From a micro-architectural point of view, there is some nice ideas in Bulldozer. But it seems they failed to finally implement what they expected at first. The concept of "cores" for Bulldozer is just a marketing BS. A FX-8150 is a 4-cores CMT-based CPU with a dual Integer cluster. CMT architecture is not something new and noboby called a cluster a "core" before. AMD just renamed a core "a module" and a cluster "a core" in order to amaze ppls with "8-core CPU !!". Now what's next ? Calling an ALU "a core" ? After all, why not ? So the FX-8150 could be a 16-cores CPU as well.
Edit : As a proof, if you look at their own patent (
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20080209173.pdf), you see they know exactly what is a "Core" and what is a "Cluster". So why calling a cluster a core ? For marketing purpose of course, but that's still BS.
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