AMD launches its Interlagos Bulldozer chips

The firm started making its first Bulldozer chips codenamed 'Interlagos' last month and is now shipping to OEM customers. Many of the first batches of the Interlagos chip, which AMD said is the world's first 16 core x86 processor, will be used in supercomputers.

Rick Bergman, SVP and general manager of AMD Products Group said, "This is a monumental moment for the industry as this first 'Bulldozer' core represents the beginning of unprecedented performance scaling for x86 CPUs."

The Interlagos chip is compatible with existing AMD Opteron 6100 Series architecture and will be available in systems in the fourth quarter of this year.

Bergman added, "The flexible new 'Bulldozer' architecture will give Web and datacenter customers the scalability they need to handle emerging cloud and virtualisation workloads."

This in theory puts pressure on Intel, but AMD's rival told The INQUIRER back in June that it would be producing Sandy Bridge Xeons by the end of the year. µ

Missed this one from June:

AMD demonstrates a 32 core Bulldozer server

ISC 11 Promises up to 64 cores in a 1U server >/h3>By Lawrence Latif in Hamburg
Tue Jun 21 2011, 15:49

CHIP DESIGNER AMD chose the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) to finally demonstrate a working Bulldozer system.

At AMD's ISC stand one could find several 2U and 4U servers built with older Opteron chips, but it was a 1U pizza box server made by Supermicro that housed two 16-core Bulldozer chips running live demonstrations of POVRay. This is the first time that AMD has publicly displayed its next generation Opteron processor, codenamed Bulldozer.

bulldozer-amd The chaps manning AMD's stand said that Bulldozer still has a Q3 2011 launch date and, judging by the fact that it has started to display working machines, we can assume that timeframe is not too optimistic. Asked whether AMD will be coming up with a Llano style Opteron featuring an accelerated processor unit (APU), AMD told The INQUIRER that "an Opteron APU still at least two years off".

Coming back to the present, Supermicro's 1U dual socket Bulldozer server packed in 32 cores, with space for an accelerator card. AMD said that other vendors are managing to put four sockets into a 1U server, resulting in a very impressive 64 scalar processing cores in just 1U.

Initially the chaps at AMD were not keen for us to photograph its naked server, however with The INQUIRER's winning smile the lid was lifted on the machine. One thing that surprised us was how cool the chips were running. We were able to touch the heatsinks with our bare hands. Given that this is a 1U server where cooling capabilities are stretched to the limit, that is a mighty impressive showing from AMD.

AMD was not willing to talk frequencies, cache sizes, cost or any other details without signing an NDA at this point. Although it wouldn't release exact thermal design power figures, AMD said that those will be the same as its Magny Cours Opterons'.

The 16-core Bulldozer chips should once again put pressure on Intel's Westmere EX processors, however Intel told The INQUIRER that it will be producing Sandy Bridge Xeons by the end of the year. And for AMD's Bulldozer, the litmus test will come not with Intel's Westmere EX line but next year, up against the Sandy Bridge Xeons. µ

Cleaning up the stuff at post #10...

Dirrect link:

The Start of a New Era

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The Start of a New Era

September 7, 2011 by John Fruehe

Last week, we passed a momentous milestone in the life of “Bulldozer” – our first production shipments have left Singapore.

This is important because, while we have shipped thousands of parts up to now that were engineering samples, this first shipment of production parts is a revenue shipment, so Bulldozer is now officially in production.

The first parts off the line were 16-core “Interlagos” parts. We expect to be launching “Interlagos” in Q4, a little later than we had hoped, but still in time for server deployments in 2011. Between now and the launch, we have plenty of work to do. Parts are shipping to all of our key partners now, so that they can finish their final platform validation testing. There are also several large opportunities that AMD will be fulfilling prior to launch, so while this looks like everyone can relax now, the work is actually just starting.

Here, KY Wong (left) and Marshall Kwait (right) pass the first set of Interlagos processors to Joe Fitzgerald of Cray. Earlier this year, Cray announced that a number of customers with Cray XE6 supercomputers will update their systems with Interlagos processors. The processors in the picture above are most likely destined for one of those massive systems that will be used for supercomputing tasks like weather modeling or energy research. Such customers as CSCS – the Swiss National Supercomputer Center, and the University of Edinburgh have all signed up to upgrade their Cray XE6 supercomputers for their research needs.

