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AMD lops 800 million transistors from its 8-core Bulldozer chips
CHIP DESIGNER AMD has taken the unusual and embarrassing step of correcting its quoted transistor count for Bulldozer chips from two billion to just 1.2 billion.
AMD had told journalists that its eight-core Bulldozer chip, consisting of four Bulldozer modules, had two billion transistors, a figure that made many incredulous. Now AMD has taken the extremely unusual step of correcting itself, saying that the same chip has just 1.2 billion transistors.
AMD issued a statement in which the firm stated that it had shared the two billion transistor count "in error".
"Last week, AMD confirmed the transistor count in the AMD FX CPU line-up at 1.2 billion, a correction from the earlier count of 2 billion. The earlier figure of 2 billion transistors was unfortunately shared in error. This correction is not the result of a new revision to the Bulldozer design. The correct count of 1.2 billion applies to all recently introduced 8-core AMD processors that are based on the new Bulldozer core - AMD FX family of desktop CPUs and AMD Opteron family of server and HPC processors. We apologize for the confusion."
According to Extremetech's calculations, AMD's latest figures don't quite add up. Figures given by AMD showed the Bulldozer modules would take up 1.32 billion transistors and that doesn't even account for the memory controller or Hypertransport connectivity.
AMD's modular Bulldozer architecture, although clever, has disappointed in desktop and gaming workloads. One of the things AMD has always banged on about with Bulldozer is that it would shrink the transistor count of its chips, which is one way of touting the merits of a processor design. By claiming a transistor count of 1.2 billion, AMD might be trying to add that feather to its cap after returning lacklustre benchmark scores. µ
Tags: Amd
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Llano continues to be very successful for AMD.. cheap, very powerful and pretty decent power characteristics. I've seen many low-priced laptops with AMD CPU's in them this Christmas and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them. One had 4GB of RAM and (grab them while the prices are cheap), a decent HDD - all for £299. Pretty hard to beat something like that don't you think?
But Bulldozer.. sure, the transistor count error is bad, but this time next year who will care? I think more people care about and want to see, AMD succeed again like it did with Athlon 64. Bulldozer tries to achieve too much in too little time, especially considering the size and manufacturing capacity of Intel.
Despite this, BD looks much better in server markets than it does on the desktop. Perhaps AMD should have branched out more, and created better variations of the same product for different markets. For instance the stripped-down FPU hardware..you can't do that with a chip like this, it's cutting back way too much. It makes the BD slower than a previous design in some tests. Anyone remember the K6-2 vs Pentium III debate? We've receded back to those days, where AMD cares more about Integer performance.
I know AMD can do much better than this, and I think it will. Lord knows, it has to. At the moment I see no incentive as a desktop user to go with BD, even if AMD is intend on halting Phenom II production. For now, we're in limbo, unless you run server hardware in which cases BD threads incredibly well. A few months and with the continued success of APU and GPU markets, AMD could well be in a better position to create a kick-ass workstation processor.
This is what happens when you let Marketing count the transistors for you.
So after hyping up the Bulldozer chip then severely destroying the credibility of the "FX" moniker though terrible performance benchmarks and real world performance numbers, AMD thinks we will feel better with the lack luster performance if it had less transistors in it? FAIL! As a matter of fact, I'm beginning to think the word FAIL and AMD are one in the same! Been an AMD fan since the AMD 386 days, however, my next from scratch build will be Intel!