14 DAY TRIAL // AMD's long anticipated Bulldozer architecture that has been in development since 2005 is finally getting ready for prime time, and early reports suggest it to be 50% faster than current Core i7 and Phenom II processors, a worthy feat however you may look at it.
According to the DonanimHaber website, AMD reportedly gave out these performance figures in a presentation to its partners.
The document cited compared an 8-core processor based on the "Bulldozer" high-performance CPU architecture with a 4-core, 8-thread, Intel Core i7 950 and with a six-core Phenom II X6 1100T CPU, in three different usage scenarios (media, rendering and games).
The results varied depending on the tasks run, but, finally, the Bulldozer processor proved itself to be approximately 50 faster than the Core i7 950.
Very little is known about the CPU used by AMD for running these benchmarks, but the 950 features 8MB of L3 cache, a tri-channel memory controller, runs at 3.06GHz and can reach speeds up to 3.33 GHz thanks to the Turbo Boost technology.
If the numbers demoed by AMD are true, the said Bulldozer chip should even outperform the six-core Intel Core i7 980X CPU.
In development since 2005, Bulldozer is AMD's next high-performance processor architecture, and is optimized to deliver better inter-core communications and a higher instructions per clock cycle count.
As a result, AMD used a modular approach, each dual-core module being comprised of 2MB of L2 cache, 16kB 4-way L1 data cache per core and a 2-way 64kB L1 instruction cache per module, two dedicated integer cores and two symmetrical 128-bit FMAC pipelines that can be unified into one large 256-bit wide unit.
In addition, Bulldozer CPUs can be configured with up to 8MB of L3 cache shared between the available cores.
The chips will use AMD's 9-series motherboard chipsets as well as the new AM3+ socket, MSI already presenting such a board to the world. (via TechPowerUp)
UPDATE: The AMD presentatin slide that DonanimHaber based its assuptions on was just published on the website. Read more bout it here.