AMD reintroduces the Athlon name with two CPUs

Five new offererings, four Pro, one Amateur

Sep 6, 2018 by

AMD Ryzen logoAMD reintroduced the Athlon name today with the new 200GE and Pro 200GE CPUs. Readers of SemiAccurate will know these are low end devices meant for volume, not benchmark halos.

There are actually five new CPUs out today, the two 200GEs and three new Ryzen Pro models, two 7’s and one 5. The 200GEs are both 2C/4T devices based on the current 12nm APUs while the Ryzens are based on the 8C/16T Zepplin die. The specs are not going to leave you breathless but the management features on the Pro models are a welcome addition. It looks like this:

AMD Athlon 200GE and Ryzen Pro lineup

Four of the new five

I know we said there were five new CPUs and to find the specs of the missing one you will have to use your imagination a bit. Take the top line with the Pro 200GE and pretend the Pro part is missing and there is a $55 price where the 5MB cache is. Don’t worry, the 5MB of cache is still on the chip, remember this is just a mental exercise, and all else is the same as the Pro variant minus the manageability features of course.

The Athlons name has been used to counter Intel’s bottom of the barrel Pentium branding in the past and this time is no different. AMD is stacking their parts up against the Pentium G4560 54W CPU so you know roughly where in the market these chips are going to battle. Other than that it is a low end part to fill out the market with new tech.

It won’t make much of an impact on the market as a consumer device but there is a big, yawning gap for inexpensive manageable corporate parts. AMD could make a dent here with cheap chips for PoS, call center, and other low compute task markets. You will probably never see one but the TAM for this kind of device is large and the margins, at least on the Pro side, are quite good.S|A

The following two tabs change content below.
My Twitter profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profile

Charlie Demerjian

Roving engine of chaos and snide remarks at SemiAccurate
Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also available through Guidepoint and Mosaic. FullyAccurate