Now, the real work begins, so watch for some exciting news as we pull into Q4 and keep your eyes on the server space, because “Interlagos” is now shipping.

John Fruehe is the Director of Product Marketing for Server, Embedded and FireStream products at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

POSTED IN: AMD Opteron, Bulldozer

And also:

Bulldozer finally shipped last week

What caused all the slips?

Sep 7, 2011

What is going on with AMD’s (NYSE:AMD) Bulldozer and why did it only ship last week? That is a long story, and a complex one, filled with enough minor and major problems to write a medium length book about. We will try and do it in a slightly condensed version.

The short story is that Bulldozer is delayed from where it was in June, and a little bit, but not all that much, from what we said a few weeks ago. We said within two weeks on August 4th, and it was just over a week later than that. Why the mess? Well, to paraphrase one pundit, “The nice thing about having 10 fingers is that you can point in a lot of directions”. Bulldozer delays come down to a lot of little things, and three big ones.

The first one is that there is a new stepping coming, SemiAccurate is hearing mid- to late Q1/2012 for the next rev. That rev is said to bump performance, specifically integer performance, up by quite a bit, and possibly improve clocks too. Either way, it looks like that stepping is the one to keep an eye out for. It isn’t a Barcelona type fiasco, but it isn’t an HD4870 launch either.

Next on the list is yield, or lack thereof. The same problems that affect Llano affect Bulldozer, and we took a look at those earlier. The short version is that GloFo has problems with the 32nm SHP process, but they are still best in class. No other foundry can do a 32nm HKMG + strain process, so they are currently the only choice. AMD pays only per good die, so they are financially insulated from the yields.

More problematic for AMD is that they can’t get enough chips. Most observers agree that if GloFo could make more chips, AMD could easily sell them. Coupled with bad dies, this means a lot of money not earned for both companies. The situation would be much better for AMD if Intel used a foundry, they would basically be in the same boat. Fortunately for Intel, and unfortunately for AMD, they don’t, and 32nm HKMG + strain is not a big deal for them.

What we are hearing is that currently, the delays are due to availability of product. Bulldozer is built on the same process as Llano, 32SHP, so the yield problems are going to hit that chip at least as hard as Llano. Llano has a large portion of it’s area taken up by GPU shaders, so you can salvage a lot of lower binned dies because of that, and more by going to 3 or 2 cores. Assuming any single module can be fused off in Bulldozer, it could have a very high resistance to defects as well.

That said, Bulldozer is a larger die, about 50% larger than Llano, so yield should go down noticeably. Llano’s yield, to use the technical term, sucks, so Bulldozer should be at least as bad. Time will tell, but the constant slipping by a week or two here or there is a pretty good sign that this is the case. When Bulldozer is released in volume, what SKUs are offered, and their availability should give a lot of clues about yields and bin splits.

The last thing that could delay Bulldozer’s release is simple, money. Global Foundries can only run so many 32nm wafers at the moment, and that is not going to go up dramatically in the near future. Assuming AMD is the only customer for that process, it is up to AMD to allocate the wafers to one chip or the other. Yield, die size, and ASPs all come in to play on this one, as does expected process improvements.

If you want to look at it the simple way, on average, each wafer will yield X Llanos or Y Bulldozers. On average, each Llano will sell for $A, and each Bulldozer will sell for $B. Assuming that AMD will be able to sell everything they make, likely at this point, so the math is simple. If X * A is bigger than Y * B, make more Llanos. If X * A is smaller, make more Bulldozers. Yield improvements, customer bitching, and many other things come in to play to influence the split, but the gross calculation is simple. You run the one that makes the most money in the end.

So Bulldozer keeps slipping. Several hard deadlines have passed, but each time, the difference between the current date and the expected one keeps shrinking. When will it ship? If we had a hard date, we would not be able to say what it is. If we don’t, we don’t, so that is about what you will get, nothing. The whispers in the background are still saying that it isn’t long though, and the whispers still say that it is not September 19th.S|A

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Should bring forward Intel's Sandy Bridge Xeon launch CHIP DESIGNER AMD has announced that it has begun shipping its Bulldozer architecture chips to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

ISC 11 Promises up to 64 cores in a 1U server >/h3>By Lawrence Latif in Hamburg Tue Jun 21 2011, 15:49

The Start of a New Era

What caused all the slips?

ISC 11 Promises up to 64 cores in a 1U server >/h3>By Lawrence Latif in Hamburg
Tue Jun 21 2011, 15:49