14 DAY TRIAL // AMD's Bulldozer architecture won't enter history books as a superpowered CPU/APU architecture, and it will only narrowly miss going down as a weak one, if it does at all. Steamroller aims to soften the public opinion of it.
There was another attempt at this, called Vishera, but it still wasn't recommendable. Now, Steamroller seeks to provide a more palpable leap in performance
Not a huge one though. The increase over the original core will be of up to 30%.
Which brings us to the most recent revelation: an entry on the Bionic research database has revealed some details.
In fact, Bionic listed the first engineering sample, bearing the following ES code: 2M186092H4467_23/18/12/05_1304.
The folks over at WCCF Tech website were the ones who spotted it first.
Anyone seeking to figure out anything about performance has to look at the four numbers in the middle, although the other parts reveal some things too.
First off, the nominal frequency is of 1.8 GHz, indicated by the “18.”
The “23” just before it stands for the turbo setting of 2.3 GHz, achieved automatically via Turbo Core technology.
Meanwhile, the “12” probably indicated a North Bridge clock of 1.2 GHz.
Had this been a normal central processing unit, that's where we would have stopped, but it isn't. This is an accelerated processing unit, which means that it has an integrated GPU as well.
Thus, the “1304” is the graphics processing unit code, no doubt the AMD1304.1, otherwise known as “KV SPECTRE MOBILE 35W (1304).” It has a frequency of 500 MHz.
The processor will be made on Globalfoundries' 28nm manufacturing process technology and will have a TDP of 35W. Since this is an engineering sample, the final product may even be faster than 1.8/2.3 GHz. Only time will tell if this hope of ours turns out in any way true though.