AMD to start Bulldozer AM3+ production by March 2011, launch in April 2011

[MAS]

AMD to start Bulldozer AM3+ production by March 2011, launch in April 2011

According to a roadmap leaked by a Swedish forum, the desktop version of Bulldozer comes by April. Engineering samples of Zambezi AM3+ CPU are expected in December 2010 and hopefully this has already happened.

Production candidate 32nm silicon should be ready by February 2011 and the CPU should be production ready by March 2011.

The launch should take place in April, which is the first month of Q2 2011. Many people expected this CPU at a later date, and this up to 8-core processor series might be something to get AMD much needed traction and attention.

The Scorpius platform also comes with AMD 990FX Northbridge that can take care of 2x16 PCIe Crossfire mode and it comes matched with SB950. The new SB950 southbridge supports Raid 5, 14 USB 2.0, 6 SATA ports at 6Gb/s as well as AMD overdrive. Unfortunately there is no native USB 3.0 support.

Scorpius also supports AMD 990X chipset with two 8X PCIe Crossfire capable slots, AMD 880G in AMD3+ version that has one 16X PCIe slot as well as integrated DX10.1 graphics card at 560MHz. The last chipset to support Scorpius needs is AMD 970 and this little one has only one PCIe16X slot, but the vast majority of people don't need more anyway.

the pics are clickable




Source - www.amdforum.se forum

[dartaz]

Also, the slides say that Llano is going to be out in July. Which means that xbitlabs was right about this

[Pantsu]

It also says these slides are october 2010 update, so outdated information.

[Tenknics]

What are "Husky" cores? I know bobcat and bulldozer...whats husky?

[Mad Pistol]

I really am hoping that AMD pulls out a home run on this one. Intel hasn't impressed me with the initial Sandy Bridge Reviews. They're like 10% max better than the i3/i5/i7's that are already out. If AMD can finally close that gap, I'll be happy to wait until Bulldozer hits the market.

[generics_user]

What are "Husky" cores? I know bobcat and bulldozer...whats husky?

husky is a new revision of the K10 stars core used in deneb and thuban; it's intended to make Llano more cost efficient as it's smaller than bulldozer because it doesn't need a very powerful memory and cache system

[-Boris-]

Looks a bit faked to me, especially the fifth picture, looks like something made in paint. It's quite bad work, some of the lines are a pixel or two to long.
There is something with the language used that don't look that proffesional too. And what about the longevity charts? Why don't they say anything about longevity?
Haven't seen any official Bulldozer charts mention Zosma either.

[nn_step]

if they release zacate under 4.5W, we might even see systems powered by AA batteries next year.

[RPGWiZaRD]

How much likely do you concider an April launch? With the somewhat luckluster release of SB with limited bclk possibility versus AMD's "all-in" attempt to raise from the shadows of Intel in order to try and break out from the current scenario when Intel controls the performance and sets the pricing it's rather tempting to sit back and wait and see but I would hate to find out that Bulldozer would get delayed to say June/July for example.

[JF-AMD]

First, I don't know if those slides are real because I don't work in that group, but where are you seeing launch in April? All it says is IP in April.

[Darakian]

I'm not sure what IP stands for in this case, but if Brazos has IP in november and is supposedly launching in January then wouldn't June be a better guess for Zambezi?

[informal]

I'm not sure what IP stands for in this case, but if Brazos has IP in november and is supposedly launching in January then wouldn't June be a better guess for Zambezi?

Actually AMD started to ship first Zacate chips to its customers in November,on the day when analyst day was held.

“As of 4 am Central Time, our facility in Singapore, our test and manufacturing facility, shipped the very first Fusion APUs - production units - to customers worldwide," said AMD senior vice president and general manager Rick Bergman.

link

[zerazax]

Wooo, if they do come out in april, I can hold off on building a new PC until then... can't wait to see some #'s since SB hasn't been as awesome as I thought

[Nintendork]

Will AM3+ mobos be available before Zambesi launch? Since they're bc with current AM3 chips folks like me can upgrade to a futureproof system skipping AM3 motherboards.

[alucasa]

How much likely do you concider an April launch? With the somewhat luckluster release of SB with limited bclk possibility versus AMD's "all-in" attempt to raise from the shadows of Intel in order to try and break out from the current scenario when Intel controls the performance and sets the pricing it's rather tempting to sit back and wait and see but I would hate to find out that Bulldozer would get delayed to say June/July for example.

Well, I personally don't doubt that AMD can release their next generation CPU in April for the masses, but I am in doubt that they can match Intel's progress in CPU tech.
Which means that I am looking forward to build a bulldozer rig but I am not looking forward its performance to be on par with SB.

