Quote Originally Posted by Opteron146 View Post
I still doubt the rumor. In my opinion, he mixed up things with Ontario. That chip is indeed the result of automated tools. You can clearly see it by the strange floorplan, it is totally irregular. However, to the contrary, Bulldozer's floorplan is very modular / rectangular, even inside the cores. That's normally the result of handcrafted design. Just compare it with Ontario and the difference is imminent.

Furthermore, Ontario is a success and has a very small die-size and a competitive power consumption. Actually I would even say that it is currently AMD's best chip. Small, cheap to produce and it should sell very well, the typical cash cow.

Just assume, AMD really do it with automation tools. Before the processor could be launched, there is testing for the chip. When the performance turns out to be worse than Phenom II in some cases, do you think, their design engineers do not know about it?
If they know it, what makes them not tuning it?(this is not stated in the report)
I have doubt about the insider news too.
Or he really thinks that his colleagues are really dumb? lol