AMD's Piledriver To Break 4GHz Clock Barrier, Use New Resonant Clock Mesh Tech
AMD's Piledriver To Break 4GHz Clock Barrier, Use New Resonant Clock Mesh Tech
Posted 02/24/2012 at 12:14pm
| by Brad Chacos
48
Comments
Print
Has it already been almost five months since AMD's Bulldozer chips launched? Somehow, it has -- and that means it's time for the old info train to start rolling about Bulldozer's follow up, better known as "Piledriver." AMD has apparently been paying attention to our pleas for better, faster, MOAR because this week the company announced it was licensing new resonant clock mesh technology from Cyclos Semiconductor to help push Piledriver's clock speed over the 4GHz barrier.
The Cyclos technology fit right into the standard design and manufacturing processes AMD already had established for Piledriver, so its implementation shouldn't delay the new core in any way, according to a press release by Cyclos. The company says its technology will "reduce clock distribution power up to 24% while maintaining the low clock-skew target required by high-performance processors."
Here's Cyclos' Cliff's Notes version of how the resonant clock mesh tech works:
Cyclos resonant clock mesh technology employs on-chip inductors to create an electric pendulum, or “tank circuit”, formed by the large capacitance of the clock mesh in parallel with the Cyclos inductors. The Cyclos inductors and clock control circuits “recycle” the clock power instead of dissipating it on every clock cycle like in a clock tree implementation, which results in a reduction in total IC power consumption of up to 10%.
Basically, the tech can be used to hit higher clock speeds or higher power efficiency. Dan Ganousis, a VP from Cyclos Semiconductor, explained the technology more in-depth to the deep minds over at SemiWiki.com. Check out the link to learn about the nitty-gritty details.
More like this
48
Comments
Comments are closed on this article
pet789
February 29, 2012 at 8:49pm
my roomate's aunt makes $83/hr on the laptop. She has been without work for 8 months but last month her pay was $8682 just working on the laptop for a few hours. Read more on this site...Nuttyrich . com
batgirl
February 28, 2012 at 7:56am
a classmate's step-mother makes $75 every hour on the laptop. She has been fired for 5 months but last month her income was $19722 just working on the laptop for a few hours. Read more on this site NuttyRich. com
livebriand
February 26, 2012 at 3:31pm
I'm not getting my hopes up, after Bulldozer. I'd certainly consider an AMD A4/A6/A8 for a budget machine used for web browsing and a few light games, but for a mid-range or high-end machine, it's simply no contest, Intel wins. That said, I would love to see AMD get competitive again, so that I have some decent choice in the upper-end market and Intel can't price gouge.
bpstone
February 27, 2012 at 12:57am
Light games? How many GPUs plus monitors are using to cause so much bottleneck that you cannot get mid to high range performance? Bulldozer may not be the cream of the crop, but it is nowhere near that bad. You build a system according to your needs. If you have three high resolution monitors with a patched extreme game, then a $1k CPU on an x79 motherboard might make some sense. One bulldozer combined with a Radeon HD 7970 GPU is more than enough processing power for the average gamer right now.
ashinms
February 27, 2012 at 5:53am
He was referring to the APUs. I know the high end A8 is similar to an athlon II 640, which is what I have (OC to 3.4). At stock speeds, it WILL cause a bottleneck on the CPU side, though it's hard to notice, and won't show up in FRAPS, but I agree with you that, at least for gaming, an 8150 will not cause a bottleneck.
bpstone
February 27, 2012 at 11:18pm
The A8 is more for compact multimedia mobile platforms. It does well for what it is. Using it for a gaming system is not an ideal thing to do. Note: I believe Brian edited his original post.
Ghost XFX
February 26, 2012 at 2:17pm
Somebody call Intel. Tell them their turnips fell off the truck again...
Before mouthing off about stuff you don't know, you should err on the side of caution and let technology prove itself.Intel fans know so damn much, why in the hell aren't you all hired to do the job? AMD shouldn't have to place itself as direct competition with Intel. They obviously have different objectives now. Like buying a car, you want a Corvette, go get one. Me personally, I want a Challenger or a Charger for practicality is concern. I shouldn't have to hear about your damn Corvette every time one or the other is mentioned.
keyzs
February 26, 2012 at 8:53am
had my HD 6970 in Dec 2010... waited almost 1yr for Bulldozer...on arrival paired with an almost 1yr old graphic card...*sigh*
result... performance not great, worse of, there are some very minor issues associated with various applications intermittently too...
thought of giving AMD another shot... in the end, as in right now, i am planning to sell it all off and am looking forward to the launch of Ivy Bridge...
i tried with AMD, i really did...
oh well, that's it for me with AMD... its back to Intel and nVidia...
Keith E. Whisman
February 25, 2012 at 10:05pm
Sounds like a description of the flex capacitor. So will this chip go back in time to 1955 if it were to ever accelerate to 88.5 miles per hour?
Contrarian
February 25, 2012 at 10:53pm
I believe that was the "flux" capacitor. And wouldn't it need to be attached somehow to a Delorean?
SkinnyZeroOne
February 26, 2012 at 2:13am
Yes -- was "Flux". And after getting that attached to the Delorean, I have no doubt that it would run better than any of AMD's current crop of BullSh*t Bulldozer & upcoming Piles of Sh*t Processors.
