

The Bulldozer module is sort of a mid-point between those two familiar arrangements. To date, we’ve seen x86-compatible CPU cores capable of tracking and executing two threads via a feature known as simultaneous multithreading (SMT), better known by its Intel marketing name, Hyper-Threading, and we’ve had a number of chips with multiple cores onboard in a chip-level multiprocessor (CMP) configuration, tracing back to the original Athlon 64 X2. The first of those is a dual-core “module” as a fundamental building block.
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To that end, Bulldozer introduces some unorthodox concepts into the PC processor space. Bulldozer draws on that tradition in various ways, but it is a novel, clean-sheet design intended to take AMD processors into their next era.

Nearly every CPU AMD has made for the past decade-plus (with the exception of the low-power Ontario/Zacate E-series APUs) has been derived from the original K7, the chip first known as Athlon. In fact, the firm has been working for several years on a brand-new breed of PC processors based on a fresh microarchitecture, code-named “Bulldozer,” that aims to restore some competitive balance. The introduction of Sandy Bridge processors at the beginning of this year put Intel firmly in the lead in terms of overall performance, power efficiency, and the value proposition offered to consumers.īeing the perennial number-two CPU maker in such a competitive context can’t be easy, but AMD hasn’t taken the challenge lightly. Since then, Intel has turned over new manufacturing technologies followed by extensively revised CPU architectures in relentless succession. The sound of Intel’s ongoing CPU development cycle has been constantly in the backdrop for its biggest competitor, AMD, ever since the world’s largest chipmaker set an aggressive cadence for itself more than five years ago.
