AMD Moving to ‘Tick-Tock’ Micro-Architecture Model, Some Say

A report about AMD's further plans for its micro-architectures has emerged, one that may or may not be at odds with something the company said back in December, 2011.

Right to the point, X-bit Labs believes that Advanced Micro Devices is thinking of adopting the same model of transitioning to new manufacturing processes as Intel.

In other words, it is looking at the “tick-tock” model, which dictates that every change to the micro-architecture should be accompanied by a die shrink of the process technology.

Thus, the “tick” corresponds to a shrinking and the “tock” stands for the new architecture itself.

Advanced Micro Devices will start from the “Piledriver” micro-architecture and continue from there, or so the rumor implies.

APUs, being aimed at a broader segment of the market, will be released earlier than CPUs and will have “reduced” x86 cores, to enable a shorter development time.

Still, they will follow the next-generation architecture while fully supporting previous-generation features.

Meawhile, the CPUs will be released a few months later and will possess x86 cored with support for more instructions.

Viperfish, the desktop and server-aimed Piledriver and successor to Orochi (powers FX and Opteron units) will have more instructions per clock (IPC), among other things.

All in all, the Trinity APUs, based on early Piledriver, will be superior to the first Bulldozer but not as advanced as the CPUs powered by the “full” Piledriver.

Assuming this is all on the mark, one can only wonder how this plan will fit with AMD's previous statement that rapid advancement to new technologies was losing importance.

Predictably, the Sunnyvale, California-based company did not comment on all these assumptions, but that does not mean the world has to wait long before some official words are spoken. After all, AMD intends to outline its future plans at its financial analyst day, on February 2, 2012.