At the launch of the AMD FX series and the Bulldozer architecture it was said the processor would sport two billion transistors. AMD has now revised this to only 1.2 billion, which sounds a bit too low.
AMD’s first whole new architecture from the ground up in nearly 12 years launched this fall, code-named Bulldozer, and the retail processors are part of the FX series. The processors are anything but a success even though we were told that it had two billion transistors, which was twice as many as the Thuban cores of Phenom II X6, which Bulldozer is having trouble to outperform. AMD has now revised the number of transistors to 1.2 billion, which is more in line with how it performs.
| Cores | L2 cache | L3 cache | Node | Transistors | Die size | |
| Sandy Bridge-EP | 8 | 8 x 256 KB | 20 MB | 32nm Bulk/HKMG |
2 270 milj | 435 mm² |
| Sandy Bridge-E | 6 (8) | 6 (8) x 256 KB | 15 (20) MB | 32nm Bulk/HKMG |
2 270 milj. | 435 mm² |
| Zambezi | 8 | 4 x 2 MB | 8 MB | 32nm SOI/HKMG |
~1 200 milj. |
315 mm² |
| Thuban | 6 | 6 x 512 KB | 6 MB | 45nm SOI/HKMG |
904 milj. | 346 mm² |
| Llano Beavercreek | 4 | 4 x 1 MB | – | 32nm SOI/HKMG |
1 450 milj. | 228 mm² |
| Westmere | 6 | 6 x 256 KB | 12 MB | 32nm Bulk/HKMG |
1 170 milj. | 240 mm² |
| Sandy Bridge | 4 | 4 x 256 KB | 8 MB | 32nm Bulk/HKMG |
995 milj. | 216 mm² |
| Deneb | 4 | 4 x 512 KB | 6 MB | 45nm SOI |
758 milj. | 258 mm² |
We don’t believe this is the entire truth though, especially considering the large cache. Modern processors use SRAM for cache and if AMD is not using some other technology that has not been made official we are not sure how to interpret the new numbers.
But since AMD is behind the circuit we will have to trust them here and in the end it is just a number that doesn’t mean anything for the end user. The good thing about the FX series is that it is selling better than expected and demand is higher than the supply. FX-4100 and FX-6100 can still be found in stock but the performance line with FX-8120 and FX-8150 are a rare sight.
Source: Anandtech
