“Processor architecture designs take years from initial conception to the first shipping CPU sliding out of the fab assembly. So it’s clear that AMD’s new CPU architecture has been in the works for some time. Whether that’s a problem or not vis à vis the competition isn’t yet known, since AMD isn’t yet talking about performance details.What is known is that Barcelona—as AMD has dubbed this first iteration—isn’t so much a brand-new architecture as it is a highly refined, tweaked version of the existing AMD x86-64. Those tweaks are numerous and significant. It’s probably fair to suggest that Barcelona is to the current Opterons as Intel’s Core 2 is to the Pentium M—designed from the ground up, on a base of the old with a lot of new stuff rolled in.”
Here are some more Processor articles from around the web:
- 2007 Dual Core Battle : Intel Wolfdale vs AMD Antares @ VR-Zone
- Quad Core Battle : Intel Yorkfield vs AMD Altair @ VR-Zone
- Intel Developing New Chip Designs in India @ Slashdot
- AMD X2 AM2 4200+ EE @ Neoseeker
- Sneak Peek : Intel’s New Quad-Core @ Hardware Zone
- AMD’s AM2- What Went Wrong @ XYZ Computing
- Intel puts four on the floor @ CNET
The all new quad-core Barcelon?
ExtremeTech is sharing everything they know about the upcoming quad-core processor from AMD, currently known as Barcelona. Taking a different aproach than Intel, they did not widen the instruction pipe, instead optimizing the current one with a 512-entry indirect branch predictor, a 32-byte instruction fetch, a sideband stack optimizer and out-of-order load execution.
