AMD cuts to the core with 'Bulldozer' Opterons

[Mats]

(Best apple video ever.)

[zalbard]

(Best apple video ever.)

So true!

[Darakian]

Lies, iflea > all
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvPj22jANDw

[savantu]

Andy Glew has a few things to say about Bulldozer and considering his background and experience, you may want to listen what he says. Lots of details about the inner workings of Intel and AMD projects :

BRIEF:

AMD's Bulldozer is an MCMT (MultiCluster MultiThreaded)
microarchitecture. That's my baby!


DETAIL:


Thursday was both a very good day and a very bad day for me. Good,
because my MCMT ideas finally seem to be going into a product. Bad,
because I ended up driving 4 hours from where I work with IV in the
Seattle area back to Portland, to my wife who was taken to a hospital
emergency room. The latter is personal. The former is, well, personal
too, but also professional.


I can't express how good it feels to see MCMT become a product. It's
been public for years, but it gets no respect until it is in a product.
It would have been better if I had stayed at Intel to see it through.
I know that I won't get any credit for it. (Except from some of the guys
who were at AMD at the time.) But it feels good nevertheless.


The only bad thing is that some guys I know at AMD say that Bulldozer is
not really all that great a product, but is shipping just because AMD
needs a model refresh. "Sometimes you just gotta ship what you got." If
this is so, and if I deserve any credit for CMT, then I also deserve
some of the blame. Although it might have been different, better, if I
had stayed.......

http://groups.google.com/group/comp....736a56?q&pli=1

Let's hope his contacts at AMD are wrong and the product lives up to the hype. Otherwise, there would me quite a few facepalms around here. Read his other posts in the thread, it's fascinating how many different paths AMD took and ended up with the current K10, the lousiest of all.

[haylui]

Andy Glew has a few things to say about Bulldozer and considering his background and experience, you may want to listen what he says. Lots of details about the inner workings of Intel and AMD projects :



http://groups.google.com/group/comp....736a56?q&pli=1

Let's hope his contacts at AMD are wrong and the product lives up to the hype. Otherwise, there would me quite a few facepalms around here. Read his other posts in the thread, it's fascinating how many different paths AMD took and ended up with the current K10, the lousiest of all.

I guess Dirk has learned enough lesson on K10 and K10.5
seeing now AMD actually could keep to the timeline of each product that would be great. At least I guess less political issues to interfere with the design team etc.

[JF-AMD]

I have no idea who Andy Glew is, but he left the company several years ago.

I work with engineering teams and the general feeling is that future prospects today are far better than they have ever been, so I am not sure what his agenda is.

The world seems happy to declare bulldozer dead before anyone ever has silicon in their hand. As someone on the inside, I will say that as I look at our products, there is a pretty strong belief that Magny Cours will be a significant game changer in the server business and that Bulldozer will have a similar, if not greater impact on the market.

So now you have 2 opinions, one from someone no longer connected to the project and one from someone who is connected. You decide for yourself which you want to believe.

[JF-AMD]

I guess Dirk has learned enough lesson on K10 and K10.5
seeing now AMD actually could keep to the timeline of each product that would be great. At least I guess less political issues to interfere with the design team etc.

Since 2007 there have been significant changes structurally to both the teams and process, and we find more efficiency.

Shanghai was 3 months early with higher frequency than expected.
Istanbul was 5 months early with higher frequency than expected.
Magny Cours will be 1 quarter earlier than expected with higher frequency.

We are executing strongly these days, problems from the past are just that - from the past.

[wuttz]

things are looking up for AMD.

intel= cpu only
nvidia= gpu only

only one company has the complete CPU+GPU designs to leverage a complete computing solution.

AMD.

[savantu]

I have no idea who Andy Glew is, but he left the company several years ago.

I am pretty sure the older guys from the CPU teams know who Andy Glew is.

I work with engineering teams and the general feeling is that future prospects today are far better than they have ever been, so I am not sure what his agenda is.

Umh none. The guy is simply an uber geek who happens to have quitte a reputation in the CPU world for coming with revolutionary new stuff.
Besides, he is extremely happy that AMD is incorporating his idea of a cluster uarch; the bad news come from AMD people themselves if you read his post.
What you feel <> what architects inside the company feel.

The world seems happy to declare bulldozer dead before anyone ever has silicon in their hand. As someone on the inside, I will say that as I look at our products, there is a pretty strong belief that Magny Cours will be a significant game changer in the server business and that Bulldozer will have a similar, if not greater impact on the market.

How is Magny-Cours going to be a game changer when a 6 core Istanbull loses on all major benchmarks to a 4 core Nehalem, and that is at roughly similar frequency. For MC, you double the core count in an inneficient way, drop the frequency to 2.1-2.3GHz. Scaling would definetly suffer.
OTOH Nehalem EX adresses exactly that with an innovative ring bus uarch for connecting the cores and the L3 ( same as GPUs ) and a few other goodies.

Considering this, will AMDs position in the market improve ? I doubt it. At best it will stay the same. Bulldozer can change that, but it needs to deliver.

[Helmore]

things are looking up for AMD.

intel= cpu only
nvidia= gpu only

only one company has the complete CPU+GPU designs to leverage a complete computing solution.

