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AMD Details Upcoming Bulldozer Architecture
Vigile writes "AMD is taking the lid off quite a bit of information on its upcoming CPU architecture known as Bulldozer that is the first complete redesign over current processors. AMD's lineup has been relatively stagnant while Intel continued to innovate with Nehalem and Sandy Bridge (due late this year) and the Bulldozer refresh is badly needed to keep in step. The integrated north bridge, on-die memory controller and large shared L3 cache remain key components from the Athlon/Phenom generation to Bulldozer but AMD is adding features like dual-thread support per core (but with a unique implementation utilizing separate execution units for each thread), support for 256-bit SIMD operations (for upcoming AVX support) all running on GlobalFoundries 32nm SOI process technology."
Read the subject.
Can't wait to get home and read details about this. Can anyone tell me if they mentioned prices in TFA?
Living With a Nerd
Compared to such articles as AnandTech's coverage of this in November 2009, I don't see much new information. Perhaps the key bit, and this is glossed over but you can tell from the slides AMD gave them, is the difference between the bulldozer and bobcat cores. The bulldozer cores contain the two integer units that have been revealed before, but the bobcat core only has one but it still implements hyperthreading.
Call me whatever you want, but the only reason AMD is still alive and well is because they've been innovating and building good products for a while now. Itanium, anyone?
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
"AMD's lineup has been relatively stagnant while Intel continued to innovate with Nehalem and Sandy Bridge (due late this year) and the Bulldozer refresh is badly needed to keep in step."
AMD just came out with Six-Core processors for $200, how is that stagnant? Intel's only 6-core processor is still $1000
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Will existing PCs with an AM3 socket be upgradeable to bulldozer, anyone know? I see a few people asking on forums and stuff but I couldn't find any authoritative answers.
Sounds like a slow-moving behemoth. Not the best choice for a name.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
It's a whole new architecture and will almost certainly require a new socket. ISTR the article saying nothing about memory technologies as well. The good news is that a new architecture on the horizon which almost certainly requires a new socket makes it seem less likely that AMD will bring out another socket before then.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There is also this on the AMD site. It has a slightly different take on the core/module semantics.
because they can not really compete with Intel anymore. And Intel hardly punished for it's anti-competitive behaviour will laugh about it. Too bad but that will not change in the near future.
Processor Speed: Very fast hamsters on well-oiled wheels
Multiple Cores: Many well-oiled wheels
On die memory controllers: dangled cheese
Cache: water trough next to the wheel
L3 Cache: Camelback packs for each hamster
Shared L3 Cache: This is where the real innovation comes in and won't be defined as patent is pending.
People simply don't want to sit in a fixed position governed by a box and a monitor, which is one reason laptops outsell desktops. The future is untethered, which means low power battery operated systems. Your discrete graphics card will never be more than a niche market.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The future is untethered, which means low power battery operated systems. Your discrete graphics card will never be more than a niche market.
So no-one is going to play PC games anymore? I guess you could be right, but Microsoft better hope you're wrong.
Yes, because we all know you can compare CPU's because they both have the same amount of cores right? Wile the AMD Six-Core is allot cheaper than Intel's offering, that's because the AMD chip only competes with the quad core i7 chips (not with Intel's Six-Core chips, top AMD vs top Intel Six-Core chips, you would have to hit 4GHz+ OC on the AMD to even get close to the Intel at stock speeds) and for price reasons is far more accurate to compare with those. That is NOT to say that AMD's chips are not a a good buy, for the performance you get, the prices are quite nice, and depending on the use, might be better suited.
Honestly, I wish Via had the resources AMD and Intel have. Their Nano CPU is pretty nice, but it's languishing. They're only just now coming out with a dual core version. The Nano's on-die crypto extensions, low power use, and higher performance per watt would otherwise make it ideal for server applications, particularly SSL front-ends.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Anyone who has been paying attention for the last 10 years is well aware that the entire consumer electronics industry is largely driven by integration and shrinkage.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
You know laptops can still run PC games, right?
The next iteration of the XBox 360 will have an SoC that integrates both the GPU and CPU on a single die.
I think we're at a point where only a small niche (well, more so than before) pushes for the $600 behemoth video cards and $900 CPU's.
People are moving towards "just enough" machines that are light on price and power consumption.
...which is all that the 99% of people who would be classified as "ghetto users" need anyhow.
Even laptops are more comfortable to use on a desktop. They're actually annoying to use on a laptop.
Regardless, almost all the laptops you've ever used had separate CPU and GPU chips in them. So "untethered" is not driving integration.
What drives integration is price and the premium that can be charged for a lighter, smaller device. But the integrated chip will not have the same performance as separated chips at the same manufacturing cost. So you will get an integrated CPU/GPU based platform that costs the same as the old one but has less CPU or GPU performance.
I worked with 128 bit SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) on an Intel x86 processor for my undergrad capstone, specifically SSE4.1. SIMD mainly allows vector operations. As one example, instead of adding 42 to a single 32 bit number in RAM, you can add 42 to four 32 bit numbers in RAM, if they're all next to each other, and do it in almost the same amount of time. Good for graphics and, well, vector operations. Kind of the CPU's answer to the GPU's specialties.
