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AMD Releases Image of Phenom/Barcelona Die

Posted by Zonk on from the can't-get-much-dorkier-than-that dept.

MojoKid writes "A few weeks ago, AMD released information on new branding for their desktop derivatives of the Barcelona core, now dubbed the Phenom FX, X4 and X2. If you're unfamiliar with Phenom, the processors will be based on AMD's K10 architecture. They've been tight lipped about specifics, but we know that it will feature a faster on-die memory controller, support 64-bit and 128-bit SSE operations, and they'll be outfitted with 2MB of on-chip L2 cache (512KB dedicated per core) in addition to 2MB of shared L3 cache. This week, instead of revealing some more of the juicy details regarding those enhancements, AMD just sent over a tasty photo of a Phenom die. At least it's something."

12 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. wow a photo by jonathan+DS · · Score: 5, Insightful

    can you see how fast it is? How about some specs we understand?

    1. Re:wow a photo by ceeam · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Frankly - who cares? It will be fast enough, no doubt. Speed is not the #1 characteristic of CPU anymore.

  2. Hype it up by jhfry · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I know that this is just a ploy to build up hype for the new processors... I just hope that the processor performs up to expectations.

    AMD really needs to respond to the Core 2 Duo's with something that tells the world that they are still in the race. I really don't want to see Intel become the unchallenged winner of the silicon wars... it would hurt us users in the long run.

    I fear that it is a real possibility however. The cost of fabs, R&D, and marketing have grown so much in the last few years that it would be VERY difficult for any newcomer to compete with Intel unless they managed to develop a completely different and low cost way to manufacture their chips... or they are very heavily backed.

    --
    Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
    1. Re:Hype it up by tomstdenis · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Where is it $266? The Q6600 at the local shop here in Ottawa is $670 CAD [currently on sale for $639]. I'll wait until I can actually find one for around $266 USD.

      Also keep in mind that the AMD design is a true quad-core. They didn't just hack two dual-cores together over an FSB. This is a true quad-core (e.g. the L3 is shared between all four cores) over a higher speed internal bus, attached with it's own memory controller, etc....

      Will the average OpenOffice or Firefox user notice the difference between the Q6600 and Barcelona? Most likely not. But if you're doing number crunching [say media filtering, encoding, chemistry, etc] the AMD design will likely pay off better.

      Tom

      --
      Someday, I'll have a real sig.
  3. The advantages of four cores on a single die by Eukariote · · Score: 5, Insightful

    On-chip connectivity can be much broader and lower-latency than off-chip connectivity. The two-dual-core in one package "quad cores" of Intel have to talk via the off-package north bridge. As you can see from the AMD Barcelona/K10/10h snapshot, the cores live together on a single piece of silicon.

    The space between the the cores is a very broad crossbar, allowing fast inter-core synchronization/cache-coherency. The uniform block at the edge of the chip, outside the cores, is the L3 cache shared by all four cores. Each core has its own L1 and L2 cache. This design is nicely symmetric: each core has equivalent resources. It should do very well on heavy-duty symmetric multiprocessing applications.

    1. Re:The advantages of four cores on a single die by Eukariote · · Score: 4, Insightful

      According to Intel engineers though, communication between the chips was never a bottleneck
      What a load of crap. For quite a few applications, it definitely is a bottleneck. If you have single-threaded tasks that sit happily on their own processor and do not intercommunicate, then, yeah, it does not matter much what connectivity the cores and dies have. But in the real world, multi-threading and SMP tasks do need to intercommunicate, often heavily so. Also, processes will often migrate from one core to the next because the core it was running on before is in use. At that moment, fast inter-core synchronization of the caches is very helpful.
  4. and socket type? by Danathar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And it will probably require ANOTHER slot type and force me to upgrade my motherboard yet AGAIN!

    Geeze...please let me keep my motherboard for 6 months!

    1. Re:and socket type? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No it doesn't require a new socket. The socket is still AM2, so you can keep your mainboard. The boards, that do come out now are AM2+ boards, they offer a new power saving tech for the Phenom's, which will save you about 10% power consumption.

    2. Re:and socket type? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Yeah whatever. Remember socket 940?
      That was the high-end socket for K8, for Opteron/FX chips, while Athlon64 took the cheaper socket 754.

      Then AMD marketing wonks decided to invent socket 939 to differentiate the market further and isolate desktop and server platforms. (And don't fall for the marketing BS. For the last time, no, 939 doesn't have anything to do with unbuffered RAM. Sockets have nothing to do with that. Unbuffered support is purely a function of the new CPUs' fixed memory controller. Older K8 revs had horribly unstable first-generation memory controllers that couldn't drive multiple DIMMs without registered memory.)

      The net result was anyone with a desktop socket 940, such as the ASUS SK8V, got the shaft. You had to start buying more expensive Opterons instead of newer FX CPUs. And then, quite strangely, Opteron 1xx migrated to socket 939 exclusively so you had to buy Opteron 2xx even for a single-CPU system.
      And with socket 939 getting all the attention, companies like ASUS abandoned BIOS updating for the socket 940 desktop boards. You can't even use a dual-core CPU on them, let alone any newer K8 rev.

      I predict the same fate for AM2. DDR3 is on its way, after all. Then the AMD marketing wonks will force a new socket on us and you AM2 users will be out in the cold. I'm waiting this time. Sweet revenge.

  5. Shhhhh! by dreamchaser · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Some of them are busy fapping to the pic right now, so hush. You'll spoil the mood.

  6. Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    they'll be outfitted with 2MB of on-chip L2 cache (512KB dedicated per core)


    It's about effing time... maybe chip manufacturers have finally clued in that cache is the single biggest characteristic of a processor that affects (NOT impacts) performance. I have seen far too many 2-3GHz chips crippled by insufficient cache over the years, but hey, it was $20 bucks cheaper and the same speed so it must be a better deal right? Too bad that this will probably not make the market and the cache will be cut back to 64KB per core to shave a few dollars off the price and suck more people in to buying crippled gear...
  7. Well then, by TheCreeep · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why don't they just release the CPU? I mean they have it working, they tested it and stuff.
    I'm not trolling, I'm just curious to find out what changes a processor goes through in it's last months before being launched.