AMD today made public its Phenom processor technology. Dubbed a successor to the Athlon, the CPU will be one of the first true quad-core desktop processors, according to AMD; unlike Intel's Core 2 Quad or Xeon 5300, the Phenom in its X4 version will have four cores that can speak directly with each other at high speed rather than two dual-core halves that need to use the less efficient system bus. An even more advanced version, known as the Phenom FX, will also work with a special dual-socked mainboard platform known as the FASN8 ("fascinate") for eight-core gaming and workstation systems.

The semiconductor firm will also release a simplified dual-core chip, the Phenom X2, as a direct replacement for the Athlon 64 X2 in mainstream and entry level systems. As with earlier chips, the Phenom will be platform-agnostic and should work with NVIDIA's GeForce graphics cards as well as mainboards from other companies that hope to produce mainboards for the technology.

No specific word had been given regarding a release date, with AMD so far committing only to the second half of 2007 for shipping hardware.