AMD's 2010 - 2011 Roadmaps: ~1B Transistor Llano APU, Bobcat and Bulldozer
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 11, 2009 12:50 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
AMD's 2010 - 2011 Desktop Roadmap
Today’s high end desktop platform is called Dragon. It’s what you get when you combine a Phenom II, AMD 790FX/GX chipset and a Radeon HD 4000 series graphics card. Nice, but that’s old news now.
Next year the high end platform will be called Leo. It’s made up of a Thuban CPU, which is an updated Phenom II rev sporting as many as six cores. It’s still 45nm so don’t expect much in the way of new architectural features. Graphics comes courtesy of the Radeon HD 5000 series, which we all know and love. The chipset is going to be AMD’s new 8-series, complete with a new SB850 south bridge.
In 2011 we get Bulldozer and it comes in the form of the Zambezi CPU (AMD’s codenames are such fun). You’ll see four and eight core versions of Zambezi. Both will support DDR3 and both will work in Socket-AM3. Obviously guaranteeing motherboard support this early in the game is difficult, but AMD is usually good about maintaining socket compatibility. You may be able to slip a Zambezi into your current day Socket-AM3 motherboards.
All this plus a chipset and AMD’s 6000-series graphics makes up what’s going to be called the Scorpius platform.
Moving down one notch to mainstream, today we have the Pisces/Kodiak platforms (yep, never heard them called that either). That’s made up of Athlon II CPUs and the 785G chipset with integrated graphics.
Next year we’ll have Dorado, which consists of Athlon II CPUs and next-year’s integrated graphics chipset. Unfortunately it won’t be a DX11 chipset, AMD is only listing 10.1 support in the 2010 platform. Which means that the graphics we’ll see in 2011 integrated on-die will be a derivative of the DX11 Radeon HD 5000 series we have today. Sweet.
The 2011 mainstream desktop platform is called Lynx, purr. It comes with the Llano APU, which as I mentioned before, doesn’t use Bulldozer. Instead Llano is made up of as many as four 32nm Phenom II-like cores. Llano also features an integrated DX11 GPU. Llano will require a new socket as the pinout will have to support video out just like Intel’s Clarkdale.
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themusgrat - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
That's got to be an honest mistake. Fix it please. If it's not, my time here is done, was a good run Anand, you once were a valued voice in the PC community.T2k - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
there's no mistake here - it's nothin g but a typical giant DOUCHE article from a your giant DOUCHE, Anand Lai Shimpi.Most his pieces are either boring or full of rehashed stuff - I often wish he would stick to counting the beans and just leave the fuck this site alone, to people who know how to write etc.
This piece perfectly illustrates how much he has to do with writing or journalism or news - nothing.
DaveninCali - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
Come on, Anand. This is really poor form. A roadmap article about AMD only and you include this Intel slide as the first image. I have to agree with everyone else, you made a BIG mistake here.Griswold - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
I have to agree with that. It doesnt matter if you want to get the point across that Intel is doing this and that a year ahead yadda-yadda.If it is supposed to be an article about AMDs roadmap, the first slide/picture/whatever should certainly not include an Intel logo... park that and the conclusion at the end of it.
srp49ers - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
What has happened to this site. It has happens slowly yet surely.Intel ad right the top of an "AMD" article. Poor taste and highly suspect.
Hope the money is good....
Carleh - Thursday, November 12, 2009 - link
Intel is not playing catch-up with AMD, so it has no reason to waste money marketing its products this way. Besides, the offending slide was removed.JimmiG - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
Seriously AMD's road map for 2010 is about as boring as it gets. Some users will appreciate the 6-core CPUs. However, per-core performance will probably be lower than current Quads because of lower clock speeds and lower cache to core ratios. AMD will be forced to compete in the $150 segment and below for all of next year - and do so using chips that are as big and complex as the $999 i7's...AMD really needs a new micro-architecture. Very high clock speeds, larger caches etc. have made the K10 architecture reasonably competitive with Core 2. However this isn't 2006, this is the end of 2009...
GeorgeH - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
AMD's mobile roadmap (even if they stick to it) is very disappointing; it looks like Intel will barely even have to try to stay on top. Sure AMD's IGPs will be better, but real performance will still come from discrete GPUs. All Intel has to do is make a "good enough" IGP with very low power consumption, enable seamlessly switchable discrete graphics, and boom - AMD's mobile offerings are relegated to the extreme low end for another few years.As laptops continue to supplant desktops, it looks like AMD will be surrendering even more of the consumer market and mindshare to Intel in the coming years.
fitten - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
I want to hear more about this: "A major focus is going to be improving on one of AMD’s biggest weaknesses today: heavily threaded performance. Intel addresses it with Hyper Threading, AMD is throwing a bit more hardware at the problem. The dual integer clusters you may have heard of are the route AMD is taking..."JACKDRUID - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
AMD is lucky Intel totally flops on IGPs... else they'd be out of business by now due to their inability to compete.On the other hand, 785/790 chipsets really turned AMD around. Excellent IGP for people who don't do too much gaming (however would like to be able to play some occasional light gaming or favorite older games).
for my next upgrade, I would still go with AMD or NV?? if Intel continues to flop on IGPs. However, if they somehow get a comparable igp, i would switch in no time.