AMD details next-gen architecture for 16-core server chips

From InfoWorld: Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday shared details about its next-generation chip architecture code-named Bulldozer, which will form the basis for its upcoming 16-core server processors.

Processors based on Bulldozer will include more cores and perform up to 50 percent faster than chips based on earlier architectures, said Dina McKinney, vice president of design engineering at AMD. The new design squeezes out more performance by bringing flexibility to the way tasks are executed across processor cores.

Bulldozer processors will go into computers ranging from servers to desktops and laptops, McKinney said. The first chips are expected to be server processors code-named Interlagos, which will have between 12 and 16 cores and are scheduled for release next year.

Chip designers like Intel and AMD have traditionally boosted processor performance by adding cores, cranking up clock speeds, or by improving threading capabilities. A new element in the Bulldozer CPU architecture is the ability to improve performance by pairing execution cores and sharing them with components inside a CPU.

The architecture scales performance by sharing components like the floating point unit between two processing cores, which provides a wider pipe to execute more operations per clock cycle, McKinney said.

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