10/03/2011 11:19:00 PM
dannzfay
Even though AMD hasn't even launched its first processors based on the Bulldozer architecture, the company is looking ahead and has already started designing its next-generation high-performance chips based on this arch, the first details about these CPUs just making their way to the Web.
For now, the processor is known as the “FX Next” and the slide reveals that this is based on the second generation Bullodzer cores, known under the code name of Piledriver.
If this designation sound familiar to you, is because the Piledriver core will also be used in AMD's Trinity APUs which are expected to launch in early 2012.
Compared to the current Bulldzer core, AMD's leaked slide says that Piledriver will deliver about 10% better x86 performance and will also bring support for the Turbo Core 3.0 technology.
In addition to these changes, “FX Next” chips will receive support for the IOMMU v2 technology as well as for a series of new instructions.
This includes the FMA3 instruction set, used for performing fused multiply–add operations, which will also get included in Intel's Haswell processors in 2013.
What's important to note here is that AMD's upcoming FX-Series CPUs already include support for the FMA4 instruction set, which provides more programming flexibility than FMA3.
However, FMA4 was developed by AMD, so Intel most probably won't include support for this instructions in its chips, which will mean that most software builders will optimize their code for FMA3.
Just like the upcoming FX-Series, the next-generation Bulldozer chips will also be available in different SKUs containing up to four processor modules for a total of eight cores and a maximum of 8MB L2 cache memory.
According to the slide provided by Donanim Haber, AMD is set to retain compatibility with the AM3+ socket and the 900-series chipsets. No release date for AMD “FX Next” processors was provided.
Posted in: 
0 comments:
Post a Comment