Enter the Dragon: AMD AM3 6-core desktop arriving in 2010

[kl0012]

If true, then Bulldozer in late 2010/early 2011 looks even less plausible.

[570091D]

AMD plans to transit from the current Dragon AM3 platform to Leo platform in April 2010. The new platform is made up of a slew of faster 45nm multi-core AM3 CPUs to be released next year coupled with the new AMD 890FX/GX + SB850 chipsets as well as the DX11 graphics cards;

source

i wonder if these are the "faster" cpu's they are talking about, i would be quite happy if we didn't have to wait until q3 for this. it would also be nice to see a few enthusiast class duel-socket mobos for this platform. asus? you listening?

If true, then Bulldozer in late 2010/early 2011 looks even less plausible.

why?

[kl0012]

why?

Buldozer is aimed at high-performance segment, as well as "Thuban". Supposedly Bulldozer will be faster then Thuban, so what is the sense to release Thuban at the same time frame? Again Istanbul is barely competitive against Nehalem and supposedly will be just crashed by Sandy Bridge in Q4 2010. This movie seems to me like an act of desperation (considering there was no plans for Istanbul in the desktop segment in AMD's official roadmaps).

Istanbul vs. Nehalem:
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/17005

[ajaidev]

Buldozer is aimed at high-performance segment, as well as "Thuban". Supposedly Bulldozer will be faster then Thuban, so what is the sense to release Thuban at the same time frame? Again Istanbul is barely competitive against Nehalem and supposedly will be just crashed by Sandy Bridge in Q4 2010. This movie seems to me like an act of desperation (considering there was no plans for Istanbul in the desktop segment in AMD's official roadmaps).

Istanbul vs. Nehalem:
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/17005

I think the 6 core will get replaced by a Bulldozer 6 core later on. Till then quad cores maybe based on Bulldozer. Its similar way to how Intel has used Nehalem and its shrink together in its product tree. Intel will eventually replace the quad nahelem with a shrunk. In a similar way AMD may have 6 core Thuban and 4 core Bulldozer running together and eventually replace the 6 core Thuban with a 6 core Bulldozer. Also the AMD part is 2.6Ghz while the x5550 is 2.66Ghz & with turbo its 3.06Ghz, so its quite nice to see how the 2435 vs x5550 battle is so close. If AMD does release a 2.8-3.0 Ghz hexa core processor with a TDP of around 140w it would be a instant hit.

Now for the people who say AMD cant make profit on the hexa core because it too dam huge at 346 mm2 as compared to 265 mm2 for the nehalem, well the die size is not the whole thing of the equation. There are numerous other things that determine how expensive the processor will be to make like the cache, IO system, etc.

isnt it still today?

But Intel and AMD has given up the speed race what else can they do but make the cpu's more efficient and parallel in nature with addition of cores.

[FlanK3r]

570091D: -Thuban is Phenom K10/K10.5 architecture
-Bulldozer is totale new architecture, maybe killer architecture (here is thread about it)

[570091D]

570091D: -Thuban is Phenom K10/K10.5 architecture
-Bulldozer is totale new architecture, maybe killer architecture (here is thread about it)

i understand this, and i've been reading dresdenboy's thread and blog. thuban is istanbul adapted for a different socket/platform. what i'm saying is: i wonder if the "faster processors" mentioned in the article are in fact thuban based. i can only hope so, because waiting until q3 to compete with nehelam will be disastrous for amd.

[Jamesrt2004]

i understand this, and i've been reading dresdenboy's thread and blog. thuban is istanbul adapted for a different socket/platform. what i'm saying is: i wonder if the "faster processors" mentioned in the article are in fact thuban based. i can only hope so, because waiting until q3 to compete with nehelam will be disastrous for amd.

wouldnt be surprised to see them add in a couple little tweaks etc..

[kl0012]

I think the 6 core will get replaced by a Bulldozer 6 core later on. Till then quad cores maybe based on Bulldozer. Its similar way to how Intel has used Nehalem and its shrink together in its product tree. Intel will eventually replace the quad nahelem with a shrunk. In a similar way AMD may have 6 core Thuban and 4 core Bulldozer running together and eventually replace the 6 core Thuban with a 6 core Bulldozer. Also the AMD part is 2.6Ghz while the x5550 is 2.66Ghz & with turbo its 3.06Ghz, so its quite nice to see how the 2435 vs x5550 battle is so close. If AMD does release a 2.8-3.0 Ghz hexa core processor with a TDP of around 140w it would be a instant hit.

Now for the people who say AMD cant make profit on the hexa core because it too dam huge at 346 mm2 as compared to 265 mm2 for the nehalem, well the die size is not the whole thing of the equation. There are numerous other things that determine how expensive the processor will be to make like the cache, IO system, etc.



But Intel and AMD has given up the speed race what else can they do but make the cpu's more efficient and parallel in nature with addition of cores.

The question is not whether or not it will be replaced by Bulldozer. The question is "when?" I was sceptical about Bulldozer in Q4 2010/Q1 2011. Now I'm sceptical even more. I dont believe that AMD plans to release a year from now so questionable processor (from performance and cost points) that would be changed to something else within next 6 months.

[saaya]

But Intel and AMD has given up the speed race what else can they do but make the cpu's more efficient and parallel in nature with addition of cores.

if you cant make the cores clock higher then make them do more work per clock... just copy pasting the same core over and over for years and praying that some apps will hopefully make use of it one day is ridiculous...

for servers that strategy actually works well, thats why they continue, both intel and amd... but they must realize that they cant dump all those mega core chips on the desktop, we will have 8core 16 thread and 12 core cpus in the server market soon... it will probably be a decade until this amount of cores makes sense in a desktop system... so whats their strategy? in the server segment they double up cores every now and then, and desktop? 4 cores... 4 cores... 4 cores... 4 cores... all we get is slightly improved ipc, slightly higher clocks, slighty lower tdp and slightly lower prices maybe... if they dont come up with a better strategy the desktop segment will stagnate for quite a while...

[MirageSys]

This reminds me of apples stock and earnings expectations.

AMD is being heavily pessimistic and loose with their expected launch so they can say "Hey look at us, we are beating our deadlines!"

[poke349]

if you cant make the cores clock higher then make them do more work per clock... just copy pasting the same core over and over for years and praying that some apps will hopefully make use of it one day is ridiculous...

There's a limit to that too...
First with SSE, and now AVX. Needless to say, not everything can vectorize.

Same idea at the instruction level. It's kinda hard to make an instruction take less than 1 cycle. Yes you can do multiple instructions at once, but again, that's parallelism and not every application allows for that.

[Hell Hound]

Lost planet uses 7 cores ,and I'm guessing lost planet 2 will use the same.Some games do benefit from more cores.http://www.gamespot.com/features/6185511/index.html

[BrowncoatGR]

If true, then Bulldozer in late 2010/early 2011 looks even less plausible.

Bulldozer is a 2011 product and has been for a while.

[perkam]

I hope they release it sooner.

An overclocked Phenom II X6 will match overclocked i7s in folding applications at a lower system cost.

Perkam