Early photos of AMD Shanghai CPU
Summary: Credit: Fuad Abazovic, FudzillaPhotos of CPU-Z highlighting AMD's 45nm Shanghai quad-core processor appeared on Fudzilla last week. It confirms that AMD's latest processor will have a total of 2 megabytes L2 cache (512 KB per core), and 6 megabytes of shared L3 cache.
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| Credit: Fuad Abazovic, Fudzilla |
By contrast, AMD's 65-nm Barcelona-class processors (Phenom and Opteron quad-core) only have 2 megabytes of shared L3 cache. The L2 and L3 caches will mostly be exclusive which means they will for the most part not share any content effectively making the cache size larger.
Shanghai's core voltage of 1.15 V is equivalent to the low-voltage edition of AMD's current 65nm quad-core processor Barcelona though it's unclear if this particular Shanghai was operating at normal or low voltage. According to Fuad Abazovic of Fudzilla, Shanghai is expected to operate above the 3 GHz mark though the CPU-Z photo has the clock speed left out. We also need to put this in the context of Barcelona having a targeted clock speed of 2.8 GHz according to papers presented at ISSCC 2007 though actual production speeds have yet to exceed 2.3 GHz.
One other interesting note is that AMD's Montreal 8-core processor due out after Shanghai will resort to MCM (Multi Chip Module). Montreal will be two Shanghai cores glued on to a single processor package. That means AMD will be adopting the same strategy Intel has been using on its 65nm and first-generation 45nm processors where you take two smaller cores and "glue" them on to a CPU package to have more cores per processor. Ironically, Intel will be going the opposite direction starting with Intel Nehalem. Not only will the initial Nehalem-EP 8 MB L3 cache quad-core processor be single-die, but even the much larger Nehalem-EX 8-core processor with 24 MB L3 cache will be single-die. So in 2009, watch for both companies to reverse their marketing literature touting or disparaging MCM "glue" technology.
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Talkback
Intel wants to FAIL???
HUGE difference here
The other big factor is that Intel will be on their second year of 45nm manufacturing and they have confidence in their yield levels. Intel also expects to get relatively good margins with Nehalem-EP because it's a monster performer.
While you do have a key point in maturity
While I do agree that both methods have potential and that AMD was at more of a disadvantage, trying to make a precision item using stone age tooling, Intel still could easily trip up and even though AMD is behind without question, the ground work appears to be being laid for AMD to take off or again stumble over their own two feet.
Intel's timing on native quad and native 8-core is better
Unless you are Apple...
Although I am surprised that AMD has decided to sell the Black Box CPUs at the same price as their counterparts. Look at Intel and their Extreme Editions and the price premium they ask for them.
Intel's "native" 8 core is better
Observe nature. Is an Octopus two 4 pus's glued together? No. It's one.
What does that have to do with the price of Pork?
I liked the idea of possibly comparing something mechanical like a car, but nature?
Example, Are 2 4 Cylinder engines better than a single V8?
The answer is that it doesnt matter
It should bring the price of bacon down
Having said that, I agree with Ou. Native octal will allow Intel to leap ahead with 32nm much more cost effective than AMD in the next logical core grouping. You can only reasonably do this with 32nm, IMHO.
AMD may have native 8 core
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6154&Itemid=66
Interesting that George obtained pics from Fudzilla but missed this info....unless of course the Fudzilla article is completely wrong (it doesn't cite any actual literature - just a highly placed source within AMD). Does anyone have more info on this?
No, AMD Shanghai will be MCM
http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/04/01/amd-travels-from-shanghai-to-montreal
And whether you agree with Charlie or not, he's got good AMD sources.
Also note that Montreal has a quad and octal version
RE: Early photos of AMD Shanghai CPU
When intel started their MCM products, they were trying to counter AMD multi products, and they did not have anything else handy. At the same time, if it was better to have two native core rather than 2 processors on the same chip, it certainly was better for some markets to have two core rather than one.
With AMD MCM strategy we are speaking of 8 core, not two or four, which makes a huge difference. Process capable of parallelizing task on 8 concurrent threads are not that common today; as a result as the number of threads increase it becomes more are more difficult to re"ally take advantage of real multicore. If you consider virtrualization infrastructure, you may even have an incentive to go for MCM rather than multicore, as as a reasult you wont share cache between the core, and it will become more insteresting to parallelize ressources, something you do do not do the same way in MCLM and native multicore architectures.
At the same time technologies Intel began some time ago are becoming mature, so intel will in the next year be capable of delivering large number of native cores. we will have to see the architecture of their cache and memory infrastructure, and how wll its scales with the number of cores.
Good points/ green chip
Another angle that could be leveraged is the power-saving capability. If there is no load, the power savings on a system capable of powering down a single chip on the package are much higher than what you would experience by powering down a single core.
Servers naturally take advantage of multi-threads
Nehalem will support 2 logical threads per core. That means Nehalem-EP 2P platforms will do 16 logical threads. Nehalem-EX 8P platforms will do 128 logical threads.
No, you do what you can get away with
AMD was way late to the table in delivering native quad core and to this day you still can't get it for servers and desktops are stuck at 2.3 GHz. The low clock speeds and low margins make native quad core a raw deal for AMD. Those lower clock speeds more than defeated any performance advantages of native quad core technology.
Agreed
Native is always better IF you can yield high clock speeds
Intel execs have also clearly stated that native quad core is better but that they weren't confident enough with 65nm and first-year 45nm to produce the desired yields and clock speeds. However, they are confident enough in their second generation 45nm process to do native quad- and eight-core.
That is ironic
I wonder if AMD's MMC setup will have separate memory controllers for each chip in the package? I wonder if that would affect the scaling decision to go to 8 cores...
They split the memory channels