AMD cuts to the core with 'Bulldozer' Opterons

[Helmore]

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/200...dozer_preview/

interesting performance claims? is it just me, or do they seem weak?

What performance claims? What do you mean weak? I don't see what you're talking about. I'm sorry that I may sound a bit harsh, I don't intend to be.

10% performance hit to scale to more cores.


Hrm. Not sure how I feel about that.


On the one hand, apps that can use more cores will see a large benefit. On the other hand, apps that cannot, will possibly see lower performance.



Isn't this what people got all pissy with Intel about and HT?

He states that it gives them a 10% performance hit through the way they added a core to a module compared to just adding a complete module. What he means by that is, if you would take a BD module and remove one integer core along with its scheduling hardware. Now you take that castrated BD module and just put two of those modules on a single die. That dual core die will be about 10% faster than a single (non-castrated) BD module. Savvy?
Just don't read to much into it, that's just their performance claim after all. In the end, all that matters to us is simply how it will compare to the competition.

"With the Bulldozer cores (which are not called the K9 generation, by the way, perhaps because AMD does not want any chip to be affiliated with a dog), AMD is being a little more clever."


Perhaps it's becasue AMd has a K10 already - K9 does not make much sense,11 maybe.


"As you can see in the diagram, the Bulldozer module has a shared floating point scheduler and two 128-bit floating point units, which debuted with the quad-core "Barcelona" Opteron 2200s and 8200s two years ago. "


22xx and 82xx are dual core 90nm,Barselona was up to 835xx/235xx

They don't seem to be very informed, that's for sure. No noteworthy new information either.