AMD shows off BD architecture at Hotchips

[blackened23]

3d realms has branched off into developing CPU's, can't wait.

 

[dma0991]

Apple is apparently refreshing their line of products this September and the iPhone 5 is rumored to be one of them. I don't see Apple giving an official statement or leak showing how the iPhone 5 would perform or look. The only thing that I know about the iPhone 5 are the technical specs which are pretty predictable when you look at the iPad 2.

If Apple is not willing to part with information about their products a month before launch that might be beneficial to their competition, what makes AMD any different?

 

[BlueBlazer]

If Apple is not willing to part with information about their products a month before launch that might be beneficial to their competition, what makes AMD any different?

iPhone is already into its 5th generation. Difference is how many years it took BD to materialize (akin to DNF or "Duke Nuken Forever"). Right now many enthusiasts are waiting while many others (tired of waiting) already making the switch (to Intel). IMHO AMD needs to show something to stem the tide (or stop the "exodus").

 

[dma0991]

iPhone is already into its 5th generation. Difference is how many years it took BD to materialize (akin to DNF or "Duke Nuken Forever"). Right now many enthusiasts are waiting while many others (tired of waiting) already making the switch (to Intel). IMHO AMD needs to show something to stem the tide (or stop the "exodus").

Exodus has already happened and BD is 8 months late. I don't know why it is that AMD is not worried that they're losing ground within that time period but if I were the CEO of AMD I would be having myself at gun point by now.

AMD must be thinking that they are already late for the party by 8 months so an extra month won't be a problem to them. I think AMD is applying the better late than never approach. I never really liked that kind of approach in the things I do FYI. :thumbsdown:

 

[Regs]

AMD was just as equally hush-hush about phenom II. I even remember Anand criticize AMD for being so quiet and how poor the lunch was. AMD does not do well promoting new products period.

 

[waffleironhead]

Exodus has already happened and BD is 8 months late. I don't know why it is that AMD is not worried that they're losing ground within that time period but if I were the CEO of AMD I would be having myself at gun point by now.

AMD must be thinking that they are already late for the party by 8 months so an extra month won't be a problem to them. I think AMD is applying the better late than never approach. I never really liked that kind of approach in the things I do FYI. :thumbsdown:

IMO, they are better off fixing the issues before release than ending up with another tlb fiasco.

 

[dma0991]

IMO, they are better off fixing the issues before release than ending up with another tlb fiasco.

Agreed. But if it has something to do with the complexity of making a new architecture with a new process then they should implement something like Intel's Tick Tock.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Yep i reckon Intel would've had their hands on just about every relevant stepping of BD, im sure they know exactly how it's going to perform. Hell they probably have it performing better than AMD are able to..

Huh?????

 

[carnage10]

Huh?????

Just saying...it's obvious AMD has had big troubles and complications with BD considering it's immense lateness, it wouldn't surprise me if with Intel's much larger R&D budget they could improve upon BD's design if they really wanted to.. wasnt being serious, just a little fun at AMDs expense

 

[dma0991]

Huh?????

Level 1 inception. We need to go deeper.

 

[classy]

K8 and K7 numbers were available quite early. Even Phenom II and Llano ended up in Anand's hands for a preview. So I stand by my statement: AMD is being uncharacteristically mum about Bulldozer.

There were not a lot of leaks of K7. And the numbers weren't good either. This was one of the first clear looks at the K7
http://firingsquad.com/hardware/k7550preview/default.asp

But in the end K7 ruled for quite awhile. I get the feeling this new AMD cpu will perform better than what most think. I think what is glossed over quite abit in these threads is, this clearly looks like an architecture they can work off of for awhile. It has lots of room for improvement.

 

[Idontcare]

What really grinds MY gears is not the secrecy of performance, but the secrecy of the launch date. Sometimes I get the feeling it isn't secrecy, they just don't know it... Scary.

The only kind of launch you can plan for months and months in advance down to the day is a paper-launch or one with high risk of extremely limited supplies.

If you want to hard-launch with all your suppliers and e-vendors well stocked with parts then you have to be <1month to launch before fixing the launch date as that is the only time you have clear numbers on inventory supply coming from the fab.

