14 DAY TRIAL // As previously reported, Advanced Micro Devices plans to release quite a range of processors in the early 2009, based on new core architectures and featuring fresh technologies. The Sunnyvale company's upcoming chips will be based on the Deneb, Propus, Regor and Rana cores, and are expected to challenge Intel's counterparts. As many of you know, the chip maker failed to deliver great products during the past year or so.
The upcoming K10 die design-based CPUs were at a certain point believed to be the same chips with alterations. To be more precise, the chips were rumored to be built around the Deneb architecture. According to the latest news, this is far from the truth, and the die size of the chips differs enough to prove so.
AMD's Barcelona K10 "Stars" micro-architecture surfaced about a year ago, and, although it failed to take the performance lead on the market, it got implemented in a number of new designs. The chip maker took the K10 die and changed the number of available cores, delivering this way a series of different processors.
The same is said to happen with Deneb and Rana. Unlike the upcoming 45nm Phenom II X4 chips, which are Deneb-based, the Rana based Phenom II X3 processors will basically feature the same architecture, only that one of the cores is reported to be disabled. This does not apply to the next-to-come Athlon X4 chips.
The Regor and Propus cores are reported to be totally different from Deneb. It seems that AMD does not plan to have two cores disabled so as to come up with a dual-core chip. The company will go for two different designs, one with L3 cache and one without, and the estimated die size of the upcoming chips is proof of this move.
While Deneb will sport a core sized at 243 sq. mm, the Propus core will be 140 sq. mm, and Regor around 80 sq. mm. The great difference in size is given by the fact that Deneb comes with a large 6144 KB L3, while the last two will come without it. Moreover, the great size difference also suggests that the L3 cache is physically missing from the Propus and Regor cores rather than being disabled.
The best part is that, if things prove to be so, the smaller cores will also come with a lower power need, which is supposed to make them more appealing to users. Propus will be spotted in CPUs that AMD plans to launch in early 2009, as the recently unveiled roadmaps showed.