AMD Dodeca-core

[MotF Bane]

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=11531

"Shanghai! Shanghai!" the reporters cry during the AMD's financial analyst day today. Despite the fact that the company will lay off nearly 5% of its work force this week, followed by another 5% next month, most employees interviewed by DailyTech continue to convey an optimistic outlook.

The next major milestone for the CPU engineers comes late this year, with the debut of 45nm Shanghai. Shanghai, for all intents and purposes, is nearly identical to the B3 stepping of Socket 1207 Opteron (Barcelona) shipping today. However, where as Barcelona had its HyperTransport 3.0 clock generator fused off, Shanghai will once again attempt to get HT3.0 right.

Original roadmaps anticipated that HT3.0 would be used for socket-to-socket communication, but also for communication to the Southbridge controllers. Motherboard manufacturers have confirmed that this is no longer the case, and that HT3.0 will only be used for inter-CPU communication.

"Don't be disappointed, AMD is making up for it," hints one engineer. Further conversations revealed that inter-CPU communication is going to be a big deal with the 45nm refresh. The first breadcrumb comes with a new "native six-core" Shanghai derivative, currently codenamed Istanbul. This processor is clearly targeted at Intel's recently announced six-core, 45nm Dunnington processor.

But sextuple-core processors have been done, or at least we'll see the first ones this year. The real neat stuff comes a few months after, where AMD will finally ditch the "native-core" rhetoric. Two separate reports sent to DailyTech from AMD partners indicate that Shanghai and its derivatives will also get twin-die per package treatment.

AMD planned twin-die configurations as far back as the K8 architecture, though abandoned those efforts. The company never explained why those processors were nixed, but just weeks later "native quad-core" became a major marketing campaign for the AMD in anticipation of Barcelona.

A twin-die Istanbul processor could enable 12 cores in a single package. Each of these cores will communicate to each other via the now-enabled HT3.0 interconnect on the processor.

The rabbit hole gets deeper. Since each of these processors will contain a dual-channel memory controller, a single-core can emulate quad-channel memory functions by accessing the other dual-channel memory controller on the same socket. This move is likely a preemptive strike against Intel's Nehalem tri-channel memory controller.

Motherboard manufacturers claim Shanghai and its many-core derivatives will be backwards compatible with existing Socket 1207 motherboards. However, processor-to-processor communication will downgrade to lower HyperTransport frequencies on these older motherboards. The newest 1207+ motherboards will officially support the HyperTransport 3.0 frequencies.

Shanghai is currently taped out and running Windows at AMD.

[Bobsama]

Good. I want to see Shanghai shipping, so AMD really does get in better shape. Thanks.

[grimREEFER]

intel is gonna have how much then? 12 virtual cores, 6 real cores?

[[XC] 2long4u]

Bla, bla, bla. It seems that anything AMD pumps out is crap these days.
I'll believe it when I see it. :P

[squilliam]

Bla, bla, bla. It seems that anything AMD pumps out is crap these days.
I'll believe it when I see it. :P

All I see are two AT-ATs humping...

[jcool]

I wouldn't say no to a decent 6-core or even 12-core CPU though.. since Intels 6-core will be useless, being S603 (?).

[Warboy]

All I see are two AT-ATs humping...

Win.

Anyways.... How about those guys at intel? Native 8 cores, with 16 threads huh? hmmm tasty.

[Zytek_Fan]

I'd like to be optimistic and say AMD will be successful with Shanghai, but the reality is, that when Shanghai is released, Intel will have Nehalem, which will be pretty much the death blow.

[ExodusC]

AMD doesn't need more cores right now, they need better cores... If these are going to be identical to B3 Barcelonas, the 45nm shrink doesn't seem to be helping too much.

[nn_step]

I'd like to be optimistic and say AMD will be successful with Shanghai, but the reality is, that when Shanghai is released, Intel will have Nehalem, which will be pretty much the death blow.

I don't see how exactly that could even remotely be possible.
Also, let us just assume for a second Intel Wins and AMD is gone...
Then we will all be seriously ed, then Intel would stop funding their R&D departments as heavily and just soak up as much profit as the market could bare. Which effectively means Windows and most of our games will stagnate on a platform that virtually stopped advancing

[twilyth]

Bla, bla, bla. It seems that anything AMD pumps out is crap these days.
I'll believe it when I see it. :P

Whoa - bitter much?

I'll tell you about bitter. I've had AMD stock since 2001. I kept buying it as the market collapsed. When it finally got up to around $14 several months ago, I should have sold. But I believed - I BELIEVED. Now I've watched it surf the swirly waters down to $6 and less. That's bitter.

