Unveiling the Innovation of “Bobcat” and “Bulldozer”
As general manager of AMD’s Technology Group, my job is to lead AMD’s stellar team of innovators in developing technology. We ensure that AMD continues to anticipate industry trends that will make our customers’ lives simpler and enrich their customers’ lives. So, that’s why I am excited about the company’s most significant new x86 core designs in over 10 years, and even more excited to share them with you in a few weeks at Hot Chips.
“Bobcat” and “Bulldozer” are our two new x86 core architectures, with “Bulldozer” designed for the higher performance desktop and server markets, and “Bobcat” designed to address the low power, ultrathin notebook and netbook markets. As you may know, these new cores are at the heart of AMD’s future product roadmap, including the highly anticipated AMD Fusion family of APUs, making it possible to carefully balance outstanding performance with power-efficiency for the best possible computing experience.
But, what will we be sharing that’s new? Short answer: plenty.
At Hot Chips from August 22 – 24 at Stanford University, my colleagues Mike Butler and Brad Burgess will be discussing the essential features of the two advanced cores, while also disclosing the different power management techniques so essential to our customers. Bulldozer brings a new approach to multi-threaded processing; balancing shared and dedicated processing elements for maximum throughput while minimizing power consumption. Bobcat is a very small, out-of-order execution engine, making it very low power, yet highly capable.
The position held by the x86 architecture at the very heart of modern computing is undeniable; and it has continually evolved to become more capable, even smarter, over time. That continuing innovation keeps it relevant, even as other consumer electronics devices become more connected and capable, the pure processing capability of the x86 for many of our most used applications makes it well-suited for the demands we put on it. The Bulldozer and Bobcat cores continue that evolutionary path in new ways that might be a challenge to decipher for a non-engineer, but promise to change the way we all use compute devices.
If you’re not able to attend Hot Chips, keep an eye out for more details here and in your favorite online news site.
What are the most critical aspects you hope to see in these new core architectures? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section.
Chekib Akrout is a Senior Vice President and General Manager, Technology Group, AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied. This blog contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are generally preceded by words such as “plans,” “expects,” “believes,” “anticipates” or “intends.” AMD Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements in this blog involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations.
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COMMENTS: 29
Critical aspects I hope to see in these new core architectures?
IPCs higher than Intels next gen parts. 2P motherboards backed by AMD for desktops with quad channel memory.
I will be very attentive to:
1- The decoder design of Bulldozer, particularly the balancing of power consumption, area and multi-threaded perf.
2- It’s FPU design, particularly how will it’s peak perf compare to K10 with similar area.
3- It’s ALU design… I have a teory or two about it, will be pleased if they’re confirmed.
In Bobcat I have only a general interest, particularly on any new power tricks.
i would like to see in bobcat cpu running at clocking speed of at least 2.0 ghz or more. i also would like to see if bobcat cpu can also contribute along with raedon hd graphic card in accelarating of video games, videos and high picture quality.
I do not know if this is considered part of the “core architecture” but I am sure that much of the client market is most interested in learning about Bulldozer compatibility (or lack thereof) with AM3 boards. In particular I would like to learn if my newly purchased 890fx board will be “future proof” in this regard. I am sure that a confirmation of compatibility could only help sales!
For bulldozer: Higher IPC, lower latency lvl 1&2 cache and clockspeeds above 3GHz. For bobcat: on chip graphics well above intels offerings and power management that will give us battery times above 8h (for workloads).
I just wanted the bobcat to be powerful than the atom-ion combination with increased energy efficiency for that will do more for basic home computing and htpc.Also want to know what is the advantage of bulldozer’s cpu over Sandy bridge and it’s power consumption
Looking forward to news on whether the new bulldozer Zambezi CPU’s will be AM3 or AM3+ and if they are AM3+ when we are likely to see a roll out of the new socket.
For sure the most interesting and exciting aspect is AMDs next gen power efficiency techologies and techniques.
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All I care about is quad channel memory support.
To guy asking about am3, no it wont. They are talking about server bulldozer.
hello again,
i also remembered that i would like to see the next generation of ddr4 memory in bobcat that will be available in 2012
DD4 will be more expensive and latency higher than DD3, at least initially.
