Over in California, chip-fabricator GLOBALFOUNDRIES is hosting its GLOBAL Technology Conference, and has taken the opportunity to share some details about AMD's upcoming CPUs. While many of the details were confirmations or restatements of what we already knew, there were a few new titbits of information.
First was confirmation from AMD SVP Chekib Akrout that Ontario-based CPUs would be launching sometime around the start of next year. Rumours and leaked roadmaps had suggested this already, but it's nice to have confirmation from an official source. He also went into brief details on the core's single-die design, which will feature low-latency memory shared between the CPU and GPU components of the chip.
Ontario is of course the company's upcoming mobile and ultraportable Fusion-CPU which will be the first to use the Bobcat architecture. It will be based on a 40nm bulk-process that promises to deliver up to 90 per cent of the performance of today's mainstream mobile-CPUs at a fraction of the power-draw.
There were also details on the first Fusion desktop-processor, codenamed Llano. This will use a 32nm process and though the company didn't go into any details on the new APU, it did show off a freshly pressed 300mm wafer.
However, those on-hand managed to chat to delegates after the conference to uncover some more details. Apparently Llano, which is expected sometime after Ontario, will be a quad-core chip based on a heavily-modified version of the K8 architecture. However, it will support automatic overclocking and voltage-adjustment, as well as other current-generation features. It will also lack L3 cache to save money and decrease power-usage, in exchange for a small performance-hit.
Lastly, the design of the first Bulldozer CPU, named Orochi, was shown. The chip will be an eight-core server CPU, though it may also find a home in high-performance desktops. This will also be a 32nm part and is again expected to launch in the second-half of next year.
