[Solved] Fusion Buldozer :o

First of all, APU = CPU package with CPU cores and GPU cores. Bulldozer = CPU core microarchitecture. APUs can be and are made with several different CPU microarchitectures, and Bulldozer will be offered in APU and non-APU formats.

Bulldozer-based APUs will apparently work in Llano FM1 motherboards, and non-APU Bulldozers will work in Socket AM3+ desktop motherboards as well as Socket C32 and Socket G34 Opteron server motherboards. You can buy all of those motherboards right now.

The leaked benchmarks of the first 4-module/8-core Bulldozers suggests performance competitive with Gulftowns and Sandy Bridge CPUs. However, leaked benchmarks can be on the mark or very far off it, so take it with a grain of salt. AMD typically holds its cards very, very close, so we won't see much of how a Bulldozer we know is 100% legit really performs until launch day.

There are currently two series of APUs- ones based on the low-power Bobcat core (Ontario/Zacate) and ones based on the K10/Stars core (Llano.) The Bulldozer-based "Orochi" units will be considerably different yet.

Maybe, maybe not. The "Stars" architecture performs pretty similarly with a 2 MB L3 and DDR2-1066 memory (Agena) and no L3 and DDR3-1333 memory (Propus). The full-house model with 6 MB of L3 and DDR3-1333 performs the best of all, but it's 5-10% faster clock for clock than the L3-less or DDR2-using models. That's a very small difference, truth to be told.

First I am not American and don't own a credit card but what you are saying is wrong.

1) Bulldozer based CPU is planned to be out this year (it does not have an integrated GPU).
2) Yes there are other fusion chips that have been released this year.
3) There has been no confirmation if Bulldozer APU's will use AM3+ socket or FMx socket (used by APU's now is FM1).

So everything sounds disappointing. Can anyone cheer me up? [/quotemsg][/quote]

Bulldozer-based CPUs will be released in Socket FM1, Socket AM3+, Socket C32, and Socket G34 forms, as well as in a notebook socket (S1g5?). The Socket AM3+, C32, and G34 units will not have integrated GPUs and will thus not be APUs. The FM1 and notebook versions will have an integrated GPU and will be APUs.

See my definition at the top of my reply. Some APUs are Bulldozers, but not all Bulldozers are APUs and not all APUs are Bulldozers.

Opterons will not be available in APU format at least for the upcoming Bulldozer v.1 generation that fits into Socket C32 and G34 motherboards. AMD made a big deal about Bulldozer-based units being drop-in compatible for C32 and G34 systems, and C32 and G34 are not APU-capable. Perhaps the next generation of Opterons (C2012, G2012) are APU-capable, but unless the APU is used as an FPU or other co-processor used to accelerate server applications, don't expect to see APU Opterons. Graphics are NOT important to servers; in fact most of them run without any sort of GPU or even a monitor attached. Like I said above, AMD is very secretive about future projects, so don't expect to hear a lot about their future platforms until fairly close to launch.

My guess is that the next generation of Opteron platform will use APU chips, but solely as a coprocessor. Think of an OpenCL/Stream/DirectX Compute Shader type of FPU/SIMD-heavy embarrassingly parallel number-crunching coprocessor. I also wouldn't doubt that AMD may also offer a version of the G2102-based chips as units without GPU cores for workloads where an extra 2-4 CPU cores would be more useful than GPU cores. AMD has been known to offer product variations based on requests from certain customers (Athlon 64 1500+ blade processor for HP, upcoming high-clocked 8-core Opteron 6200s for certain unnamed customers), so I wouldn't be surprised to see an APU-containing or APU-less CPU from them for the next generation of Opterons after the C32/G34 Bulldozers.