AMD Details Bulldozer at ISSCC
AMD chose the annual ISSCC conference to take the wraps off its Bulldozer core, which is targeting server and high-end desktop processors.
At the core of Bulldozer processors are "modules", which integrates two "tightly linked" and slim processor cores. According to AMD, the cores integrate their own L1 caches, but share high-bandwidth resources such as a floating point unit, L2 cache as well as fetch, decode and prediction units to enable "chip multi-threading (CMT). Intel, in contrast uses an approach called chip multi-processing, which uses complete individual cores and multi-threading.
AMD said that Bulldozer will run at clock speeds of up to 3.5 GHz. The processors will be manufactured by GlobalFoundries in a 32 nm process. One Bulldozer module with two cores will house about 213 million transistors and have a surface area of just 31 mm, including L2 cache.
The upcoming 8-core Bulldozer processors are likely to have more than 1 billion transistors as the entire chip will also integrate L3 cache as well as a Hypertransport 3.1 controller. The future Valencia Opteron, which will likely be called the Opteron 4200 series, will be available with six and eight cores. The Opteron 6200, code-named Interlagos, will debut with 8, 12 and 16 cores.
I think the limit to core expansion will be when the manufacturers can't deliver a reliable core count at a given manufacturing size (nm). Even then it will only be temporary.
The real limit will be when/if we actually need 12 or 16 or more cores for everyday use.
AMD might as well start research on Star Trek transporter technology.
"ARGH!!!!!! Give a release date and some benchmarks AMD!!! If you don't release info soon I am upgrading to the sandy bridge platform."
Um do you guys realise Intel was a little quick to release Sandy Bridge and all you have is a Billion dollars worth of paper weights. There is absolutley nothing that requires home users to have thses AMD chips at the moment. AMD take your time and get it right ...
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be patient...i am sure that you can wait a little longer...intel is and will allways be better than AMD
Is it coming soon? 2012...? The world ends, it'll be to late by then.
My 2+ year old core2 Quad is looking for an AMD replacement.
I agree though AMD needs to tell the public an actual target date when these will be available to purchase. I want to buy one but I may end up getting a sandybridge even though the southbridge chipset is having some problems. The 2600K is pretty solid. And Killerclick AMD has stated estimated performance figures before if you just do some simple searching you can find the figures. And coming from a company standpoint, the performance figures AMD stated for their 8 core bulldozer CPUS are probably a little bit lower than they actually will be. AMD is not a favorite among the majority of pc users, so I doubt AMD would overstate the performance of their CPU's because that would piss a lot of people off if the CPU's fell short of AMD's performance figures. I would think that when the 8 core Zambezi is released that it will be faster than what AMD has said in the past. For anyone wondering, AMD said that the 8 core Zambezi is supposed to be 50% faster than a core i7-950 in gaming to give you an idea of performance. I expect that it will even be a little faster.
When they mentioned benchmarks for Barcelona, everyone said "it's only 30% not 40% faster." Just be careful cause I still don't know how to judge i3,i5,i7 with the 3xx, 4xx, 5xx, 7xx, 8xx, 9xx. At least AMD doesn't castrate chips to charge less.