AMD Talks Phenom II, Roadmaps and More at Fall 2008 Financial Analyst Day
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 13, 2008 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
45nm Phenom? It's called the Phenom II and you Get It Next Year
Phenom II will be available in a couple of versions. The Phenom II X4 is a quad-core part initially released for the Socket-AM2+ platform, but eventually it will be a Socket-AM3 part with DDR3 support. The Deneb core is a Phenom II X4 with 8MB of L3 cache and the Propos version has a 2MB cache. Both of these cores have integrated DDR2 memory controllers, with a transition to DDR3 sometime in 2010.
Caspian is a dual-core version of the 45nm Phenom II with a 2MB cache, Champlain hits in 2010 and is a quad-core Phenom II with DDR3 for the mainstream notebook market. Geneva is a lower powered 45nm dual-core product, presumably Phenom II as well, due out in 2010 for ultra portables.
AMD also revealed a bit of its 2011 roadmap; these products are based on the first new architecture since Phenom - called Bulldozer. I talked about Bulldozer a while ago but details have been scarce since then.
In 2011 AMD expects to be at 32nm with its Orochi, Llano, and Ontario cores. Orochi will be the new high-end enthusiast desktop product with more than four cores, more than 8MB of cache, and an integrated DDR3 memory controller. Remember from the server roadmap that in 2011 AMD will have four DDR3 memory channels on its server products so I'd expect at least a 3-channel DDR3 controller here.
Llano is the mainstream 32nm part with four cores, 4MB of cache, DDR3 memory controllers, and an on-die GPU. Note that this is a delayed introduction of the first CPU/GPU fusion product, originally scheduled for 2009. AMD stated that the plans for the first CPU/GPU products got pushed back simply because the 45nm designs weren't compelling enough. The dies get small enough at 32nm that you can actually offer tangible benefits. Note that this also means that the first single-package CPU/GPU will actually come from Intel in 2009 with a Nehalem derived part and not from AMD.
Finally we've got Ontario, which is a very low power core based on AMD's upcoming Bobcat core. It's a dual-core product with 1MB of cache, on-die GPU, and a DDR3 memory controller. We know even less about Bobcat, but I did write about it over a year ago.
The New Consumer Platforms
AMD outlined all of the new platforms we'd see in 2009 and they are as follows:
4Q 08 - Maui platform, HTPC with integrated 3.1 and 7.1 pre-amp or 5.1 amplified audio out.
1Q 09 - Dragon platform, 45nm Phenom II X4 processors
1H 2009 - Yukon platform, ultra portable and mini notebook space, sub-25W TDPs. These won't be Atom competitors, as they should be higher performance but also higher power consumption. These things will be targeted at netbooks and low-end notebooks.
2H 09 - Tigris platform, 45nm mainstream notebooks
2H 09 - Kodiak platform, 45nm business class notebooks
2H 09 - Pisces platform, 45nm quad and triple-core processors, consumer desktop
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hechacker1 - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link
The iphone/ipod touch has a h.264 decoding chip. The main reason for support is battery life and higher quality for a given file size. it also uses YouTube's h.264 videos (a.k.a high quality videos).The iphone supports 640x352 maximum (I encoded for the maximum target). The screen is 480x320.
JarredWalton - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link
Ah... targeting 640x352 is a huge difference from 1920x1080. I'm not positive on this, but I'm pretty sure encoding times scale linearly with resolution under H.264. So, based on that, 1080P encoding would require 9.20 times longer than 640x352 encoding. It may not be *exactly* nine times longer - depending on quality settings among other things - but for sure the higher resolution encode is more processor intensive.overzealot - Saturday, November 15, 2008 - link
My experience with h264 encoding follows your theory, fairly linear increase in encode time.It's worth noting that Nero AVC quality is quite average. It is to h264 what xing was to mp3 encoding. It gets the job done fast, but at what cost?
Agitated - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link
I may have missed this since I'm reading the article on a blackberry but was there any mention of them throwing out an am2 socket 45nm quad core opteron?pugster - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link
Today they can scrap up something to compete with the Intel Atom processor but they didn't. Even ARM is doing it. I guess they don't get the hint.teldar - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link
I don't think they have the development budget for ANYTHING right now that's not going to make some real money. Even Intel SAYS they aren't making as much because ATOM is taking sales away from higher margin parts.That's really not a market segment AMD can get into right now. Maybe if they make some money for a few quarters... But I'll believe all this when I see it.
T
Griswold - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link
Humm no, Intel never said that. Its just a theorie that didnt show up in hard numbers in their reports yet (albeit, its a theory that isnt too far stretched).R3MF - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link
A netbook format, but not using the fusion CPU/GPU single package, i wonder what it is............low-power dual-core Phenom II at .045u and probably around 1.6GHz
low-power 780G chipset at .055u, hopefully paired with the SB750
Could be a very compelling product when put in a 10" chassis!
3DoubleD - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link
I'd put my money on downclocked, super low voltage dual core athlons. It was demonstrated not so long ago that such an Athlon chip running below 10 Watts wipes the floor with the Intel Atom. Personally, I don't buy into the whole netbook thing, but I think this is the right way to go for AMD. I feel like I pioneered the idea when I assembled a 12.1" laptop (from a barebones kit) with the slowest (eg. lowest power components) available ~4 years ago. I was able to get ~7 hours of battery life at only ~4lbs. Having said that, I would not trade any more performance for power savings if I did it again. Getting any smaller than 12.1 inches is also crazy unless you are planning to only use it for web surfing. I don't see the allure of paying all that money for something that just browses the web. I understand the desire to bring a laptop everywhere, but it should be useful, that's why I think the super low power X2 Athlon would be a good call.On that note, I don't think that Phenom can be low power enough to suit their needs. AMD is really really good at making Athlons, which is why they can run so low power.
teldar - Thursday, November 13, 2008 - link
I would love to have something similar to the eee but actaully with a little bit of power. But that's me as a student right now. It would be nice to be able to pull up the prof's power points during class and add notes by typing rather than writing. And it would let me get some other things done while sitting in class when there's not a whole lot of info being disbursed.But it would be nice as well if it could get a couple things done at the same time. Not an option with the atom netbooks.