Friday, December 2nd 2011
AMD Realizes That Bulldozer Has 800 Million LESS Transistors Than It Thought!
AMD's new flagship Bulldozer "FX" series of processors have turned out to be mediocre performers in almost every review and benchmark going, sometimes even getting bested by the existing Phenom II and certainly no match for their Intel competition. To add to this tale of fail, it now turns out that AMD didn't even know how many transistors they have! Anand Lal Shimpi of AnandTech received an email from AMD's PR department and this is the revelation he had to share with us:
Source:
AnandTech
This is a bit unusual. I got an email from AMD PR this week asking me to correct the Bulldozer transistor count in our Sandy Bridge E review. The incorrect number, provided to me (and other reviewers) by AMD PR around 3 months ago was 2 billion transistors. The actual transistor count for Bulldozer is apparently 1.2 billion transistors. I don't have an explanation as to why the original number was wrong, just that the new number has been triple checked by my contact and is indeed right. The total die area for a 4-module/8-core Bulldozer remains correct at 315 mm².Yes, something as basic as how many transistors are in their flagship product wasn't known about until months after the launch! This kind of info would be common knowledge within the company by the time the first tape-out is ready during the design and testing phase, so surely this cannot be and there must be some other explanation? If this is an attempt to make the processor look better by showing it "doing more with less", then this PR stunt has backfired spectacularly and it would have been better to have left the "error" as it was. Paradoxically, FX processors are a sales success and are flying off the shelves as we just reported, here.
142 Comments on AMD Realizes That Bulldozer Has 800 Million LESS Transistors Than It Thought!
I wonder if there is still anyone at AMD that knows how to design a cpu.
Bad management decisions having large scale backfire.
You're always free to look somewhere else. I have no problem with that at all. None.
Now, with my tinfoil hat on, I reckon it was deliberate in some way. I just have no idea how, lol. Or if they were really that disorganized, then AMD has some serious problems.
Thanks for the kind words. :toast:
If you're not too happy about my writing style, then I'm always willing to listen to constructive criticism and suggestions and debate them with you. :toast:
Finally, these should be made in the comments section, or PM, not the news thread. If you want to make sure that I see your comment in that section, then feel free to PM me the link and I'll discuss things with you. :)
www.planet3dnow.de/cgi-bin/newspub/viewnews.cgi?id=1321455683
in googlish:
Wednesday 16 November 2011
16:01 - Author: Dr @
AMD Bulldozer Schrumpfkur missed - a virtual
Who now expected, it would be a new revision of the miracle bulldozer in the wings who will be disappointed. For the launch of the first "Bulldozer" processor-based desktop AMD FX (codenamed "Zambezi") had AMD communicated to the press through a die size of 315 mm ² and a transistor count of around 2 billion. As The Register then in the context of the launch of the new Opteron 6200 ("Interlagos") and 4200 ("Valencia") is only 2.4 billion transistors for the "Interlagos" spoke, asked some users cope in our forum, such as this number to the previous statement fits. After all, this figure is 40% below the original value of about 4 billion
Therefore we have asked AMD, after which it has been confirmed that the statement of The Register is accurate. Because all processors of the first "Bulldozer" generation on the same "Orochi" The building is for all versions 315 mm ² die size and 1.2 billion transistors to estimate. Since the Opteron 6200 is constructed from an MCM (Multi Chip Module) from each of two dies, each processor must here per the duplicate values are estimated. The virtual downsizing in the number of transistors is built so simply due to a communication error. As it happened, you could not tell us yet.
Source: AMD
This whole news story has me scratching my head. Has it always been 800 million transistors less? Did AMD keep with the original number and not know about it? Did they disable the chip in a last minute attempt to bring it to market? Funky stuff...
Patch Notes:
Added 800 Million more transistors should see 40% performance increase.
To the best of my knowledge, a mistake like this has never been made before in the semiconductor industry.