AMD Gives Early Hint at Bulldozer Performance
Bulldozer is a very aggressive name.
AMD last week launched a new blog section dedicated to talking about Bulldozer, one of its next-generation core technologies.
John Fruehe, director of product marketing for server/workstation products at AMD, started with a description of what Bulldozer is: "a brand new design featuring up to 8 cores for client products and up to 16 cores for server products. Bulldozer will feature a new floating point unit that can support up to 256-bit floating point execution, which will boost the performance for technical applications that rely on floating point math. There will be some new software instructions that will be supported, allowing for greater performance and flexibility, but, it will be backwards compatible so you won’t need to change anything to start using the processor."
In AMD fashion, the company is aiming to make Bulldozer chips compatible with existing platforms. This means that Opteron 6000 Series platform (G34 socket-based) and Opteron 4000 Series platform (C32-socket based) are compatible with Bulldozer. The 6000 series will be home to the upcoming “Interlagos” (16-core) processor, while the 4000 series will be fit for the upcoming 8-core “Valencia” processor. Bulldozer will also support DDR3.
AMD said it wasn't going to reveal anything on performance until launch sometime in 2011 (with no more specific date other than the year). What Fruehe did share, however, was the jump in performance in relation to Magny Cours.
"From a performance standpoint, if you compare our 16-core Interlagos to our current 12-core AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors (code named “Magny Cours”) we estimate that customers will see up to 50% more performance from 33% more cores," Fruehe wrote. "This means we expect the per core performance to go in the right direction — up."
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GO AMD!
Less cores, better performance???.. (not following)
A dual core is good enough for me though... lol
I've got a friend who played around with an ES. Said it was about 12% better clock for clock than i7 in games. This was with the 8 core version. He assured me it's the next CPU he'll get. Based on that, I may do the same.
Less cores, better performance???.. (not following)A dual core is good enough for me though... lol
where in the article are you reading less cores?
Still not clear if Bulldozer will run on Socket AM3 motherboards though, would love to find that out because i would get a 965 and AM3 board if it did...
... wuhaa!!! and... how about desktop version?
So if 12 cores = 100% performance and 16 cores = 150% performance, then there is a 12.5% increase in performance per core. I don't know if that's enough to dethrone Intel in the high end.
It does not sound like they are targeting the consumer very much. 8 cores is all well and good, but only if they end up matching Intel's performance per core which their current Phenom II line does not. Quad cores have been out for years now, and consumer software still rarely makes good use of the extra cores.
Is "Magny Cours" pronounced "Many Cores"? First time I saw that codename, I thought it was a horrible pun. However, google tells me its a city in France or something (which matches the AMD naming scheme), so I'm guessing it's not "many cores".
Less cores, better performance???.. (not following)
Try "not reading". It says when you compare their [NEW] 16-core processor to their current 12-core processor, you get 50% improvement with 33% more cores. That's more cores, not less.
Still not clear if Bulldozer will run on Socket AM3 motherboards though, would love to find that out because i would get a 965 and AM3 board if it did...
Uhh..?
It looks like it will support AM3.
I have to say I love AMD for pushing the competition even though core-to-core against Intel isn't as up to speed in performance. The fact they manage to keep the same socket for generations is impressive and something Intel could take note of. I'm tired as many are, of having to change mobos for every new upgrade.
2011 should definitely be interesting for the CPU market.
So if 12 cores = 100% performance and 16 cores = 150% performance, then there is a 12.5% increase in performance per core. I don't know if that's enough to dethrone Intel in the high end.
it will dethrone intels Core i7 890X at the moment by a significant margin, intel will only have 32nm 6 and 8 core I7 and i9 at the time of bulldozer, actually intels 2011 road map look rather plain
Keep in mind folks this is only a estimate and so on, as well as being for the server market, big difference. But 2x the cores with 12.5% faster cores sounds very nice for desktops
Uhh..?It looks like it will support AM3.
From the below comment it looks like the server segment is backwards compatible but there was no mention of the desktop segment...
I was personally impressed with AMD's Magny Cores. Higher per-core performance while getting more cores? Wicked.
So, everyone, would you prefer (assuming same clock per clock performance) a 5.5GHz quad core or a 3GHz 16 core. If i7 voltage scaling is anything to give a guess on, they'd have around the same TDP.
When will we receive more great 65watt chips though? There were some sweet C2Q chips. I'd prefer a less exotic cooing setup (and a much cheaper PSU). At this point in time, when there is little use for most people for anything over a 2GHz dual core, efficiency overshadows performance (in the mainstream). But not the Atom approach (low performance, yet inefficient). Even gamers don't need quad cores most days. Of course, there will be the enthusiasts who still lust for power.
