AMD Bulldozer Plows New Ground: Conjoined Cores Cut Cost in Next-Generation CPU

摘要

At last week's Hot Chips conference, AMD unveiled its next-generation CPU, code-named Bulldozer. It is AMD's first significant CPU redesign in seven years. In that time, multicore processors have become ubiquitous in PCs and servers, and Bulldozer is the first CPU design to take full advantage of this situation. Its unique micro-architecture fuses two CPUs together, sharing some blocks while maintaining separate instruction streams. This approach is intended to improve performance per watt and performance per mm2, although AMD is not yet disclosing any specific metrics to confirm these claims. The design includes numerous other microarchitecture enhancements intended to help it compete against Intel's next-generation Sandy Bridge CPU design.