At Comdex, AMD today announced it has selected “AMD Athlon 64” as the brand name for its next-generation processor for desktop and mobile PCs, formerly code named “Clawhammer.”

The upcoming AMD Athlon™ 64 processor is expected to be the industry’s first and only 64-bit, x86 PC processor for desktop and mobile computing. Desktop and mobile PCs built on the AMD Athlon 64 processor will be able to run 64-bit applications at full performance and simultaneously run 32-bit software applications with no performance penalty.

Athlon 64 processors are planned to be available in late first quarter 2003 or early second quarter 2003; now, in a very interesting bit of news just wait you read this quote from Anandtech's Comdex Coverage regarding some hands-on experiences with the processor at the show:

The performance of the Athlon XP 64 at 1.4GHz was around the speed of a 2.2GHz Pentium 4 or Athlon XP 2200+, at least in the 3DMark tests we ran. Obviously this isn't an indication of final performance but it does give you an idea of where AMD is headed. If they can reach the 2.0GHz clock speeds they are shooting for then the Athlon XP 64 could be quite a competitive part. Judging by the stability of the system we played with, AMD's only issue right now is getting clock speeds up. Coming from 800MHz at Computex to 1.4GHz today, AMD is getting there but they've still got a long road ahead.