Bulldozer will be the base of AMD’s next generation server and desktop processors. The long overdue architecture now has its own blog at AMD where it now hints of the performance of the architecture.
Bulldozer will scale to 16 cores pretty much right away, from the 12 cores we have today with the Opteron 6100 series, and these are the processors that are used to estimate performance.
“We release benchmarks at launch, so don’t expect too much detail there anytime soon. From a performance standpoint, if you compare our 16-core Interlagos to our current 12-core AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processors (code named “Magny Cours”) we estimate that customers will see up to 50% more performance from 33% more cores. This means we expect the per core performance to go in the right direction — up. That is all I will say until launch.”
The numbers presented by AMD shows that Bulldozer will bring optimized IPC (Instructions Per Cycle) compared to current circuits. At the same time we can conclude that the work hasn’t gone into getting much better performance at equal clock frequencies, which means it will need a frequency advantage to get even with Intel. Or compensate with more cores, like with Interlagos.
AMD has more trumps than just raw performance. It points out that the new Interlagos Opteron processors will be fully compatible with current Magny-cours platforms (Sockel G34 and C32), which means that server customers can enjoy drop-in support with the new Bulldozer processors.
At the same time we know since earlier that Bulldozer with its 32nm technology will introduce additional energy saving technologies that AMD hopes will result in even greater improvements in performance per watt. This is highly essential in the server segment.
“This new generation of processors is being designed with some new technologies that will help make these processors more efficient, higher performing and more power optimized than anything we’ve offered to date.”
AMD shows that it is focused on bringing broad processors with multiple execution units, the question is how this will affect the retail segment. John Fruehe doesn’t mention the retail versions of Bulldozer, but we hope to hear more of these in coming blog posts.
