Despite Bulldozer not being the success that everybody has hoped for, AMD has now stopped shipping Phenom II and Athlon II processors fabricated on the 45nm node, except for one such chip in the P II line.
The new processors based on the Llano and Bulldozer architecture
AMD released this year will slowly but surely take the place of the current Athlon II and Phenom II chips as these will start disappearing from the stocks of retailers around the world.
The only chip that will survive, according to
Nordic Hardware, will be Phenom II X4 960T based on the Zosma core that is effectively a six-core Thuban part with two of its computing cores disabled.
Of the two brands that AMD stopped shipping, Athlon was the most successful, as it spanned an impressive number of architecture since it was first introduced in mid-1999.
This also included the successful AMD K8 architecture, which gave the company a substantial lead in its fight against
Intel, to be later dethroned by its rival’s Core 2 Duo processors based on the Conroe arch.
Many things have changed since then, and 2011 marked one of the most important years in AMD’s recent history as the chip maker refreshed its entire
CPU lineup with new processors based on the Llano and Bulldozer architecture.
The Llano chips, called APUs – Accelerated Processing Units, in particular have proven to be very successful for AMD that for years struggled to compete with Intel in the CPU market.
Bulldozer however hasn’t been the success that the Sunnyvale-based chip maker has hoped for, but despite this AMD has to move on and this implies getting rid of the older 45nm Athlon and Phenom II parts.
Don’t know about you, but although I knew that this moment will eventually come, it’s still hard to get used to the idea of parting ways with the Athlon and Phenom brands. After all, most of us have fond memories of the K8 days.
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