Anyone else want a 32nm i7 930 at 2.8GHz with a 65 watt TDP?
People keep talking about intel changing the socket....forgive me if I am wrong....but how long was 775 the socket? 4 years? that is not bad.....
Now I agree that having both 1156 and 1366 was stupid....but you can easily research the parts and know what you are getting yourself into before buying a system or building one.....
Not impressed.. 50% performance increase with 33% more cores (assuming same clock speeds) sounds no way exciting.. If you factor in the current performance figures then the upcoming processors would still struggle matching up to their Intel counterparts.. I guess it'd again be a price to performance ratio slogan (getting sick of it already).. And with Intel lowering prices on their current line up along with launch of sandy bridge, AMD's p2p arena looks in a spot of bother..
knowing the way AMD works we would be seeing an AM3+ and AM4 socket to ensure an upgrade path for existing customer. The most interesting aspect of bulldozer (other then the whole GPGPU fusion thing, which i think if they do correctly can really tailor their CPU for specific market segments) is the implementation of AMD's version of hyper threading, which has contributed to Intel's crown (IMHO), the next step is for intel to have one physical core present 3 virtual cores to the OS
of course if AMD can pull off the GPGPU thing then all this talk about cores (virtual or otherwise) could become a moot point
Is "Magny Cours" pronounced "Many Cores"? First time I saw that codename, I thought it was a horrible pun. However, google tells me its a city in France or something (which matches the AMD naming scheme), so I'm guessing it's not "many cores".
I think the french pronunciation is the correct one, even though in Italy some AMD family names can be pretty interesting; For example the name "Duron" in italian can be translated as "Ready for Sex". And Magny Cours was a F1 Track (it isn't used anymore)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circu [...] agny-Cours
it will dethrone intels Core i7 890X at the moment by a significant margin, intel will only have 32nm 6 and 8 core I7 and i9 at the time of bulldozer, actually intels 2011 road map look rather plain
Riiiight. Hoping against all hopes, are we?
Bulldozer better be an AM3 compatible CPU or else there would be no point. AMD has already stated that there are no new desktops CPU's in the making so this is AMD's only hope for now..
I don't think AMD is trying to dethrone Intel when it comes to Bulldozer, it should be a remarkable chip at a reasonable price. Intel is too far ahead of AMD, but Intels pricing and socket life-span is what steers me away. Hopefully both companies can surprise us next year with some nice options.
As nice as it would be to have Bulldozer support Socket AM3, I think AMD should move ahead with something new if it means the architecture is significantly improved over a K10. If it's as good as AMD is saying, and gives Sandy Bridge a run for its money, I'll be in line with cash in hand for the new platform.
yawn
it will be backwards compatible so you won’t need to change anything to start using the processor
OMG I LOVE AMD!!!
btw, Marcus Yam (from TH) wrote about the server processors, it wasn`t written in the blog. So I`m 99% sure that AM3 will support Bulldozer.
Look out Sandy Bridge - your not made out of steal you know..
AMD codenames like Magny Cours are named after Formula 1 racing circuits, with Magny Cours being the site of the French GP, Barcelona being the site of the Spanish GP etc.
... wuhaa!!! and... how about desktop version?
Same architecture, so you should see the same kind of performance boost. Since they are exactly half, you should still see 1.5x performance increase over from the 8 core chip over the 6 core chip (Thuban = 1090T and 1055T)
Here's to hoping they knock it out of the park with Bulldozer!
So no change in socket? basically that means the new chip will still have the same terrible throughput, and thus will be bottlenecked... no thanks, I'll stick with my i7/i9.
If anything, I would consider myself an AMD fanboy, but let's be real: AMD talking about AMD performance isn't the most unbiased source you can find. I do have faith in AMD, but I'll believe the specifics when I see them.
To those wondering what the chip names are like Magny Cours, Valencia, and Interlagos, etc...they're the names of Formula One racing circuits. I don't know if many know this, but AMD sponsors Scuderia Ferrari (the official team name of Ferrari's Formula One effort), and supplies their workstations and laptops with AMD chips. Looks like AMD are finally tying in that part, finally.
As far as the Bulldozer name goes...that is not F1 related at all, but a warning to Intel that it's about to be bulldozed!
AMD has been making huge leap in term of server hardware lately. But their desktop division is still trailling far behind. I know that the money is in the businesses, but I can't stop wishing they get a 12 cores monster consumer CPU.