AMD to Release Bulldozer in 2009

Advanced Micro Devices' President and Chief Operating Officer Dirk Meyer confirmed, during the last week’s conference call, that the chip manufacturer plans to release its next CPU architecture, also known as Bulldozer, in 2009.

The multi-core processor will come straight in the 45-nanometer flavor. However, the 45-nanometer chips will be available only for a short period of time, as AMD will make the transition to the 32-nanometer CPU micro-architecture right after Bulldozer is introduced.

AMD will start sampling the Bulldozer chip in late 2009, but the chip will not be publicly available in the 45-nanometer technology. This means that there is a long way ahead until it finally appears in retail systems, given the fact that AMD has not even started producing chips at the 45-nanometer node.

The slow transition is mostly due to the fact that AMD's Fab 36 is currently manufacturing the company's Athlon, Phenom, Sempron and Turion families of processors, and replacing the whole technology will likely affect the manufacturing operations.

The Bulldozer chip will come as a 16-core silicon, touted by the company as the first substantially new CPU core since the original Athlon 64 processor. Moreover, the new chip will be built from scratch and will offer a solid foundation for the company's upcoming architectures. The chip is aimed at the "Sandtiger" server and workstation platforms that are expected to arrive in mid-2009.

However, the recent wave of layoffs that hit the chip manufacturer's headquarters are likely to make the company miss its deadlines. According to previous reports, the Austin and California offices are the most affected locations. While the Austin facility is working on the Barcelona and Phenom families, the Bulldozer chip is exclusively baked in California, and the layoffs will leave the company with less workforce available for the project.

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