Fusion die-shot - 2009 Analyst Day

[mczak]

Bobcat supports SSE4.1 at least doesn't it? How does that instruction set compare to the revision of AVX found in the 360?

Bobcat only seems to support SSE3 (and SSE4A which is not related to SSE4).
I'm not sure exactly what instruction set the xbox 360 powerpc core supports.

the design methodology used in the atom could explain the large size of the cores.

Hmm atom is roughly 20 million transistors on 10 mm^2 (core only without L2) right? That isn't particularly dense indeed.
If Ontario is really cedar with 2 bobcat cores bolted on, that would mean the 2 bobcat cores (including L2) would take up around 90 million transistors. Subtract L2 and each bobcat core would be around 20 million transistors. So, a bobcat core indeed would have similar transistor count to a atom core, but simply be packed in a much smaller area.

 

[CRoland]

Bobcat only seems to support SSE3 (and SSE4A which is not related to SSE4).
I'm not sure exactly what instruction set the xbox 360 powerpc core supports.

SSE4 is mostly for flexibility, not higher peak performance. Both Bobcat and Xenon support 128-bit SIMD instructions, but Bobcat's FPU will do them in two cycles, if I understand correctly.

 

[larrabee]

Hmm atom is roughly 20 million transistors on 10 mm^2 (core only without L2) right? That isn't particularly dense indeed.
If Ontario is really cedar with 2 bobcat cores bolted on, that would mean the 2 bobcat cores (including L2) would take up around 90 million transistors. Subtract L2 and each bobcat core would be around 20 million transistors. So, a bobcat core indeed would have similar transistor count to a atom core, but simply be packed in a much smaller area.

an atom core is 14 million transistors in 9.3mm^2. the 4.2mm^2 512KB L2 is 31 million transistors including tags. that translates to 7.4M xtors/mm2 for the cache and 1.5M xtors/mm2 for core logic. that's a 5x difference in density. most of the blocks in the atom are fully synthesized. the SRAM arrays could be a lot denser but because this is a high power process it limits min voltage of the entire chip thus they went with larger SRAM cells.

bobcat looks interesting though. i'm really hoping that it isnt fully synthesized. since intel's physical design advantage is gone i think AMD has a chance to take lead in the low power x86 market.

 

[Erinyes]

There definitely seems to be a lot of potential for this core, it'll be interesting to see where it ends up. AMD have a real window for opportunity if Intel aren't going to significantly increase Atom's performance until 2013. The single threaded performance of an Atom always struck me as too low and the latest revision was seriously underwhelming. At the very least, I know I'm already interested in an Ontario based netbook, and I think many others will be as well if you can demonstrate to consumers how it manages to "fix" most of the issues the current crop of Atom based netbooks have. Not including full 1080p hardware decoding was a serious own goal for Intel, I don't know what they were thinking by leaving that out of the latest revision, its such an easy feature to sell especially now Flash offers full hardware acceleration.

Next gen Atom apparently has a HD video decoder onboard, and it might have some variant of Intel HD graphics onboard as well. Along with the shrink to 32nm in Q3/Q4 2011, we should see at least a 20% increase in performance. Though 120% of crap is still crap (By that time atom would have basically offered the same performance for almost three years)

 

[Blazkowicz]

but it's dual core crap
I briefly ran a dual pentium pro with raid 0 scsi, scavenged from WW2 surplus, it was surpringly usable and it gets its ass handed over by any dual atom w/ sata hard disk and 1GB or more ram.

sure I've seen the stupid single atom netbook with crap graphics struggling in 10 year old games (warcraft III) and that's something it will always be bad at.
I would like trying a dual atom for generic use, with multithreaded browsers, codecs and with free AVG in the background if running windows, it's surely not real horror.
but Ontario will trounce it.

 

[Jawed]

Llano processor

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/carl/exclusive-amd-fusion-processor-picture/

So what are those funny little devices?

 

[hoom]

So did the CPU gobble up the GPU or GPU gobble the CPU?

