AMD Vows to Ramp Up 32nm Microprocessors in 2010

From X-bit Labs: For years Advanced Micro Devices was considerably behind Intel Corp. in terms of new fabrication process adoption. But after spinning off manufacturing operations into a separate business entity known as The Foundry Company, the chip designer hopes to shrink the gap with the market leader and start selling its first 32nm chips in 2010.

Dirk Meyer, chief executive officer of AMD, said in an interview with Information Week web-site that the company intends to ramp up manufacturing of central processing units using 32nm process technology in mid-2010. This leads to assumption that the company will not be a year behind Intel with 32nm, even though AMD’s chief executive does not claim that the reduction of the gap is a result of spinning off the company’s fabs into a separate company.

The information about ramping up of 32nm processors in mid-2010 seems to be very positive for AMD, as this may mean that the company is on-track not only with its process technology, but also with its new micro-architecture code-named Bulldozer. A little less than a year ago AMD said that Bulldozer processors are developed for 45nm process technology and that the first samples will be available in 2009. Since it takes some time to validate a microprocessor and ensure that it is ready for commercial launch, AMD must have working 45nm Bulldozer chip about a year before the start of “ramp up” of 32nm process technology in mid-2010.

Bulldozer is the next-generation micro-architecture and processor design developed from the ground up by AMD. It is expected that the next-generation micro-processors will offer considerably higher performance than current-generation chips. AMD Bulldozer CPUs will also feature SSE5 instruction set. The Sunnyvale, California-based microprocessor developer badly needs principally new CPU micro-architecture to recapture performance crown from Intel Corp. and win back market share.

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