K5, K6 and Athlon

AMD's first in-house x86 processor was the K5 which was launched in 1996. The "K" was a reference to "Kryptonite", which from comic book lore, was the only substance (radioactive pieces of his home planet) which could harm Superman, a clear reference to Intel, which dominated in the market at the time, as "Superman".

In 1996, AMD purchased NexGen specifically for the rights to their Nx series of x86-compatible processors. AMD gave the NexGen design team their own building, left them alone, and gave them time and money to rework the Nx686. The result was the K6 processor, introduced in 1997.

The K7 was AMD's seventh generation x86 processor, making its debut on June 23, 1999, under the brand name Athlon. On October 9, 2001 the Athlon XP was released, followed by the Athlon XP with 512KB L2 Cache on February 10, 2003