AMD Pushes Bulldozer Processor

Advanced Micro Devices officials have launched a blog dedicated to the company’s upcoming “Bulldozer” processor architecture, which will be disclosed at a conference later in August.

Postings on The Bulldozer Blog, which launched on 2 Aug, will focus primarily on the commercial side of the business, though there will be some discussion of the consumer space, according to John Fruehe, director of product marketing for AMD server and workstation products, who wrote the first post.

“The server business tends to have much longer sales cycles and more architectural discussions, so you will see more focus from us in those areas,” Fruehe said.
Bulldozer is AMD’s first new microprocessor architecture in several years, and is aimed at the server and desktop PC spaces. AMD officials will give further details when they talk about the architecture at the Hot Chips conference on 24 Aug. at Stanford University in California.

Bulldozer And Bobcat

At the same time, they will give more details about “Bobcat,” a new core architecture for low-end, ultrathin notebooks and other smaller devices. Like Bulldozer, Bobcat will be coming out in 2011.

AMD officials aren’t giving out many details on Bulldozer, such as a precise launch date, pricing or benchmark results. However, with Bulldozer, AMD will be ramping up the number of cores on each chip. It will be included in new Opteron server processors, which will scale up to 16 cores. Chips with up to eight cores, targeted at PCs, will come out afterward.

Backward-compatible

The microprocessor architecture will offer not only more cores, but also greater performance than the current Opteron 60000 and 4000 series chips.
“There will be some new software instructions that will be supported, allowing for greater performance and flexibility, but it will be backward-compatible so you won’t need to change anything to start using the processor,” Fruehe said in his post.

Bulldozer also will offer a new floating point unit that can support up to 256-bit floating point execution, an important step for technical applications found in HPC (high-performance computing) environments.

Jeffrey Burt

Jeffrey Burt is a senior editor for eWEEK and contributor to TechWeekEurope

View Comments

  • Bulldozer release is a much awaited one. though llano reviews are out their bench is awesome that is 200% when coupled with entry level graphic cards, when they are coupled with higher level graphic cards their efficiency decreases, so i decided to wait for bulldozer release.

Recent Posts

TSMC Denies Talks With Intel Over Chipmaking Joint Venture

Denial from TSMC, after multiple reports it was in talks with Intel over a joint…

2 days ago

Apple iPhone Shipments In China Slide, As Cook Talks With Trump Official

CEO Tim Cook talks to Trump official, as IDC notes China's smartphone market growth, and…

2 days ago

AMD Warns Of $800m Charge From US Chip Restrictions On China

Another big name chip maker expects a hefty financial charge, after the US tightened rules…

2 days ago

Google Digital Ad Network Ruled Illegal Monopoly By Judge

More bad news for Google. Second time in less than a year that some part…

3 days ago

US State Dept Closes Office Flagging Russia, China Disinformation

Federal office that tackled misinformation and disinformation from hostile nations is closed down, after criticism…

3 days ago

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Makes Surprise Visit To China

After Nvidia admits it will take $5.5 billion charge as Trump export limits of slower…

3 days ago