[Zytek_Fan]

I don't see how exactly that could even remotely be possible.
Also, let us just assume for a second Intel Wins and AMD is gone...
Then we will all be seriously ed, then Intel would stop funding their R&D departments as heavily and just soak up as much profit as the market could bare. Which effectively means Windows and most of our games will stagnate on a platform that virtually stopped advancing

AMD won't be dead, but Nehalem will be pushed aggressively by Intel, which could make it hard for AMD to grab market share.
AMD could spring a surprise with Shanghai. Who knows? The only thing you can do is make a somewhat educated guess.
And Intel won't allow AMD to die. AMD dead would mean bad happenings to Intel courtesy of the FTC and DOJ.

[nn_step]

AMD won't be dead, but Nehalem will be pushed aggressively by Intel, which could make it hard for AMD to grab market share.
AMD could spring a surprise with Shanghai. Who knows? The only thing you can do is make a somewhat educated guess.
And Intel won't allow AMD to die. AMD dead would mean bad happenings to Intel courtesy of the FTC and DOJ.

AMD doesn't need superior performance to grab market share, it just needs a cost competitive product and guess what they do.
Heck soon we will have sub $100 Quad cores, combined with $60 mobos with the 780G chipset, make killer budget boxes

[[XC] 2long4u]

Whoa - bitter much?

I'll tell you about bitter. I've had AMD stock since 2001. I kept buying it as the market collapsed. When it finally got up to around $14 several months ago, I should have sold. But I believed - I BELIEVED. Now I've watched it surf the swirly waters down to $6 and less. That's bitter.

Ouch.
I believed in AMD at one point also. I don't really like mainstream anything.
The music I listen to isn't mainstream, the vehicles I drive arn't mainstream, and the processor I used to run wasn't mainstream. It bothers me there is a quad core in my rig right now, but it is better then anything AMD has to offer.

[[XC] 2long4u]

AMD doesn't need superior performance to grab market share, it just needs a cost competitive product and guess what they do.
Heck soon we will have sub $100 Quad cores, combined with $60 mobos with the 780G chipset, make killer budget boxes

Yes, but does it blend? er, Fold.

[Sparky]

I would buy AMD stock if I could afford to. Can't get much lower before it goes up.

[nn_step]

Yes, but does it blend? er, Fold.

yes, in fact not only the CPU does folding, you can get the Integrated graphics to fold as well

[[XC] 2long4u]

yes, in fact not only the CPU does folding, you can get the Integrated graphics to fold as well

Probably still won't have as many PPD as my quad!

[fireice2]

But if AMD doesn't get the performance crown, it will have so much to loose from the user "hype". Its a free advertisement for them that way.

[knightwolf654]

12 cores huh...
that 4 to play with and 8 for F@H

[cegras]

I've been telling people I know to buy some stock in AMD. I'm almost tempted to just buy 10 shares, just to see how it'll end up.

[Donnie27]

AMD doesn't need superior performance to grab market share, it just needs a cost competitive product and guess what they do.Heck soon we will have sub $100 Quad cores, combined with $60 mobos with the 780G chipset, make killer budget boxes

QFT but remember me being flamed for saying the same thing? I don't see AMD failing at all. Wayyyyyyy too many and too important folks have too much money tied up in them for that to happen. Considering all of the debt they have that's being paid back, they've done a lot better than the 611 million they lost when they were paying back smaller loans.

[Swatrecon_]

Everyone's saying that "nehalem will be such 1337 h4x, AMD is n00bzor"

Well, let's look back when Intel thought they'd be having 10 GHz Pentium 4's eh? We all know that didn't work out. Athlon 64 *crushed* anything Intel could offer. I for one want to see it happen again.

[Zytek_Fan]

Everyone's saying that "nehalem will be such 1337 h4x, AMD is n00bzor"

Well, let's look back when Intel thought they'd be having 10 GHz Pentium 4's eh? We all know that didn't work out. Athlon 64 *crushed* anything Intel could offer. I for one want to see it happen again.

Well, now Intel has the aggressive "tick-tock" strategy, that is almost impossible to up

[Donnie27]

Everyone's saying that "nehalem will be such 1337 h4x, AMD is n00bzor"

Well, let's look back when Intel thought they'd be having 10 GHz Pentium 4's eh? We all know that didn't work out. Athlon 64 *crushed* anything Intel could offer. I for one want to see it happen again.

You have one poster talking about Intel fanboys cheering AMD's pain, I've not seen it that. But wishing pain on Intel is OK? Note, both Intel and AMD have had their share of Champs and Chumps. A64 NEVER crushed Intel LOL! X2 was the only real superior product accross-the-board like Conroe/Penryn currently enjoys.