AMD had a bit more to add on its Bobcat design, unquestionably created with the Fusion initiative in mind. The focus here is on Bobcat as a technology, which AMD plans to use to create SoCs targeting specific markets—the first of which should be its Ontario APU, featuring on-die graphics processing, fixed-function video playback acceleration, a DDR3 memory controller, and the dedicated bus linking everything together.
AMD’s estimate here is retention of 90% of today’s mainstream performance (I’d certainly consider something in Athlon II territory reasonable) in less than half of the silicon area. That’s a figure we’ve seen AMD use in past discussions of Bobcat. But perhaps less known was how the company planned to achieve this.
Details being discussed today include a dual-issue x86 decoder and out-of-order execution, perhaps enabling a performance advantage compared to Intel’s Atom CPUs. Bobcat will support SSE, SSE2, and SSE3, along with virtualization acceleration.
Beyond its performance implications, though, AMD repeats over and over that this is a sub-1 W-capable core. Possible though that might be (at standby), remember that Ontario will incorporate a pair of these cores. Additionally, Bobcat is part of a SoC. So, it might be a little more realistic to expect power numbers between 10 and 20 W.


Really? Here I was thinking that's exactly what AMD was building.
By the way, just who the hell comes up with these ridiculous names? I personally think manufacturers would sell more units if they weren't so confusing.
Put it in a mac, the sheeple will eat this Sh1t up.
By the way, just who the hell comes up with these ridiculous names? I personally think manufacturers would sell more units if they weren't so confusing.
I'd have to say I partially agree with you. I see way more Intel commercials (many) than AMD (none). My next build: Bulldozer
Not quite, the out of order execution WILL enable a performance advantage compared to Atom, + the added bonus that the AMD GPU on the Ontario platform (if similar or better in performance to the ION) WILL again make for a better platform as a hole.
On the Bulldozer side, Power Gating and Turbo for modules, TST > SMT should be something to look forward.
PS: On the commercials side I'm looking forward to something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK0hU0OYvCI
I totaly agree on the commersial bit.
Yeh but Intel also has its new 2011 line-up in the works. I really want AMD to do well but Intel has one hell of a lead in terms of clock-vs-clock performance. But i'm still hopeful...so go AMD!
Really? Here I was thinking that's exactly what AMD was building.
Intel will need to buy a decent Graphics design team to keep up.
Goodby NVidia ... your about to be assimilated into the collective.
Chris, I might have predicted this a few times before ...and got it wrong too.
Great article btw.
It's good to see they got away from having ports with both AGUs and ALUs. Hopefully they copied more from Intel than that.
AM2+ user
From the looks of it Zambezi sounds like it would outperform the i7 920 if it just used 4 cores except that it will have 8 cores (4 modules).It looks like it might even match or maybe outperform the 6 core i7-980X Gulftown monster.That is if AMD can really execute this properly.
Will Intel have faster CPU's by then? Probably.
The real question is will software catch up with this new hardware?
PC Gaming will be great really great with high FPS with new GPU's