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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Abwx - Saturday, January 8, 2011 - link
Looks like you re arguing with an Intel employee,though AMD are quite messy with their PR job.
Anyway, BD is sheduled for somewhere in april
with Llano following in Q3 according to the few
available official and leaked infos.
JarredWalton - Sunday, January 9, 2011 - link
Enough with the "Intel employee" garbage, please. I spent upwards of three hours in meetings with AMD at CES; I didn't even visit with Intel.As mentioned, AMD is entering their "quiet time" before the yearly earnings report, so they are not allowed to discuss products that aren't shipping in any sort of detail. The fact is, I asked about a dozen times in varying ways for more information on Llano and Bulldozer, and they cannot (legally) provide me with the details I'd like. Too bad for us. Most of the leaks you're referring to are now outdated, so other than AMD telling me "within a month of each other" (and they didn't tell me which would come first), we really don't know what's going on right now.
Which will come out first: Llano or Bulldozer? It really doesn't matter that much. Both will release close to each other, and personally I think Llano would be the better chip to ship first. Imagine what Llano reviews will be if BD ships first (and lives up to the hype): "Well, Llano has some pretty sweet integrated graphics, but we can only wonder what it would have been like when paired with Bulldozer."
The two products are also very different markets, and for some people Llano is the more exciting offering. Imagine HD 5650 performance from an IGP! If AMD can get the updated K10.5 power requirements down to Core i3/i5/i7 levels, that's enough to win a lot of important benchmarks. My biggest concern with Llano is that K10.5 in the past has been okay performance with pretty terrible battery life relative to Intel--we're talking Core 2 levels of performance but at the cost of higher power in many situations.
If Llano has a lot of new power gating enhancements thrown in (relative to Athlon/Turion/Phenom II), that would really change it's potential. Sandy Bridge quad-core got 10.24W of average power draw during our Internet battery life benchmark with a 17.3" LCD. To put that in perspective, the AMD Phenom II P920 used roughly 15.3W of power in the same test, with a 15.6" LCD (and a paltry 1.6GHz maximum clock). So yeah, we'll see what happens probably in the next six months.
silverblue - Friday, January 7, 2011 - link
Troll alert.Sorry, someone had to say it. May as well be me.
mino - Friday, January 7, 2011 - link
"Brazos is even smaller than Atom, in part thanks to the use of 32nm (Brazos) vs. 45nm (Atom)"While 40nm TSMC process has even better density than Intel's 32nm process. The naming stands.
JarredWalton - Friday, January 7, 2011 - link
Fixed. Sorry for the confusion; it's been a couple long days.Yuriman - Friday, January 7, 2011 - link
"Providing 25-33% more performance using 30% less power (and 100% less standby power)..."100% increase in standby battery life != 100% less standby power.
iAdmin~r - Saturday, January 8, 2011 - link
Llano is a failed bulldozer.silverblue - Sunday, January 9, 2011 - link
It's nothing of the sort. It's not even targeted at the same market as Bulldozer.Troll alert #2.
papapapapapapapababy - Saturday, January 8, 2011 - link
i dont get brazos. lame cpu paired with lame dx11gpu. how exciting. at least with intel you got a GREAT cpu paried with the lame-st- gpu. simply put, the integrated gpu of amd needs to be GREAT . at least > 5770 levels of performance for me to even care. so yea, triple core brazos > no nerfed dual core + integrated no nerfed gpu.The Crying Man - Sunday, January 9, 2011 - link
If you don't "get" Brazos then I suggest you go back and read all the articles that mention Ontario and Zacate, and concentrate on what their targeted market is.