AMD Discloses Bobcat & Bulldozer Architectures at Hot Chips 2010
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 24, 2010 1:33 AM ESTFinal Words
The Bulldozer and Bobcat architectures are the update AMD has needed badly over the past couple of years. AMD has done reasonably well in the mainstream market despite not having them, but I’m eager to see both in action.
I’m pretty much sold on Bobcat. The architecture looks like an out of order Atom, which is exactly what we need to drive the performance of netbooks up. I’m curious to see exactly how well Ontario and other Bobcat based designs perform vs. Atom and CULV notebooks, but it looks like AMD will at least have the architecture to compete in the small form factor portable market in a major way.
Note that we still don’t have full disclosure on the AMD GPU that’s going to be paired with Bobcat. We’ve said that ION really improves on the netbook experience but doesn’t make up for the anemic Atom CPU. With AMD’s Ontario we may get the best of both worlds: a faster CPU and competent GPU.
We’re also not that far away from Bobcat availability. The real trick here will be making sure that AMD’s partners are lined up to deliver some killer designs based on the part. After the recent FTC settlement there shouldn’t be any pressure on any OEMs to avoid shipping competitive Bobcat based netbooks/notebooks next year. Let’s hope AMD can deliver as we definitely need competition in that market.
Bulldozer I'm excited about, but more cautious - partly because we don't know what Sandy Bridge will bring, and partly because we're further away from Bulldozer than Bobcat. In many ways the architecture looks to be on-par with what Intel has done with Nehalem/Westmere. We finally have a wider front end, branch fusion, power gating/true turbo and more aggressive prefetching. Whether or not AMD can surpass Sandy Bridge’s performance really boils down to how many Bulldozer modules you get at what price. If 2 module (4-core) Bulldozer CPUs go up against dual-core Sandy Bridge things could get very interesting.
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SuperiorSpecimen - Tuesday, August 24, 2010 - link
Let's see some competition outside of the price game!mrmojo1 - Tuesday, August 24, 2010 - link
Awesome article, can't wait to see their release :) Should be very interesting!crawmm - Tuesday, August 24, 2010 - link
I drooled on my laptop reading this. Thank you, Anand. Good overview. And fun reading after a day of tedious (and mindless) work.lothar98 - Tuesday, August 24, 2010 - link
"In many ways the architecture looks to be on-par with what Intel has done with Nehalem/Westmere."I truly hope that this does not end up to be how things roll out. It has been far too long since we have seen good competition throughout the range of consumer CPU lineup. Currently we have options and competition in the mid-low end giving us exceptional bang for our buck. While one would never say you can get the best bang for your buck in the mid or high end everyone can still appreciate having options as well as getting value.
Freddo - Tuesday, August 24, 2010 - link
Bobcat seems very interesting to me, I hope it won't take long until we see a good netbook with it, with good build quality (metal, no plastic toy), a HDMI port and 2GB RAM.Mike1111 - Tuesday, August 24, 2010 - link
I'm wondering: what about AMD powered notebooks? And I don't mean netbooks or CULV notebooks. Looks like bulldozer won't come to notebooks until 2012, which would mean that AMD would most likely have to compete with Intel's 22nm Sandy Bridge successor, Ivy Bridge.Penti - Tuesday, August 24, 2010 - link
Llano APU, it's briefly mentioned. It's where we're at. Basically K10-based 4-core with integrated DX11 GPU. Better then today but not much of a competition.mino - Tuesday, August 24, 2010 - link
The GPU in the is supposed to be at least 5x the speed of current IGP performance.Basically you get a "discrete" GPU for a price of IGP ...
MonkeyPaw - Tuesday, August 24, 2010 - link
I can see Bobcat scaling upward in notebooks. It's multi-core capable, and is a fully-functional CPU. A quad core Bobcat with better-than-Intel graphics should be a very fulfilling product for notebooks in the mid-range, while providing good battery life (thank you, power gating). Anything above that could be handled by low-voltage Bulldozers as a premium offering. To me, that seems like a better solution than Intel's, where the Atom to Core increase is so severe.Kiijibari - Tuesday, August 24, 2010 - link
Ehh guys ...MMX is depracated in 64bit mode together with x87 and 3Dnow!:
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The x87, MMX, and 3DNow! instruction sets are deprecated in 64-bit modes. The instructions sets are still present for backward compatibility for 32-bit mode; however, to avoid compatibility issues in the future, their use in current and future projects is discouraged.
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http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee418798%2...
Why on Earth should AMD build in 2 special MMX pipes in a brand new µarchitecture ?
AMD just announced that they got rid of 3Dnow!, MMX pipes make no sense at all.
You probably mean XOP, dont you ?