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.[1] 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).[2] The modern Zen-based Athlon with a Radeon Graphics processor was introduced in 2019 as AMD's highest-performance entry-level processor.[3][4]
Athlon comes from the Ancient Greek ἆθλον (athlon), meaning "(sport) contest", or "prize of a contest", or "place of a contest; arena".[5] With the Athlon name originally used for AMD's high-end processors, AMD currently uses Athlon for budget APUs[2] with integrated graphics.[6] AMD positions the Athlon against its rival, the Intel Pentium.[7]
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