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 was 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. 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. The modern Zen-based Athlon with a Radeon Graphics processor was introduced in 2019 as AMD's highest-performance entry-level processor.Athlon comes from the Ancient Greek ἆθλον (athlon) meaning "(sport) contest", or "prize of a contest", or "place of a contest; arena". With the Athlon name originally used for AMD's mid-range processors with combined CPU/GPU processors with the GPU disabled, AMD currently uses Athlon for budget APUs with integrated graphics. AMD positions the Athlon against its rival, the Intel Pentium.