Really Little Cores?
I am on the way back from Tokyo this afternoon. Or is it last night? It’s hard to tell. Technically, as we are crossing over the International Date Line, it could be today or yesterday. But for now, it is work time.
An interesting question came up this week as I was talking to a customer about our new cores scheduled for next year. The question of whether or not we would consider our new “Bobcat” core for servers came up. Unlike the International Date Line, which is very clearly demarcated, this other line is harder to nail down.
It would be irresponsible for us not to consider every piece of silicon when determining what we are going to offer to server customers. If we have what customers need and we can profitably bring that product to market with our OEM partners, then it makes sense to productize it.
For those not familiar with “Bobcat”, it is our upcoming 9-18W client core, targeted at the mobile and small form factor client market. With all of the talk about cloud computing and low power environments, this customer was thinking that this might be a good alternative for a cloud solution. With a power draw that low, it appears pretty appealing. But if you look at today’s solutions, based on the current market needs and maturity today, the AMD Opteron™ 4100 and 6100 Series processors provide the right solutions for today’s cloud computing environments.
A “Bobcat”-based APU is 9W or 18W of power, and a dual core design, which seems pretty power efficient. Since they are dual core, a “Bobcat”-based APU is 4.5-9W per core. When you compare that to the AMD Opteron 4100 Series processors (the EE version) with a 32W ACP (5.33W/core) you see that our current server products are in the same range in a “per core” level. Even the AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors can actually reach down to 5.41W/core with the HE models, but the total power (remember that it has 12 cores) is higher.
But beyond the power consumption, cloud customers want two other things – true server features and lower management costs.
The “Bobcat” core, although an extremely efficient core, was designed for low power client solutions, so things like ECC memory and support for server OSs (through the AMD SR5600 series chipset) have not been figured into the product at this time.
Clouds grow quickly and when they do, you will need to add more systems to scale out. The “Bobcat” core, just like the Intel Atom, is based on a single processor system. So, while you get really low power, you also don’t necessarily have the core density that cloud customers demand. This can impact the overall manageability of the solution.
We will continue to evaluate and define our product roadmap to ensure we have the right products for the future. We are analyzing both “Bulldozer” and “Bobcat” core design points for future SOC’s (System on Chip) targeting the cloud server space. There is not 100% clarity at this time about the needs of the cloud market because so much of it is evolving today, but we are serious about ensuring we have the right solution going into the future. That means any products we develop in the future for cloud servers would have “server class” features (ECC, appropriate cache sizes and memory support etc.)
So what does this mean for the roadmap? We’ll be a little more tight-lipped about that as there is little benefit in sharing that strategy with our competitors. However, while “Bobcat” might not be the right product today, we’ll continue to keep our eye on it. Should things evolve in that space, we’ll be ready.
John Fruehe is the Director of Product Marketing for Server, Embedded and FireStream products at 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.
POSTED IN: AMD Opteron, Bulldozer
TAGS: "Bobcat" AMD Opteron
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COMMENTS: 36
Hello Mr. Freuhe,
would you please clarify the following?
1> Amount of L1 cache per core has been reduced in Bulldozer architecture. Would it not affect the processor’s performance adversely?
2> Do you (or AMD) view “module”, which duplicates integer core, as an opposite and more effective approach to “hyperthreading”, which duplicates some components of the front-end?
3> Is Q2 2011 official release period for Bulldozer?
4> Will Bulldozer launch with server products, or with client products, or with both?
5> Is there any restriction- or news- from AMD on when new motherboards comprising of suitable chipsets will become available, at least whether before or after the official launch of Bulldozer?
1. Believe me, the engineers spend a lot fo time looking a cache algorithms and cache sizes to get the best balance of performance and die space; the L1 has been optimized.
2. If you asked 100 people to choose their preferred way to handle 2 active threads, either on one physical core or on two physical cores, I think the overwhelming answer would be two physical cores. That will always give the best performance and the best scalability. Ask an intel engineer and they would most likely concede that having two physical cores is a better way to handle two threads and that HT is not optimal.
3. Q2 for client, Q3 for server
4. Both
5. Server models will fit into existing C32 and G34 sockets. Client products will require AM3+ sockets. I can’t comment on the details around that becasue A.) I am a server guy and B.) I can’t comment on the product plans of other companies (just as I would not like any motherboard manufacturers openly discussing my product plans.
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Leave aside common people, not even Intel praises so high of its hyperthreading as to call it a near substitute of another core. I hope module would approach as one. Regarding L1, I hope that cache miss won’t be an issue. From what you state, I assume that AMD isn’t directly controlling the release of new motherboards, as I thought because of new boards requiring new controllers/chipsets. Just hoping that AM3+ chips would sit on AM3 sockets, even if that means reduced performance, just as AM3 chips did on AM2+ sockets, so that changing boards may be somewhat delayed. Anyway, thank you- Mr. Fruehe- for entertaining the request for clarification.
AM3+ chips require AM3+ sockets, they will not run on AM3 boards.
Could you elaborate and provide more granularity what Q2 and Q3 means in this very particulary cases?
no, that is the only level of granularity that we are providing.
Can we hope to see some demonstrations or presentations at CeBIT?
I don’t know for sure. I am planning server demos but right now I do not have anything for CeBit at this point.
Will there be chipsets for Bulldozer-Mainboards only from AMD or will there be other vendors participating in the market?
AMD will be providing chipsets. If anyone else wanted to make some we would welcome that – it just means more choices in the market, which is good.
What is the TDP of one Bobcat core at 1.6GHz/1GHz?
Bulldozer at 1.6GHz is more power efficient than 2 Bobcat cores?
I do not know about bobcat, that is a client part.