Not content to have launched its first dual-core server chip last week, AMD is already chatting up its successor. Two cores not big enough for one socket? Meet the quad-core.
Proving that too much of a good thing is wonderful, AMD released a CPU roadmap showing it cramming four separate Opteron cores onto one die in 2007. Much like the current dual-core design, all cores would be interconnected via HyperTransport lanes, giving phenomenal bandwidth among them. Also like the current design, the memory bus would be shared amongst all cores, decreasing the amount of off-die bandwidth available to each core but keeping latency and contention to a minimum. The current exclusive cache design, where each core gets its own L2 cache, is also expected to be retained.
Given that Opteron was designed from Day One to accommodate multi-core setups, why is AMD waiting until 2007 to deploy them? A quad-core CPU manufactured with current 90 nm semiconductor fabrication technology would be unreasonably large, giving low yields and stratospheric pricing.
AMD intends to use its shiny new Fab36 facility in Dresden, Germany. Fab36 will be AMD’s first facility to use 300 mm wafers and 65 nm technology, according to AMD.
Source: GEEK.com
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