Slot A is the physical and electrical specification for a 242-lead single-edge-connector used by early versions of AMD's

Athlon Athlon is the brand name applied to a series of x86-compatible microprocessors designed and manufactured by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). The original Athlon (now called Athlon Classic) was the first seventh-generation x86 processor and the fi ...

processor. The Slot A connector allows for a higher bus rate than

Socket 7 Socket 7 is a physical and electrical specification for an x86-style CPU socket on a personal computer motherboard. It was released in June 1995. The socket supersedes the earlier Socket 5, and accepts P5 Pentium microprocessors manufactured by ...

Super Socket 7 Super Socket 7, also referred to as Super 7, is a hardware-level extension of the Socket 7 ZIF socket specification for x86 processors. Compatible motherboards and chipsets use a standard Socket 7 connection for the CPU, while adding certain feat ...

. Slot A motherboards use the EV6 bus protocol, a technology originally developed by

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president un ...

(DEC) for its

Alpha 21264 The Alpha 21264 is a Digital Equipment Corporation RISC microprocessor launched on 19 October 1998. The 21264 implemented the Alpha instruction set architecture (ISA). Description The Alpha 21264 is a four-issue superscalar microprocessor with o ...

microprocessor. Slot A is mechanically compatible but electrically incompatible with

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 ser ...

's Slot 1. As a consequence, Slot A motherboards were designed to have the connector's installed orientation be rotated 180 degrees relative to Slot 1 motherboards to discourage accidental insertion of a Slot 1 processor into a Slot A motherboard, and vice versa. The choice to use the same mechanical connector as the Intel Slot 1 also allowed motherboard manufacturers to keep costs down by stocking the same part for both Slot 1 and Slot A assemblies. Slot A was superseded by

Socket A Socket A (also known as Socket 462) is a zero insertion force pin grid array (PGA) CPU socket used for AMD processors ranging from the Athlon Thunderbird to the Athlon XP/MP 3200+, and AMD budget processors including the Duron and Sempron. Soc ...

References

{{amdsock AMD sockets

See also

References