AMD tapes out its Bulldozer CPU architecture

[mdsx1950]

I found an interesting article. Thought i'd share it

On Friday, AMD announced that it has successfully taped out its much delayed Bulldozer architecture and hopes to begin sampling working chips with customers shortly. The company's new high-end architecture will be fabricated on the 32nm process at Globalfoundries and is expected to sample throughout the second half of 2010.

We recently reported that AMD's 32nm Zambezi eight-core processor, the first to release in the Bulldozer lineup, will use a modified AM3 r2 socket and should feature 8MB of L3 cache, should support DDR3 1866MHz speeds, and should be paired with the Scorpio platform. The company has also stated that Interlagos is the server codename for its 32nm, sixteen-core Opteron 6000 series processors based on socket G34 which will be paired with the Maranello platform.

According to an unofficial source familiar with the company's server plans, AMD intends to begin mass production of its 12-core and 16-core Interlagos server processors in the first half of 2011. A source at XbitLabs has noted that Interlagos features two 32nm SOI chips codenamed Valencia with six or eight cores on the same substrate.Other versions of Bulldozer with reduced power consumption and increased performance for the desktop market were planned to be produced in the second half of 2011.



"In the second quarter of this year we also taped out the first 32nm product based on our new high-performance Bulldozer CPU core. We plan to begin sampling our Bulldozer based server and desktop processors in the second half of this year and remain on track for 2011 launches. These new processors will deliver significant performance improvements to the AMD platform," said Dirk Meyer, chief executive officer of AMD, during the quarterly conference call with financial community.

To reiterate on the technology development process behind this fabrication stage, the tape out on Bulldozer means AMD has finished the artwork for the photomask of the circuit architecture and has sent it to GlobalFoundries for manufacturing into a physical chip package. Back in October 2009, we hinted that AMD's new architecture should be coming in the second part of 2011. In perspective, this is the company's only hope to catch up with Intel as it continues the Tick-Tock development cycle and replaces its Nehalem architecture with 32nm Sandy Bridge in early 2011. However, nothing is made specifically clear, and the mass production schedule doesn't necessarily coincide with the official launch schedule. This means that the multi-core chips have an equal chance of coming out in the first and second halves of next year. In the silicon manufacturing industry, the average time from tape out to general release for CPUs is about 9 to 12 months, and with a tape out in mid-July 2010, Bulldozer is well on its way to a Q2 or Q3 release in 2011.

Meanwhile, the company has also announced that it will dramatically switch the timing of its dual-core 40nm Ontario and 32nm Llano Fusion production ramps due to slower than anticipated progress of its 32nm yield curve. "Llano production shipments are still expected to occur in the first half of next year," said Dirk Meyer, chief executive officer of AMD, during a conversation with financial analysts. "We have seen the rate of yield leaning below our plans on 32nm, [and] we will take a bit more time to work on the 32nm yields up the curve. So, the effective change to our internal plans on Llano amounts to a couple of months," said Mr. Meyer. More on that here.

AMD is expected to shed some more light on its upcoming Bulldozer and Bobcat architectures at the Hot Chips conference hosted at Stanford University in August.

[erocker]

Samples shipping soon. Nice! I'm trying to be optimistic about performance, hopefully we'll get to see some leaks soon.

[Lionheart]

Awesome find bro, very interesting

[Melvis]

This is looking promising, as long as it leap frogs the current i7 in performance they have a good chance of a good future. Bring on bulldozer.....

[ebolamonkey3]

Looking forward to leaked specs!

[de.das.dude]

what to do to get a sample?

[slyfox2151]

pft 16 cores...... Bring on the 48 cores @ 5.00GHZ
srsly its not far away now, 3-5 years imo.




really want to see some benchmarks at the same clocks as an i7. wonder if its going to surpass clock for clock.

[enaher]

Bring on the A64 day's were AMD was more expensive , wait is that really good?

[WhiteLotus]

I seriously hope that this series of CPUs perform on par with Intels. I'm fed up of seeing AMD as the "weaker" yet cheaper option.

[Dent1]

Originally Posted by enaher

Bring on the A64 day's were AMD was more expensive , wait is that really good?

I can not remember the P4 costing more than the Athlon 64. Maybe it was a region thing but over here Intel prices it self higher regardless.