OpenCL/GL – how tightly coupled is the Bobcat.
1)How much of a performance boost, in pure Open(X) programs.
2) OS- multiple (Linux, 7, X)best performance
Very interested in Bobcat. Particularly power consumption of the Ontario SoC (Including to know what bits of architecture were kept to maintain performance without burning excessive power) and the price of SoCs manufactured at TSMC versus GlobalFoundries that might give you an advantage.
Hello!
Do you think that using “H SHAPED CORES” will be more rational because of
complicated structure of Bobcat core? Cooling, bonding and packaging will be easier.
It’s really nice to see that Bobcat shows amazing performance for the TDP and surely is a power efficient system. But still waiting to know more about the performance of Bulldozer.Believe that Bulldozer will also share the same legacy of best performance per watt like the bobcat.
Bobcat is useful because it does not make sense to downclock an Athlon or Sempron until it consumes as little power as Atom because it is more expensive to produce a chip with large die-size fpr this market. The same can be told about Liano which has a very nice price/power/performance-ratio in the middle segment but not below and above that. Thus, Bulldozer will be for server and performance desktops with dedicated hp-graphics. The future will be very interesting. Will there be high performance parts with integrated graphics? But this should take another 5 years or more.
I’m an AMD fan, I’ve bought nothing but AMD processors. But I think you’re heading the wrong direction integrating GPUs in CPUs. I want faster single cores, not more and more cores including GPU cores. Undertaking this major change is distracting you from upping your CPU speed while Intel continues to charge forward on that front.
I’d like clarification of what a “core” is. The early statements from AMD said a core would run 2 threads with 90 percent the performance of existing dual cores (in half the area). So when you say 16 cores, is that 8 cores running 2 threads each? or is it 16 cores running 2 threads each? This really makes a difference if FPU since that’s really all that’s shared between cores within a pair. Either stop calling it multithreading (my preference) or stop calling it 16 cores. Confusion in the market is bad for everyone.
I definitely would like to know if the shared FPU will affect per-core performance.
@Paul
The Bobcat unit is actually two cores. I asked the server guy the same question a while ago.
AMD Bulldozer, DDR3-1866 and Higher Memory Level Parallelism
Quad-Channel capable IMC DDR3-1866. What does this mean Quad-Channel capable? Will it be Quad-Channel or Dual-Channel?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldozer_(processor)
I agree with Jake the Cpu performance should also be increased rather than concentrating on multicore and integrated Gpu solutions. We need performance boost in every application not only in graphics and media that’s where Intel excels. Will there be an bulldozer with two modules or four cores.
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Hi Chekib,
I hope that you manage to read this comment.
I would like the SIMD Engine Array to support dynamic dispatch, a full C++ programming model, and a coherent memory space. Also, it must fully and efficiently support scalar and vector transitions (billions of transitions per second). A full vector instruction set architecture is needed, that includes Masking & scatter/gather memory access and 64-bit integer ops & memory addressing. Doing so, you will be able to make the Fusion as powerful and flexible as possible.
i would like to see a very high improvement in memory controllers. Memory management was not so good in phenom 2/athlon 2 compared to the competitor. I guess, that is one of the most important reasons for why a phenom 2 can not perform in full potential. This is my personal thought. Also support for big amount of memory in motherboards is important. We have 64bit CPUs and Operating Systems for ages and we have only 8 GB of memory support in our mobos? that’s ridiculous.
Also, AMD is very silent in mobile platforms for so long. Mobile market is growing more rapidly then desktop now. I expect strong CPUs and chipsets from AMD in this segment.
My most important expectation from AMD: motherboards supporting multiple CPU sockets.
AMD was the first to breach 1ghz CPU speed, first to implement 32/64bit support in CPU and was first to integrate memory controller in CPU etc etc. Those were all very innovative solutions and put AMD a step beyond. But more and more innovations are needed. I want creative innovations from AMD. Peace and out
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What frequencies MHzwill be at the bulldozer?
How many memory channels will be at the game computer?
Frequency of memory will be поддерживатся 1866 MHz?
Whether there will be a Bulldozer faster и7 9xx?
these are good stuff not to mention all of the nice feature under “a true monolithic die”, but how about high power, high performance envelope where’s AMD stand’s at this point?
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