My capstone dealt with finding out if an ignorant person who otherwise knows assembler can use SIMD in general purpose cases to speed up his program. The answer is 'probably not', as SIMD tends to mess up branch prediction, pipelining, and out of order execution, and it can take significant overhead to make SIMD work for you. Best to stick with what it was specifically built for if you're going to be using SIMD.
Even Microsoft has thrown in the towel with IA-64 given the scalability of AMD64 (err, x86-64) in Xeon & Opteron processors. Windows Server 2008 R2 is the last version to support IA-64...
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/2008-IA.aspx
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
I misread that at first, yes you're correct, discrete cards are somewhat problematic in that respect. However, it's not quite that bleak, with technology that's been coming for a while, it wouldn't surprise me if before too long the integrated on die graphics chip was teamed up with either an integrated or more likely discrete graphics card to somewhat bump the quality even further.
But there's a reason why AMD wants to do it, they've had a lot of good luck with integrating things and strategically moving and removing unnecessary buses. Not completely unlike what Woz was doing back in the late 70s by removing and consolidating chips in the original Apple computers.
Except that Intel is working on photonic circuits for datatransfer/clock distribution/... and obviously the inductance/capacitance problem doesn't apply to light.
We'll see what the future brings when it's there.
hm, i think the "next iteration" you're talking about was launched already, its that 360 slim/s.
As a graphics and audio processing C programmer I am interested in SIMD instructions but seriously do we really NEED yet another set of instructions for SIMD? I am getting too old for this shit. (presumably)
Just about every iteration of SIMD from Intel and AMD has been utterly worthless. (Not to mention NEON on the ARM.) Altivec was an example of SIMD done right, and AVX finally incorporates some of the better features of it.
Performance per chip, or per core, is important. More cores is nice and all... If you can use them. Not everything can. If your apps use only 2 cores, the other 4 don't do you a lot of good. However maybe those apps need a lot of performance out of the cores they do use (games are like that). As such you are interested in performance per core, not just having more cores.
i7 may be damn good with way more higher technology and support but really, its price is dumb. Really dumb. One can't really justify paying that price (don't forget decent MB) for a desktop processor. Lets not forget the integrated ATI graphics , even lowest end can show Intel GMA as a joke. At least they got hardware T&L in 2010 for God's sake.
I have serious problems paying $1000 for a processor and I own a Quad G5 PowerPC from Apple. Now if it makes me feel like that, imagine the rest. Also one day, one non dumb company will manage to make users really use "cloud" computing all with grid technology with privacy concerns kinda resolved, that time netbook owners may really laugh at $1000 CPU owners for a reason.
If Apple didn't produce hardware and didn't make living with hardware upgrades, they could be the ones to solve this stupid problem with an elite and yet practical solution. In fact, every OS X comes with it enabled... XGrid...
Notice how every advancement of the last generation of Intel and AMD was from destroying a 100% American company known as Digital Equipment Corporation where it was bought-out by Compaq to stagnate, and then HP merged into Compaq where they began liquidating Alpha patents like it was a dream come true. It is truly sad that they are intentionally 10 years behind, because that is how fast the original unflawed version of a 21164 Alpha was not fabricated. Having a computer faster than a Pentium 4 back in 1997 is what the 21164 was designed to be but the fabrication was flawed: stagnation only concluded to make the corrections YEARS LATER to what became a 21264 Alpha that had verry few changes from a 21164. HP under Carly to sell printers is what liquidated this division. It should have gone to Apple, so then we could have the fastest technology to earn the translucent neon enclosures. Instead, we get this old hindered shit as though we are expected to sit and watch every motherf*cking reversion of processor design until we see the fast one arrive at a price-break. It's awful, and the sole reason I will never buy a modern computer ever again because I can pull usefull technology out of the dumpsters that Intel and AMD are filling-up by inspiring everyone to be wastefully-inclined to "upgrade."
HP, Intel, AMD, Microsoft, Apple: f*ck all of you corporate bastards.
Wake me up if this comes even close to Westmere and Sandy Bridge (or if this ever even ships).
People simply don't want to sit in a fixed position governed by a box and a monitor
Get Off My Lawn!!
19" monitors, full-sized keyboards and real optical mice are much more comfortable than laptop h/w.
Besides, I'm disabled and can only use one hand to type and thus laptop keyboards suck.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Reading this makes me so nostalgic for byte magazine, they on occasion would right the most awesome, and in depth articles about processors. They did not just regurgitate the companies white paper, and glossy marketing copy.
"think of it as evolution in action"
I think the cross-licensing of x86 and amd64 technology and antitrust laws have something to do with it, too.
Do you realize that ARM doesn't even have a 64 bit version of the ISA??
MIPS and PowerPC have them.
Also AFAIK it doesn't have a 'trap on integer overflow' mode like MIPS:
very interesting for a language like Ada which has exception on integer overflow:
on MIPS this feature could have zero performance impact during normal execution.
I just recently pushed for a "behemoth" video card, but it was only $150. Am I a small niche?
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