Displaying items by tag: 32nm

When the X79 motherboards hit the scene many people were not interested because they were looking forward to Ivy Bridge. As I wandered around the internet I saw multiple comments telling people not to bother with the new Sandy Bridge E CPUs because of this very thing. How much impact these comments had I really do not know, but what I do know is that a general consensus on the internet can be disastrous for sales. If you do not believe this just take a look back at Windows Vista.

There is a ton of contradictory information on the net today about just exactly what AMD and Globalfoundries are going to do with the next process. As we already know AMD’s next gen CPU Bulldozer will be a 32nm 8-core monster that has the potential to turn things around for AMD (at least on paper) that is if they can correct some of the past issues with memory performance.  What happens from there we are not so certain about, nor is anyone else for that matter. This is despite the fact that multiple journalists ended up at a press event hosted by Globalfoundries.

So far the rumors run something like this; AMD and Globalfoundries are moving away from SOI (Silicon on Insulator). SOI has been the basis for AMD CPUs for some time and to see them move away from this is a little shocking. Oh, wait; that rumor was contradicted by Globalfoundries who now say they will be sticking with SOI moving forward. Next we hear that AMD won’t move to the next node (28nm) until 2013. This is actually somewhat believable as AMD tends to try and get the most money out of any process move. After all they have been on 45nm for a number of years! To think they won’t move to the next process node until 2013 is not unreasonable (although I really think 22nm is much more likely).

To add to this are the usual suspects commenting back and forth about what they think of each article or the writer in general. It makes trying to find out real information a tad tedious.  To be honest about the only thing we know for certain is that AMD will launch Bulldozer sometime between the middle of September and the end of the Year. It will have 8 physical cores (in four CPU clusters) improved core to core communication and a few other tricks up its sleeve. We do not know much about the memory controller, but it appears from looking at the design to be a slightly modified revision of the one in the Phenom II. If this is the case and the optimizations are not spot on we could see this hinder what is certainly a bold CPU design from AMD. I guess we will all find out what is going on around the middle of September. We hope to be on the very short list of sites to review this new CPU for you, but again time will tell on that.

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There were some interesting announcements for AMD at the Globalfoundries event today; although it was not AMD that made these, but Greg Bartlett, Senior VP of Technology and Integration Engineering at GF.  Gregg was showing off a few slides of upcoming technology that GF will be involved in and let some things out. We are certain these were previously approved by AMD that would like as much press as possible about their new APUs (which appear to be very good).

The things that were let to slip were the fact that AMD’s next generation Trinity will be 32nm instead of 22nm or even 28nm. The new Trinity will be based on a derivative of the Bulldozer core architecture and, according to AMD, will be roughly 50% faster than the current Llano APUs. The new APUs will feature AMD’s next generation 28nm HD7000 series graphics (which was another confirmation although not a formal announcement). The trinity parts are slated to be pushed towards the mobile market (where AMD seriously needs a better offering) and should begin shipping in early 2012.

It will be interesting to see AMD and Intel compete for this new market space. We have already watched some entertaining Facebook posts from both sides about this very issue.

Source Fudzilla

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