AMD.

I just hope they'll be able to show us the real meaning of synergy.

For now, that's all just hope though.

[savantu]

things are looking up for AMD.

intel= cpu only
nvidia= gpu only

only one company has the complete CPU+GPU designs to leverage a complete computing solution.

AMD.

As a matter of fact, Intel is shipping allready millions of "complete CPU+GPU designs" together with an Intel motherboard and networking ( and in some cases an Intel HDD ) to "leverage a complete computing solution".

Welcome to yesterday.

[wuttz]

As a matter of fact, Intel is shipping allready millions of "complete CPU+GPU designs" together with an Intel motherboard and networking ( and in some cases an Intel HDD ) to "leverage a complete computing solution".

Welcome to yesterday.

you call those gpus?

ok then, you do sure sound with gpu tech from yesterday.
can we make another larrabee please?

[savantu]

you call those gpus?

ok then, you do sure sound with gpu tech from yesterday.
can we make another larrabee please?

Why not ? They offer similar performance levels to current IGPs , be it from ATI or NVIDIA. Secondly, they are more than adequate for their role; given there is no charge for them, why should anyone complain ?
If you care about gaming, you buy a discrete card.

As for Larrabee, the project is ongoing and more and more resources are poured in. Fortunately for Intel, they can afford it without interfering with the main CPU teams.
The 1st version will arrive as development vehicle this year allowing developers to get a feeling what it is about. The 32nm version due to ship next year is probably the marke or break part for the project. This we will have to wait and see.

[ajaidev]

things are looking up for AMD.

intel= cpu only
nvidia= gpu only

only one company has the complete CPU+GPU designs to leverage a complete computing solution.

AMD.

Nvidia can make really good ARM based processors. The A9 and A8 designs are just reference a big enough company can change the arc or make a new one if they want.

A9 is all ready OoO and Nvidia can improve on it, just sticking a better ipg does not do it for me. I do expect Tegra 3 to be more than a ARM A10 + GF100.

Intel also have invested quite a bit on lrb and the tech may be used first in haswell or maybe a discreet card will be available before who knows.

[Hans de Vries]

things are looking up for AMD.

intel= cpu only
nvidia= gpu only

only one company has the complete CPU+GPU designs to leverage a complete computing solution.

AMD.

intel = CPU + licensed PowerVX graphics cores from Imagination

nvidia = GPU + licensed Cortex cores from ARM

apple = Licenced Cortex cores from ARM and PowerVX cores from Imagination


Regards, Hans

[MrMojoZ]

Let's hope his contacts at AMD are wrong and the product lives up to the hype. Otherwise, there would me quite a few facepalms around here. Read his other posts in the thread, it's fascinating how many different paths AMD took and ended up with the current K10, the lousiest of all.

I'm sure you would be very dissapointed.

[Nedjo]

I'm sure you would be very dissapointed.

I concur!

[Russian]

Does anyone have any questions they'd like me to pose? I will have access to some very high level eng. and i should be able to get some detailed answers

[Lightman]

Does anyone have any questions they'd like me to pose? I will have access to some very high level eng. and i should be able to get some detailed answers

Apart from obvious ones?

- will Bulldozer incorporate improved interconnects for MCM packaging.
- what will be maximum memory speed supported by IMC.
- how many DIMMs IMC will be able to drive (single, not MCM)
- which extensions will be supported (SSE(S3,4,4.1,4.2,AVX,3DNow,etc) and to what degree

Just a few

[mibo]

What are the anticipated frequencies of bulldozer?

[FlanK3r]

russian: think, u are man, who had at home Deneb C0 revision?

[vietthanhpro]

Apart from obvious ones?

- will Bulldozer incorporate improved interconnects for MCM packaging.
- what will be maximum memory speed supported by IMC.
- how many DIMMs IMC will be able to drive (single, not MCM)
- which extensions will be supported (SSE(S3,4,4.1,4.2,AVX,3DNow,etc) and to what degree

Just a few

SSE5.

[qcmadness]

Apart from obvious ones?

- will Bulldozer incorporate improved interconnects for MCM packaging.
- what will be maximum memory speed supported by IMC.
- how many DIMMs IMC will be able to drive (single, not MCM)
- which extensions will be supported (SSE(S3,4,4.1,4.2,AVX,3DNow,etc) and to what degree

Just a few

1. Istanbul has snoop-filter, hope Bulldozer has this
2. Rumoured to be DDR3-1866
3. Don't know (K10: 2 for desktop, 3-4 for server)
4. SSE1-SSE4.2, AVX, AES-NI, FMA3, FMA4, etc.

[Nedjo]

Does anyone have any questions they'd like me to pose? I will have access to some very high level eng. and i should be able to get some detailed answers

I think you've missed thread?

this is correct one: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=243714

[FlanK3r]

1. Istanbul has snoop-filter, hope Bulldozer has this
2. Rumoured to be DDR3-1866
3. Don't know (K10: 2 for desktop, 3-4 for server)
4. SSE1-SSE4.2, AVX, AES-NI, FMA3, FMA4, etc.

do u know it?