AMD and GlobalFoundries, CES 2011
by Jarred Walton on January 7, 2011 3:30 AM ESTMore AMD Demos and Future Roadmap
One thing we didn’t see at AMD is Bulldozer, the CPU architecture intended to bridge the gap between the current K10.5 solutions and Intel’s Nehalem and Sandy Bridge offerings. We’ve discussed some of the specifics of Bulldozer in the past, but we still don’t have anything concrete to report in terms of performance. GF reports that 32nm production of Orochi is going well, and Bulldozer will show up later this year, but there was no hands-on time with BD at CES to report on. Estimates however are that it should provide a drop-in replacement on existing AMD servers that should boost performance by around 50%. If the desktop processors can get a similar performance boost, that ought to put Bulldozer into close competition with Sandy Bridge, and there’s no doubt that a 500GFLOPS GPU core (i.e. something similar to the HD 5600 series) will put paid to Intel’s HD Graphics 3000.
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Also present was a single "Llano-like" laptop, but it was only used for a software demonstration from another company. That demonstration consisted of a 3D camera and video camera recording a scene, similar to the Xbox Kinect. The difference here is that the Presentation demo used OpenCL code to process the video signal, analyze the 3D information, and remove the background from the video stream in real time. The result was a sort of blue-screen effect without the use of a blue screen, and the software additionally interacted with a PowerPoint presentation to integrate the presenter with the content—useful for putting the human element into a webcast. The resolution of the 3D signal was such that the outline of the human was a little fuzzy, and the demonstration still tells us very little about Llano performance, but it was still a cool demo.
Brazos is certainly showing uptake at the show, and netbooks should become quite a bit more capable thanks to the design. Going forward, AMD has the Trinity APU that will meld 2-4 Bulldozer cores with a fast GPU core, providing even better performance and flexibility. Where the “Stars” CPUs releasing this year and the Trinity core next year will both use 32nm process technology, it’s interesting that AMD is using 40nm TSMC for production of the Brazos core right now. (This apparently is due to the amount of IP that AMD already has with 40nm GPUs.) Next year, Krishna and Wichita will drop 1-4 Bobcat cores into an APU, and they’ll make the shift to 28nm. We suspect that these chips will shift over to GlobalFoundries 28nm node, though it’s possible AMD could source such chips from both TSMC and GF. Also coming at the top of the CPU performance pile are Zambezi (4-8 Bulldozer cores), roughly in the middle of 2011. That will be followed by Komodo, sporting a full eight Bulldozer cores; neither offering will include an IGP, on the assumption that these high-end CPUs will be paired with discrete GPUs.
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Edgar_Wibeau - Friday, January 7, 2011 - link
The original plan at the begnning of 2010 was:- Llano first
- Ontario second
- Bulldozer third
Then, further problems emerged with Llano, yiel problems according to AMD, some suspect problems with the GPU-part having yield-problems in 32nm SOI/HKMG which is a completely new process tech for a GPU.
So on the analyst CC in november (even befor that IIRC) the current (inofficial) plan was communicated:
- Ontario first
- Bulldozer starting from april
- Llano in Q3
Some sources now claim a re-push forward to june for Llano, but that's very uncertain as of now.
There are more mistakes in the article, like Ontario is claimed to be manufactured on a 32nm process, which (ULP Bulk CMOS) doesn't even exist neither at TSMC, nor at GloFo. Bothe were cancelled in favour of 28nm.
Maybe Anand should hire an AMD spinner for a change.
http://www.techeye.net/chips/top-intel-spinner-tip...
Edgar_Wibeau - Friday, January 7, 2011 - link
http://www.planet3dnow.de/photoplog/index.php?n=12...Edgar_Wibeau - Friday, January 7, 2011 - link
http://www.planet3dnow.de/photoplog/index.php?n=12...Inofficial of course, could be fakes of course.
spigzone - Friday, January 7, 2011 - link
Charlie said in an article a couple weeks ago on Semiaccurate GloFo's latest Llano respin suddenly came up roses, apparently everything fell into place and they suddenly had a production ready yield. May have resulted in Llano being bumped up ahead of bulldozer.JarredWalton - Friday, January 7, 2011 - link
Okay, so after meeting with AMD yet again today I asked for clarification. Sorry for the misinformation above, but Bulldozer and Llano are both supposed to come out Q2 apparently. I was told they should launch within ~1 month of each other.sirmo - Friday, January 7, 2011 - link
Those are good news. Thanks for the clarification.GeorgeH - Friday, January 7, 2011 - link
"First it was getting below 1 micron, but we’ve long since smashed that barrier and are moving steadily towards the 1nm mark. How small can we go?"Well, the radius of a single atom is ~0.1nm (depending on how you define radius.) I'd say that's a pretty solid floor on feature size. :)
HibyPrime1 - Friday, January 7, 2011 - link
Then they need to get working on making individual electrons into transistors.marraco - Friday, January 7, 2011 - link
No. Miniaturization is dead end.After 1nm we are into picometer scale, on which quantum forces completely changes the rules.
The answer are polinary transistors, which tap picometer capabilities by working with many atoms in coordination, instead to just reducing the number of atoms on the same transistor.
We need to use the same atoms on different transistors, and simultaneously. That way we would increase [logical] transistor density witouth [non-existent] smaller atoms, or stacking layers in 3D.
marraco - Friday, January 7, 2011 - link
Here is the first polinary transistor:http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-10-triple-mode-tr...
It is capable of switch between 3 states instead of the 2 states traditional transistors.
Once we achieve the four states transistor, it will be able to do the work of 2 transistors on the space of one, efectively duplicating density. It is the future of Moore's law, but it requires deeper understanding of quantum forces.