AMD Begins Tape-Out of first Dual Core Opteron
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 14, 2004 4:15 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
AMD's Dual Core Roadmap
AMD also provided us with an updated roadmap, now including the new Dual Core parts:
You can see that Egypt, Italy and Denmark are all dual core versions of the 90nm Opteron 800, 200 and 100 series of processors. We'd assume that they will be just dual core versions of their single core 90nm counterparts, Athens, Troy and Venus (which if you will remember from our previous roadmaps are basically smaller 90nm versions of the current Opterons, with no major architectural changes). AMD will offer both full and low power versions of their Opterons in dual core configurations, just like they do today.
The dual core Opterons are expected to hit in the middle of 2005, then later in the 2nd half of 2005 we'll see the first dual core Athlon 64 FX. In 2006 we're expecting AMD to offer dual core versions of other CPUs in their AMD64 lineup as well
We'll update you with more information about AMD's dual core strategy as we receive it.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
20 Comments
View All Comments
Degrador - Tuesday, June 15, 2004 - link
Yeah, I do - socket 939 is coming and I figure I may as well start that with a 90nm processor.DerekBaker - Tuesday, June 15, 2004 - link
Pjotr, I think he meant the single-cored models. Which means the second half of this year.Derek
Pjotr - Tuesday, June 15, 2004 - link
"Anyone got much more of a clue about when we'll see the 90nm Athlon 64?"Roadmap clearly states second half 2005, which is *at least* 12-18 months from now. With the usualy roadmap optimism deducted, don't expect them until 2006. So you go buy some other CPU meanwhile. Always look at what you can buy now and what platform is more future proof, never sit and wait.
Pjotr - Tuesday, June 15, 2004 - link
dual core vs dual CPUs?Dual cores will have local access to RAM, which is good. On a dual Opteron today, on a non-NUMA aware OS, half the memory accesses for one CPU goes across the second CPU. Dual Opteron cores will therefore perform better than dual CPUs with no NUMA, but with NUMA, data is placed locally on each CPU and performance gets more even. Dunno which one wins overall, though.
On a dual Xeon, it doesn't matter as much, both single CPUs and dual cores in a dual core CPU will go past the NB anyway. Dual cores means sharing the bandwidth to the NB, just like in a dual Xeon today. Intels buses all share the FSB to the NB, always has. (Even AXP supported separate FSBs for each CPU to the NB, pity they never made nForce2 dual DDR for dual AXPs)
Pjotr - Tuesday, June 15, 2004 - link
Fred Weber said in an interview that dual core Opterons support 4 way. This is logical as the core will still need to talk L2 cache coherency via the HT protocols and there are only 3 bits for core IDs.Degrador - Tuesday, June 15, 2004 - link
Anyone got much more of a clue about when we'll see the 90nm Athlon 64? I'm looking to upgrade soon and am thinking of the overclocking potential :)mjrpes2 - Monday, June 14, 2004 - link
Errr, nevermind. I'm too sleep deprived.mjrpes2 - Monday, June 14, 2004 - link
An I missing something here, but, as the rest of you already figured out, the article gives no reference to "Toledo" on the roadmap, which is dual core for desktop.To me this, this is the biggest news. We already knew servers would be going dual core; now we know it will quickly find its way to desktop.
Yupee! :)
skunkbuster - Monday, June 14, 2004 - link
whats the difference between dual core and having dual processors? is there any performance advantage in having dual core?Anemone - Monday, June 14, 2004 - link
Ok well 20 emails later, ok they are promising it. That's a good thing!! In spite of me eating crow :(Concentrate on that being a good thing because I think they needed to do it very much, give dual core on at least the FX line. I kinda doubt it will happen in 2005, but I won't let that detract from it being a good move.