[Nintendork]

With SB 4 core, and don't see why Zambesi can't be on his level or even surpass it. SB 8 core will be faster, and more expensive, same as 980X vs X6.

SB 4 core is slower than current i7 six-core, there are no core increase just a bit more ipc and other tweaks. From Thuban --> Zambesi we have core increase, ipc, more cache, new memory controller, updated optimizations (SSE4.1-4.2 which benefit i7 in some programs over the X6 such as the adobe suite, and also AVX -available for both intel&amd-).

Maybe that's a reason why people are not too impressed with sb launch (they wanted 6-8 core version from the get go).

[Hornet331]

Well for the mainstream SB i guess they match and even surpass them, but with the S2011 they will have a hard time.

[Solus Corvus]

I think it is reasonable to have conservative expctations. Realistically we can't say with any certainty how these chips will perform. To many factors changed between architectures.

I suspect it may be another situation where it depends on what you are using it for. It may be slow at single thread tasks, but have strong multithreaded performance.

[mutantmagnet]

Wooo, if they do come out in april, I can hold off on building a new PC until then... can't wait to see some #'s since SB hasn't been as awesome as I thought

This version is Sandy Bridge isn't in the same league as Bulldozer. Wait until the cpus meant for socket 2011 to make that comparison.

Sandybridge that's out right now should be compared to Bobcat.

Frankly I don't see Bulldozer or Sandybridge EX as comparable. They are both filled with tradeoffs which will make choosing either one for my future build incredibly difficult to pull of especially since no review out there will cover the issues I would need to be better informed of my suspicions on what I should expect depending on cpu platform.

While I'm looking forward to Bulldozer the chipset is completely underwhelming based on those slides. Hopefully they will relinquish whitepapers on their chipset when asked for it.

[BrowncoatGR]

While I'm looking forward to Bulldozer the chipset is completely underwhelming based on those slides. Hopefully they will relinquish whitepapers on their chipset when asked for it.

Underwhelming in what way? The specs seem reasonable to me and i'm looking forward to iommu support. Should give VMs a good performance boost.

[informal]

Sandybridge that's out right now should be compared to Bobcat.

Please tell me you are not serious here... These 2 are made for 2 different segments.Zacate(since Bobcat is just a x86 core isnide it) is a tiny chip compared to SB.Just because both have CPU+IGP doesn't mean they fit in the same product or price segment. Llano is SB's competitor in mainstream desktop and notebook segments.
8C Bulldozer is SB 6/8 core competitor in high performance/enthusiast segment.

[duploxxx]

It also says these slides are october 2010 update, so outdated information.

a roadmap doesn't change just like that, sure there might be a push-pull from a certain part but mainly they stay the same for several months unless they have some severe issues. So no they are not outdated, those roadmaps are fixed for 2-3months, they don't change every week, expect a new update early januari.

Looks a bit faked to me, especially the fifth picture, looks like something made in paint. It's quite bad work, some of the lines are a pixel or two to long.
There is something with the language used that don't look that proffesional too. And what about the longevity charts? Why don't they say anything about longevity?
Haven't seen any official Bulldozer charts mention Zosma either.

perhaps change the question a bit, have you ever seen real official slides which you can compare to?

Well for the mainstream SB i guess they match and even surpass them, but with the S2011 they will have a hard time.

what a hardtime with what? You really think AMD will only be able to scale zambezi against 1155 and 2011???

[Aten-Ra]

Wooo, if they do come out in april, I can hold off on building a new PC until then... can't wait to see some #'s since SB hasn't been as awesome as I thought

We haven’t seen the AVX performance advantage yet

Please tell me you are not serious here... These 2 are made for 2 different segments.Zacate(since Bobcat is just a x86 core isnide it) is a tiny chip compared to SB.Just because both have CPU+IGP doesn't mean they fit in the same product or price segment. Llano is SB's competitor in mainstream desktop and notebook segments.
8C Bulldozer is SB 6/8 core competitor in high performance/enthusiast segment.

Even Llanos CPU cores are half the size compared to SBs. Llano cannot compete directly to SB (Core to Core) but a 4-core Llano could be competitive (Price and Performance) to a 2 Core SB.

[MACMAC]

I'll be pissed if they launch before April, I *really* need a break

[duploxxx]

We haven’t seen the AVX performance advantage yet

Even Llanos CPU cores are half the size compared to SBs. Llano cannot compete directly to SB (Core to Core) but a 4-core Llano could be competitive (Price and Performance) to a 2 Core SB.

this time around Husky will also feature the turbocore 2.0... so they will compete much more into the single IPC parts and will totally destroy the HT cores.