I think that the answer ultimately is a question of whether the memory controller has more to do with the respective CPU (AMD) or GPU (ATI) controllers.
Certainly the bigger bit of the Ontario chip seems to be the GPU bit, so I'm inclined towards the GPU gobbled up the CPU & I expect the memory controller to be mostly ATI tech.

More general question, is this 9W power window low enough for tablet type devices?
The idea of a tablet with x86/Windows & decent graphics is pretty exciting to me.

 

[3dilettante]

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/carl/exclusive-amd-fusion-processor-picture/

So what are those funny little devices?

Are you referring to the resistors on the chip package around the CPU?

 

[Jawed]

I dunno, are they resistors?

I had a rummage and found Phenom (not sure what version) without heatspreader:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=227279

with similar devices.

So 4 resistors in one package?

EDIT: Oh, this is a Phenom II

http://slappablog.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/innards-of-phenom-ii/

 

[Kaotik]

So did the CPU gobble up the GPU or GPU gobble the CPU?

I think that the answer ultimately is a question of whether the memory controller has more to do with the respective CPU (AMD) or GPU (ATI) controllers.
Certainly the bigger bit of the Ontario chip seems to be the GPU bit, so I'm inclined towards the GPU gobbled up the CPU & I expect the memory controller to be mostly ATI tech.

More general question, is this 9W power window low enough for tablet type devices?
The idea of a tablet with x86/Windows & decent graphics is pretty exciting to me.

Intel Atoms go up to 13W TDP, not sure which models are used on current and near future laptops, though

 

[Alexko]

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/carl/exclusive-amd-fusion-processor-picture/

So what are those funny little devices?

They're small, very power-efficient cores (AMD calls them µCores) to which the main cores can offload threads and parts of the graphics workload to provide higher throughput and power-efficiency in highly-threaded environments.

They're connected together through a ring bus, which itself is connected to the CPU crossbar at a single point with an HT link. That way, AMD can just scale up or down the number of µCores depending on the targeted market for each SKU, simply by extending the ring bus and adding more µCores.



Do I get a cookie if it surfaces on some random rumour website tomorrow?

 

[Zaphod]

You forgot to add that they also serve as a bridge to manhattan.

 

[mczak]

Intel Atoms go up to 13W TDP, not sure which models are used on current and near future laptops, though

Well, the current ones use 5.5/6.5W for single cores, 8.5W for dual core. So if you think a tablet can fit a dual-core atom, it could fit ontario as well. Of course, for runtime TDP doesn't say much.

 

[CNCAddict]

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/carl/exclusive-amd-fusion-processor-picture/

So what are those funny little devices?

It's something like this. Capacitors, resistors, and maybe inductors come in these packages to reduce Pick/Place times.

http://www.vishay.com/docs/28751/acaprec.pdf

 

[Pressure]

Well, the current ones use 5.5/6.5W for single cores, 8.5W for dual core. So if you think a tablet can fit a dual-core atom, it could fit ontario as well. Of course, for runtime TDP doesn't say much.

It's worth noting that Ontario is sporting a better GPU.

If that is worth half a watt or not is really up to you.

 

[Erinyes]

Intel Atoms go up to 13W TDP, not sure which models are used on current and near future laptops, though

Those are the desktop models right? I dont think the mobile variants have a TDP > 10W.

It's worth noting that Ontario is sporting a better GPU.

If that is worth half a watt or not is really up to you.

Exactly, Ontario is sporting a GPU which i would think is about 10 times as powerful as Atom (Assuming the GPU is Cedar or half Cedar) Also to be noted is that Intel's 45nm process is superior to TSMC's 40nm process

 

[fbuffer]

Those are the desktop models right? I dont think the mobile variants have a TDP > 10W.



Exactly, Ontario is sporting a GPU which i would think is about 10 times as powerful as Atom (Assuming the GPU is Cedar or half Cedar) Also to be noted is that Intel's 45nm process is superior to TSMC's 40nm process

subjective to say the least

 

[dkanter]

subjective to say the least

What part of that do you think is subjective?

DK

 

[Alexko]

The density part, maybe?

 

[fellix]

Ontario:

On the left side is a mobile Phenom II.