AMD's 2010 - 2011 Roadmaps: ~1B Transistor Llano APU, Bobcat and Bulldozer
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 11, 2009 12:50 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Cheesy Marketing Names for Cool Tech, AMD Velocity Ensures New Designs Every 12 Months
AMD’s first APUs drop in 2011, but what happens in 2012? Intel is committed to new microprocessor architectures every 2 years as a part of its tick-tock strategy. AMD’s GPU-inspired equivalent is called Velocity.
About every year we get a new GPU architecture, whether it’s a strict doubling of execution resources or something more significant, it happens like clockwork assuming TSMC isn’t fabbing the chips. AMD Velocity just states that, in turn, every year we’ll get a brand new chip that integrates this new GPU architecture. The CPU side may or may not change, but with yearly design cycles we could see regular improvements on that end as well.
Velocity also means that even if it’s difficult getting more performance out of a CPU architecture, AMD can always rely on a beefed up GPU core to give users a reason to upgrade.
This is all going to get real interesting once we have some good GPU compute applications to run on these things. For GPU compute apps, every year could be another Conroe, with ~20% performance gains just from the GPU improvements.
We just need the apps to support it. And no NVIDIA, what we have today isn’t enough.
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Risforrocket - Monday, November 16, 2009 - link
You are short sighted. Development takes time. What I look for is ...well, development. Development of something new. Innovation. And that's what I'm seeing at AMD. No, they aren't as big as Intel. And you know, if I was the Intel CEO, I would make sure AMD kept going because I would know that Intel vs AMD makes for a better and more interesting Intel. In fact, you should think of Intel and AMD as working together because in fact they are, if you look at it the way I am. AMD just needs to keep trying.Judguh - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
It's about time they're getting more serious about developing better notebook processors instead of just throwing in athlon's an old turion's just to say they're a part of the show. My Lenovo T400 easily gets 4 hours off it's battery when I'm using it for web browsing and whatnot whereas my friend's laptop barely gives him 2.5 hours from doing the same.Eeqmcsq - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
Wow for AMD if they pull off Bulldozer with AM3 support. An upgrade from an Athlon II X4 to a Bulldozer X8 would be fun, especially since I can use all 8 cores for stuff I do at work.Inkie - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
Bear in mind that AM3 means only dual-channel DDR3. If you doing anything bandwidth intensive with your X8, that may be a bottleneck.Mr Perfect - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
"Velocity also means that even if it’s difficult getting more performance out of a CPU architecture, AMD can always rely on a beefed up GPU core to give users a reason to upgrade."I hope this works out for them, because two more years of K10 cores? Damn...
Rantoc - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
First - i'm no fanboy of either of the companies - Its good that both companies exists for consumer prices!Please give me a break, never seen such biased article anywhere. Even the first picture in an article about AMD starts with an intel product, what a joke post really. Didn't see that the date was the 1st of april....
lifeblood - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
The article appeared to be balanced and showed no obvious bias. However, the 1st picture in the article being an Intel slide really was a poor choice. It does give the appearance of favoritism.You might want to avoid that next time.
AnandThenMan - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
An article talking about AMD's 2010 - 2011 Roadmap, and what is the first image we see? An Intel slide!Unbelievable, really.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - link
While the inclusion of the Sandy Bridge image was simply a tie-in to the text below it, something I always do, it's not my intent to shift the focus of discussion here off of AMD's roadmap and onto a trivial image. I've removed the image so hopefully we can all get back to a good, meaningful discussion here :)I've also updated the article with a link to the AMD Bulldozer/Bobcat disclosures.
http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=36...">http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=36...
Take care,
Anand
Inkie - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
I think that it is a shame that you altered your article as the result of a few comments from over-sensitive people in a comments section that many people reading the main article will never read anyway.