AMD Talks Phenom II, Roadmaps and More at Fall 2008 Financial Analyst Day
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 13, 2008 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Today is AMD's Financial Analyst Day at AMD's campus in Sunnyvale, CA. I'm not a financial analyst but there are some useful tidbits that are coming out of the presentations today. Obviously the focus at AMD these days is returning to profitability and with the planned spinoff of its manufacturing business, this should be possible.
AMD was quick to point out that it only has one competitor in the CPU space and one competitor in the GPU space. There are very few markets where there are only two competitors, which led to the following statement: "We ought to be able to make money, and we can make money".
Manufacturing is going to be an important topic today and AMD plainly laid out its manufacturing transitions for next year: AMD is going to move chipsets to 45nm in 2009, graphics will be pushed down to 40nm, and we'll see 32nm designs completed for production in 2010.
I'm not sure if I'm reading this correctly but it appears to say that AMD's marketing strategy for North America is graphics-exclusive, with no real Phenom focus. The important disclosures thus far have been in the roadmaps however.
The Server Roadmap
Today AMD launched its Shanghai processor, the 45nm follow-on to last year's Barcelona. We also got a brief update on its server roadmap:
In the 2nd half of 2009 we'll see Istanbul, a 6-core 45nm product that will work in current sockets for Barcelona/Shanghai. In 2010 we'll see 8-core and 12-core solutions with up to four DDR3 memory channels and four Hyper Transport links.
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gochichi - Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - link
They actually make these, they are called LAPTOPS.I have a 13" Inspiron 1318 that I picked up for about $650.00. It has a 2.0GHz C2D, 4GB RAM, 250GB HDD, 9-Cell battery (this being key as it gives an actually useful battery... say 5 hours easy). It is definetely useful, and I have to tell you that the 13" screen is actually kind of small as it is.
Now a junky-junk-junker of a netbook is about $400.00, maybe $350 even. For $300 more you get an actually useful device. Also, sometimes you can find used Dell Latitudes X1s for about $300.00... they are 2.5lbs, 12" widescreen, 2GB RAM and about 4+ hours battery.
A used ultra-portable may be a good option for you if you're dead set about having something below 4lbs. Also Lenovo makes a killer product called the X200 which is also quite light and exceedingly fast. Though my top choice for power/price/portability would be the Lenovo T400 (14" though, which I think would be ideal, especially cause it's a little higher res 1440x900 vs 1280x800). Check out the X200 though, I think it's under $1k if you buy it with a coupon and it's going to outlast a crapbook by about 5 years (seriously).
Orthogonal - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link
Looks like AMD didn't learn their lesson with Barcelona. You don't do a process shrink AND new micro-architecture at the same time. Maybe they've learned from their mistakes, but it's just way too many variables to control at the same time. 32NM and Bulldozer.Martimus - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link
AMD is rolling out 32nm in 2010 with Magny-Cours and Sao-Paulo, which is really just a 8 and 12 core MCM version of Shanghai and Istanbul. Bulldozer is coming in 2011 according to the road map. So, they are in-fact doing a process shrink before they start the new architecture.BLaber - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link
Deneb a.k.a Phenom 2 X4 has 8MB OF L3 cache,that was not heard of before and not even shown in any Deneb ES samples seen so far ;)Veteran - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link
The writer of this article misunderstood itits 8MB of total cache = 6MB L3 cache + 2MB of L2 cache
Propus is a quadcore without the L3 cache => total of 2MB cache