athlon 200GE, also with two cores. The main functional difference between the 200GE was the Athlon 3000G's unlocked multiplier, allowing the latter to be overclocked on B450 and X470 motherboards.

Zen 2-based Athlon with Radeon Graphics processors, codenamed "Mendocino", were released on September 20, 2022 for the entry-level laptop market, alongside the more powerful quad-core Ryzen 7020 mobile series under the same codename. Featuring two processing cores, with two threads on Athlon Silver and four threads on Athlon Gold models, Athlon 7020 series mobile processors are equipped with two compute units (CUs) of RDNA 2 graphics. These 7020U series models were followed by the release of Ryzen/Athlon 7020C series for Chromebooks on May 23, 2023. Unlike prior Athlon generations, AMD has not released desktop variants of Mendocino.

Raven Ridge (14 nm), Picasso (12 nm) (see the list article for more details)
 * Specifications
 * L1 cache: 192 KiB (2×64 KiB + 2×32 KiB)
 * L2 cache: 1 MiB (2×512 KiB)
 * L3 cache: 4 MiB
 * Memory: dual-channel DDR4-2666, 64 GiB max.
 * Socket AM4
 * TDP: 35 W
 * First release: September 6, 2018
 * CPU clock rate: 3.2 to 3.5 GHz
 * GPU clock rate: 1000 to 1100 MHz

Mendocino (6 nm) (see the list article for more details)
 * L1 cache: 128 KiB (2×32 KiB + 2×32 KiB)
 * L2 cache: 1 MiB (2×512 KiB)
 * L3 cache: 4 MiB
 * Memory: dual-channel LPDDR5-5500, 16 GiB max.
 * TDP: 15 W
 * First release: September 20, 2022
 * CPU clock rate: 2.4 GHz
 * GPU clock rate: 1900 MHz

Supercomputers
A number of supercomputers have been built using Athlon chips, largely at universities. Among them:
 * In 2000, several American students claimed to have built the world's least expensive supercomputer by clustering 64 AMD Athlon chips together, also marking the first time Athlons had been clustered in a supercomputer.
 * The PRESTO III, a Beowulf cluster of 78 AMD Athlon processors, was built in 2001 by the Tokyo Institute of Technology. That year it ranked 439 on the TOP500 list of supercomputers.
 * In 2002, a "128-Node 256-Processor AMD Athlon Supercomputer Cluster" was installed at the Ohio Supercomputer Center at the University of Toledo.
 * Rutgers University, Department of Physics & Astronomy. Machine: NOW Cluster—AMD Athlon. CPU: 512 AthlonMP (1.65 GHz). Rmax: 794 GFLOPS.

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title: Athlon