AMD could have said "we'll launch on Sept 23" back in Jan, but back in Jan it really would have been anyone's guess inside AMD as to whether or not they'd have solid inventory of bulldozer SKU's to do a hard launch come Sept 23.

I don't want a paperlaunch. I want to know price, performance, power-consumption at the same time that I can open a Newegg tab on my browser and add the thing to my shopping cart.

 

[podspi]

The only kind of launch you can plan for months and months in advance down to the day is a paper-launch or one with high risk of extremely limited supplies.

If you want to hard-launch with all your suppliers and e-vendors well stocked with parts then you have to be <1month to launch before fixing the launch date as that is the only time you have clear numbers on inventory supply coming from the fab.

AMD could have said "we'll launch on Sept 23" back in Jan, but back in Jan it really would have been anyone's guess inside AMD as to whether or not they'd have solid inventory of bulldozer SKU's to do a hard launch come Sept 23.

I don't want a paperlaunch. I want to know price, performance, power-consumption at the same time that I can open a Newegg tab on my browser and add the thing to my shopping cart.

Back in January the launch was by June, though...


And we ARE within a month of launch, supposedly... These things should be shipping by now...


I don't envy the new CEO (if it is true s/he's been hired), though I do envy their salary...

 

[BlueBlazer]

Back in January the launch was by June, though...

AMD gave a vague "60 to 90 days" in June. With next month "launch", we should be hearing something by now. This is the latest marketing paraphenellia (from GigaByte)....

Where's AMD marketing department?

And we ARE within a month of launch, supposedly... These things should be shipping by now...

No announcement on shipping dates either (unlike Llano).

I don't envy the new CEO (if it is true s/he's been hired), though I do envy their salary...

No one within the company wants the hot seat, not even the interim CEO.

 

[Idontcare]

Back in January the launch was by June, though...


And we ARE within a month of launch, supposedly... These things should be shipping by now...


I don't envy the new CEO (if it is true s/he's been hired), though I do envy their salary...

Back in Jan the launch date was sometime before the end of H1. I'm not sure if they even nailed down the quarter at that time.

And yes we are within a month of launch if we believe the Sept 23 thing, but typical fab cycle times are 90 days for devices with this many metal levels. That means they are still waiting for another 30 days worth of product to exit the fab that has been in the fab for nearly 60 days at this juncture.

If yields hit their mark then they'll have the inventory they need come Sept 23. But if those wafers come out of the fab with unexpectedly low yield then they won't have the inventory to support a hard-launch, so they might want to leave an extra week or two in the schedule to push out the launch date to get a few more wafers out of the fab with lower yields if that comes to be the case.

This isn't like Intel where they have 4 fabs qualified and online to do a huge capacity ramp with a solid timeline in mind. Yields can be good in one fab and crappy in the other three and Intel can still meet their launch date. Glofo has one fab for 32nm SOI right now, yields are either good or bad, and if they are bad then that impacts the launch timeline unless AMD is willing to do a paper-launch (or risk it turning out to be one).

To be sure my biggest concern if platform robustness. If AMD is not seeding enough retail stepping chips to the mobo makers then the platform itself is going to be quite green and unoptimized on launch day. The fact that we don't have much in the way of leaks coming out of Taiwan is a concern to me that retail stepping chips are simply not out there yet.

 

[grkM3]

AMD is losing sales every week that goes by without benchmaks.People are just buying intel because its available.

The sad part is intel will leak out its ivy bridge and sandy E numbers a few days before the launch of BD to spoil there fun so even if BD is a decent comp to 2500/2600 intel will leak out its upcoming chips to over shadow AMDs BD.

It will be like wow BD is a great chip and then you will see a review of it going up against 1155 ivybridge and 2011 sandy E and most people will just wait untill the better is out once they see the numbers.

Everything leads to poor performance up till now.Even the ceo stepped down right after the sandy bridge numbers were leaked out.

 

[Idontcare]

AMD is losing sales every week that goes by without benchmaks.People are just buying intel because its available.

That includes thubans and MC opterons that they don't want to have to steeply discount in advance of actually shipping enough bulldozer parts to saite demand.

The Osborne effect is very real, not imagined.