[FordGT90Concept]

Originally Posted by WhiteLotus

I seriously hope that this series of CPUs perform on par with Intels. I'm fed up of seeing AMD as the "weaker" yet cheaper option.

I think it is because that was AMD's priority in designing it. If AMD pumped all the money into R&D and it still falls way short of Intel's offerings, investors would be pissed.


There's no way to be certain though.

[TIGR]

Originally Posted by slyfox2151

pft 16 cores...... Bring on the 48 cores @ 5.00GHZ
srsly its not far away now, 3-5 years imo.

48 cores yes. 5GHz, probably not. As clock rate goes up, the heat generated and power consumed by a CPU per unit of performance become prohibitively high—Intel calls it the ”fundamental theorem of multicore processors.” This is a good intro to why the future of computing is massively parallel.

[largon]

Hoping for memory width higher than 128bit...
And it will surely be interesting to see what new tricks AMD has stuffed in Bulldozer for it's been too much of evolutionary additions and not much of the revolution type since Hammer came back in 2003.

[Dent1]

Originally Posted by largon

Hoping for memory width higher than 128bit...

On Wikipedia, it says that the Bulldozer will support quad channel memory. Do you think this might speed up memory bandwidth enough?

[largon]

QC would mean it's 256bit, double what AM3 has atm. I doubt we'll see that. Buuut I'd like to be wrong on that one. 256bits requires four populated DIMMs - do I hear memory manufacturers screaming "Quad channel kits!!one1"?
¦P

[Timonthy]

Bulldozer should use quad-channel memory (256-bit) AFAIK.

The G34 Opterons are already Quad-channel and has been promised Bulldozer, I doubt AMD will take a step backwards. Its probably gonna be like the i7 and scales back to dual channel with only 2DIMMs inserted.

[slyfox2151]

Originally Posted by largon

QC would mean it's 256bit, double what AM3 has atm. I doubt we'll see that. Buuut I'd like to be wrong on that one. 256bits requires four populated DIMMs - do I hear memory manufacturers screaming "Quad channel kits!!one1"?
¦P

were there tripple channel kits when skt 775 was dom?
why would they market quad channel kits to a market that dosnt exist?



im fairly certain intel has said they are also going to be using quad channel, with there new R Socket (2011)

Originally Posted by TIGR

48 cores yes. 5GHz, probably not. As clock rate goes up, the heat generated and power consumed by a CPU per unit of performance become prohibitively high—Intel calls it the ”fundamental theorem of multicore processors.” This is a good intro to why the future of computing is massively parallel.

As dies continue to shrink, they've got other problems besides heat and power. I remember reading something recently where one scientist said that the speed of light was just too damn slow. Amazing.

[p_o_s_pc]

i can't wait for the reviews. With all the hype that has been put on these i hope they don't turn out to be another Phenom

[GENTLEMEN]

All I'm hoping for is backwards compatability to AM3 and performance on par (if not greater) than the current i7 while still keeping it's pricing methods (maybe a bit higher).

Hmm, I smell 48 core Black Editions...

[mdsx1950]

I get the feeling that these procs might dominate the market next year.

[Melvis]

^ We hope so that's for sure, and for AMD's sake

[largon]

Originally Posted by GENTLEMEN

All I'm hoping for is backwards compatability to AM3 (...)

If Bulldozer were pin compatible with AM3, which I hope it is not, it would mean it would have only dual channel memory as AM3 doesn't have enough pins for >128bit memory.
I'd like to see desktop BD using LGA1207'ish socket.

[crazyeyesreaper]

and if we pay attention to how amd has done things lately 9/10 the BullDozer chips on AM3 will be like the AM2+ Phenom IIs where the IMC was disabled (thats an EXAMPLE ) its no that far a fetch just because only dual channel could be used dosent mean it wouldnt still be a huge upgrade for ppl with AM3. I hope it uses AM3 because i dont need quadchannel memory. Altho i do 3d rendering etc on my off time ive found that even with huge amounts of data the number of channels dont help as much as more ram. And to be honest id only want the upgrade if bulldozer offered better gaming performance and im pretty sure dual channel DDR3 isnt the bottleneck in that senario.

[Frick]

Originally Posted by twilyth

As dies continue to shrink, they've got other problems besides heat and power. I remember reading something recently where one scientist said that the speed of light was just too damn slow. Amazing.

Link?

Another problem is that after a couple of shrinks they're running out of atoms to work with. Then they need new materials.