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I think AMD has always had the talent, but made a bad bet with bulldozer's architecture of two cores sharing a front-end and FPU[1]. I also think desktop softwa
by spamizbad 7y ago
I think AMD has always had the talent, but made a bad bet with bulldozer's architecture of two cores sharing a front-end and FPU[1]. I also think desktop software (specifically games) moved faster than some anticipated when it came to taking advantage of multiple cores, causing them to be seem resource starved.
[1] At least that's how I think they work. One decode and FPU per pair of integer cores, right?
- moonbug 7y agoBulldozer's failure was really one of market positioning. It would have been much better received if the CMT modules had been presented as a single, dual-threaded core, positioned against an Intel HTed core, rather than as two separate cores.
- wmf 7y agoEven if Bulldozer had been marketed as quad-core it was still losing to Intel quad-cores and it had a larger die.
- zelon88 7y agoNevermind the power consumption. I had an FX9590, which was a 4.7ghz 8-core at 220w. 220 watts!!!
- officeplant 7y agoAnd my R7 1700 pulls up to 230w at 4.1GHZ all core. Some things never change, except vastly more performance per watt.
- paulmd 7y agoWhile I generally agree that CMT threads are not a real "core" (and has never been presented as such by any other company that has explored CMT), the real problem with Bulldozer was a frequency-optimized, deeply pipelined design. AMD literally repeated the exact mistake that Intel did with Netburst. It would never have been good no matter how you positioned it.
- Symmetry 7y agoAnd Apple with their low clocked super-braniac cell phone chips has been achieving surprisingly good performance for their power envelope.
- rjsw 7y agoI'm typing this on a bulldozer system, it works fine for compiling software which is what I mostly do.