The Osborne Effect states that prematurely discussing future, unavailable products damages sales of existing products. The name comes from the planned replacement of the Osborne 1, an early personal computer first sold by the Osborne Computer Corporation in 1981. In 1983, founder Adam Osborne pre-announced several next-generation computer models (the "Executive" and "Vixen" models), which had not yet been built, highlighting the fact that they would outperform the existing model. A widely held belief was that sales of the Osborne 1 fell sharply as customers anticipated those more advanced systems, leading to a sales decline from which Osborne Computer was unable to recover. This belief appeared in the media almost immediately after the company's September 1983 bankruptcy:[3]

 

[ed29a]

IMHO AMD needs to show something to stem the tide (or stop the "exodus").

You immensely overestimate the importance of the 'enthusiast' market to AMD (or Intel for that matter).

 

[AnandThenMan]

AMD is losing sales every week that goes by without benchmaks.People are just buying intel because its available.

Aside from a few enthusiasts who will buy whatever offers the best performance/money, people buy Intel because they are Intel. AMD is losing a very, very small percentage of sales due to lack of BD leaks.

The sad part is intel will leak out its ivy bridge and sandy E numbers a few days before the launch of BD to spoil there fun so even if BD is a decent comp to 2500/2600 intel will leak out its upcoming chips to over shadow AMDs BD.

I don't doubt Intel will try to spoil the Bulldozer launch party.

It will be like wow BD is a great chip and then you will see a review of it going up against 1155 ivybridge and 2011 sandy E and most people will just wait untill the better is out once they see the numbers.

You are making a stab in the dark to say "most people will wait".

Everything leads to poor performance up till now.Even the ceo stepped down right after the sandy bridge numbers were leaked out.

Correlating of events without any real evidence at all.

 

[ed29a]

AMD is losing sales every week that goes by without benchmaks.People are just buying intel because its available.

Do you have any numbers and/or statistics to back up your claim or you are pulling stuff out of your rear?

 

[Arkadrel]

AMD is losing sales every week that goes by without benchmaks.People are just buying intel because its available.

The sad part is intel will leak out its ivy bridge and sandy E numbers a few days before the launch of BD to spoil there fun so even if BD is a decent comp to 2500/2600 intel will leak out its upcoming chips to over shadow AMDs BD.

It will be like wow BD is a great chip and then you will see a review of it going up against 1155 ivybridge and 2011 sandy E and most people will just wait untill the better is out once they see the numbers.

Everything leads to poor performance up till now.Even the ceo stepped down right after the sandy bridge numbers were leaked out.

I actually think what hes saying is true.

IF AMD has bulldozer working as it should, and driver optimisations are about as good as they ll get, they should release some early "offical" benchmarks to keep people from just buying a sandy bridge instead.

 

[AnandThenMan]

IF AMD has bulldozer working as it should, and driver optimisations are about as good as they ll get, they should release some early "offical" benchmarks to keep people from just buying a sandy bridge instead.

Maybe AMD should, but that's just not how they roll. They are determined to be very secretive up until the official launch, take a look at the graphics side, AMD kept a very tight lid the last few launches.

 

[Red Dawn]

You immensely overestimate the importance of the 'enthusiast' market to AMD (or Intel for that matter).

But wouldn't it be the Enthusiasts who'd be willing to spend the money for similar priced Chip if the performance was close to Intels? I'd think the average consumer would rather go with an Intel if the price was the same due to brand recognition and Intels proven track record.

 

[Idontcare]

But wouldn't it be the Enthusiasts who'd be willing to spend the money for similar priced Chip if the performance was close to Intels? I'd think the average consumer would rather go with an Intel if the price was the same due to brand recognition and Intels proven track record.

That's what I bet too. It is the enthusiasts, versus the fanboys, that are more likely to be the fickle crowd that switches vendors at the drop of a shift in the performance charts.

Enthusiasts were all about the AMD FX line back in the day, the enthusiasm for the FX line dropped as soon Intel launched Core 2 Duo.

If AMD is close to Intel then enthusiasts are the one's who care to take the time to look at the reviews and the benches to realize this was the case.

Everyone else is just going to keep on assuming AMD is inferior to Intel, justified or not.

 

[sandorski]

Some y'all are reading way too much into this. AMD doesn't need to build hype if it's Product is gonna pwnt. Their limited Production capacity ensures that they'd be able to Sell everything regardless.

Not saying it will pwnt, just that their silence has no bearing on whether it does or not.