David Graham (Blog) - August 24, 2007 1:48 PM
AMD is changing its "Barcelona" launch plans again
Let's come right out and say it: when AMD announced that the launch clock speeds of Barcelona would start at sub-2.0 GHz, people were frustrated. This
long-awaited monolithic quad core release from AMD would be the pinnacle of their core design technology and would usher in a new era of powerful computing.
Sound about right? So, imagine the collective chagrin when a 1.6 GHz base clock speed was announced with top-end clock speeds ending around 2.0 GHz. In the interim, reports surfaced about AMD having issues with top-end core speeds, which was quickly countered by the 3.0 GHz Phenom demonstration, leakage, and other processor related functions.
We knew AMD was hard at work on perfecting the Barcelona core even before the official production launch and that the promise of HT3 in this generation of processors was going to be eschewed in favor of the more widely integrated HT1.x version.
Now, word is coming that AMD might drop the 1.6 GHz from the launch line-up in favour of a 2.1 GHz or 2.2 GHz core launch speed. Perhaps the fabrication process is going much smoother than anyone realized and some of the leakage problems have been ironed out? Who knows but, looks like things are picking up for AMD.
NEW! RE: Basis for this Information?
By davegraham (blog) on 8/24/2007 2:47:38 PM , Rating: 3
It's reliable as it came from an inside source at AMD. I work very closely with these guys and, for the record, this falls outside the scope of my NDA with them.
cheers,
Dave
E a Intel não pode "colar" 4 dual-core num só package porque... ?
...porque a arquitectura dos xeon é uma maravilha.
Ok. É um exagero bastante... exagerado. Segundo consta, a arquitectura dos xeon foi feita à pressão para oferecer urgentemente um processador com mais de um núcleo e o resultado é um processador com dois núcleos a partilhar os mesmos dois busses para comunicação entre os processadores e entre processador e memória. Se quiseres espetar mais núcleos naquela arquitectura então eles tem de se limitar a usar os tais busses. Se a arquitectura xeon já é inferior à opteron com dois núcleos então não será com um maior congestionamento desses busses que a intel ia conseguir ultrapassar a AMD.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20070831115038.htmlAdvanced Micro Devices on Friday confirmed it had begun shipments of its highly-anticipated quad-core server microprocessors in August. The claim means that after all the delays and set-backs with the new micro-architecture and the world’s first monolithic quad-core x86 chip, the chipmaker is on track to formally release the chips in early September.
“AMD can confirm that Barcelona has been shipping for revenue in August,” said Phil Hughes, an AMD’s spokesperson for server and workstation products.
Mr. Hughes declined to comment on clock-speeds or other specifications of the shipping products and also remained tight-lipped regarding volumes or demand for the new central processing units that, according to AMD’s chief executive, faced six months delay. Revenue shipments of anticipated quad-core product may help AMD to improve its financial results for the third quarter, as novelties are usually sold at much higher margins than existing products.
AMD quad-core microprocessor die
Quad-core AMD Opteron processors code-named Barcelona are based on the company’s next-generation micro-architecture and will be produced using 65nm process technology. Among the highlights of AMD’s new chips the manufacturer lists shared 2MB L3 cache, 128-bit floating point units (FPU), SSE4A instructions, support for dual-channel DDR2 memory and other innovations.
The code-named Barcelona processor will be the first x86 chip that contains four processing engines on one piece of silicon. Currently available quad-core Intel Xeon chips integrate two dual-core chips on one piece of substrate, which gives the manufacturer some additional flexibility, but offers slightly reduced performance compared to monolithic design.
AMD is expected to host official introduction of its quad-core AMD Opteron processors on the 10th of September. Initially AMD will offer quad-core microprocessors with reduced power consumption and clock-speed, but later in the year the chipmaker promised to release new versions of the quad-core Opteron with higher operating frequencies.
Não vejo qual é a surpresa.
Os atrasos sucessivos têm que ser responsabilizados. É bom que assim seja e entrem novas pessoas que mostrem mais garra para o mundo de hoje em dia.
O Hector Ruiz tb ja pode ir fazendo a cama para o caso de não começarem a recuperar financeiramente.