Why Athlon 4?
Technically speaking, the Palomino core does mark the fourth AMD Athlon core since the release of the original K7 core in 1999. If we begin counting at the K7 core there was the 0.18-micron Athlon which was based on the K75 core, then the 0.18-micron Thunderbird with on-die L2 cache and the fourth Athlon core would be the 0.18-micron Palomino core. However our most astute readers will know very well why AMD chose to call the Palomino the Athlon 4. Intel has spent millions of dollars on their Pentium 4 marketing campaign, marking this as their largest processor ramp in history. By the end of 2001 Intel expects the Pentium 4 to completely push out the Pentium III in the markets and in order to do so they must create quite a bit of brand recognition. AMD is obviously using the name Athlon 4 to build off of Intel’s aggressive marketing. It is much like what they did with the K6-III processor. Originally the K6-X series of processors used regular numbers after the name to denote the process
