AMD Next Generation Processor Technology Slides
[H] Enthusiast obtained some official AMD slides that outline AMD's upcoming Quad-Core technology that has recently taped out. This tech will be the heart of next-gen Opteron and Athlon 64 FX processors.
As you might know, AMD has recently taped out its Quad-Core Opteron. AMD has shared with our colleagues that they can certainly count on the next-gen Athlon 64 mirroring the Quad-Core Opteron design less a few HyperTransport bus connects.
As expected, AMD's next-gen desktop technology will first be showcased with in the yet-to-be announced Quad-Core Athlon 64 FX. At recent demonstrations of the AMD 4x4, Quad-Core has certainly been referenced as a desktop part. The slide below shows you the map of the upcoming Quad-Core Opteron as well as the Athlon 64 FX.
Certainly the highlights here are 65nm SOI which should bring power usage down even further, "enhanced" Instructions per Clock, and a totally redesigned cache system that introduces a shared L3 cache. And most importantly the Quad-Core design.
One of the most drastic changes that will be recognized by the enthusiast is that we have an additional caching unit identified as "L3 cache."
This L3 cache is shared by each of the four cores and allows for some latency issues to be addressed in a four core environment. It has been noted to the L3 can be expanded in size as well.
Behind the power of four cores there are some very intelligent power and clock scaling systems as well.
Each core will carry its own PLL or "clock-gen." This will allow the Quad-Core Opteron and Athlon 64 FX processors to scale down their power consumption very intelligently from being fully loaded.
Source: [H] Enthusiast
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