BTW -- Been running AMD Processors for the last 12+ years. After this Bulldozer Size Mistake --- I think they're toast. I would love to be wrong -- would benefit all of us.
DOC !! Where are ya DOC?!!?
Hey.That_Dude
February 25, 2012 at 9:53pm
Yay?
FLOPS? single and double?
Cores/Modules?
Will it bake me cookies?
ANYTHING MORE USEFUL THEN CLOCK?
OCFRED
February 25, 2012 at 8:38pm
Nice pitch for Cyclos, especially with ARM proven results to back up the architecture. So far the biggest barrier in migrating to shrinking dies is heat and running fewer operations will be faster and cooler from a user perspective and far more robust in servers.
Cool.
SkinnyZeroOne
February 25, 2012 at 6:52am
After their Bulldozer disaster - I could care less. I'm on an AMD Phenom II 955 for the last 2+ years. Had to change my motherboard to take my CPU with me so I stayed with AMD in the the hopes that Bulldozer would provide an upgrade path as far as the CPU went when it was released.
Totally disappointed - It's fatally flawed. Saving my money for an Intel build next time around.
keyboardJuice
February 25, 2012 at 1:02pm
Same here. Right now I have an AMD-Nvidia build but my next one will be Intel with an AMD video card. At least they got that part of the business right.
Nimrod
February 25, 2012 at 3:42pm
Are guys both totally fucking retarded or something? Read a damn benchmark before you buy. Their parts are cheap and you should be thankful. Your obviously idiots, if Piledriver is fast and cheap who the fuck cares about AMD last chips. This brand loyalty shit is idiotic. Buy what ever is best and dont be a fucktard.
ashinms
February 25, 2012 at 5:20pm
+1
I keep coming back to this article just to read stupid comments put up by these people.
blkpanthr
February 25, 2012 at 10:30pm
and right now, intel has the price to performance ratio crown..
im not sure what you fanbois are babbling about...
right now, the 2500k is disgustingly cheap for the performance it provides....
Supall
February 25, 2012 at 8:17am
"fatally flawed"? So its so flawed that it will kill you? Let's not exaggerate its shortcomings, now, eh?
warptek2010
February 25, 2012 at 12:03am
No mention of this new Heterogeneous Computing Architecture they were pushing? I always wondered why AMD never created it's own version of Hyper-threading or Hyper-cores, or whatever. Perhaps some intrepid MaxPc reporter could investigate? Brad, any info on this?
ashinms
February 25, 2012 at 11:04am
I believe that the whole "Bulldozer Family" is a response to SMP from other companies. That's why they don't have their own hyper threading.
biggiebob12345
February 24, 2012 at 6:40pm
So AMD is creating some lame clocking scheme to reduce power while Intel develops FINFET transistors? Yeah sounds to me like Intel knows more what they're doing.
Hey.That_Dude
February 25, 2012 at 9:48pm
Intel has never refered to its transistor technology with the term "FINFET". They call it "Tri-gate" and AMD does have a semi-FINFET design because it's easy to make on an SOI.
NVZBLT
February 26, 2012 at 10:20am
Whatever bullshit name Intel wants to call it doesn't make a difference. Its still a FINFET. A rose by any other name....
Jeffredo
February 24, 2012 at 5:47pm
They could have just did a die-shrink on the Phenom II and probably got better results.
ashinms
February 24, 2012 at 6:57pm
They did do a die shrink of the K10. There are athlon IIs out right now that fit into FM1 that are on a 32 nanometer scale. Performance is about seven to nine percent better, and none of that is due to the process shrink. All an Athlon is is a phenom with no L3, so the concept still applies. A die shrink of the phenom II would have gotten little to no performance increase. The general design of the circuts just wasn't made to shrink that much. That's why they needed to go hi- K Metal Gate for 32nm.
Enigmatic Magus
February 24, 2012 at 3:08pm
I seem to recall Intel pushing for higher clock speeds and AMD touting various other features as being more important.
Has the need for more (Giga)Megahertz jumped ship? Will it be NetBurst 2.0?
QUINTIX256
February 25, 2012 at 3:37am
Interesting discussion here:
http://www.amdzone.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=532&t=138988&p=215204&hilit=netburst+pipeline+stages#p215204
It has a bit longer pipeline than Phenom II, yes, but it is no netburst.It was not that long ago that it took well over $400 to get into the 3ghz range stock. I was really excited to see Phenom II get bumped into clocking territory last tread by the ill-fated Pentium 4 (3.6GHz+)-- within the same TDP envelope no less, and the overclocking records set by Phemon II and later broken by Bulldozer. It showed that GloFo was the only foundry that could truely stand toe-to-toe with intel's fabs. So, I had high hopes for AMD's first 32nm processors. I was expecting 3.2ghz/800mhz out of the first desktop fusions. Those expectations where dashed, but that did not stop me from buying an A8 at launch :)
Captain_Steve
February 24, 2012 at 3:14pm
Clock speed is a marketing gimmick. It sounds impressive when you can brag that you have the only chip that runs at over 4Ghz. The majority of computer buyers don't know squat about computers, so they just look for big numbers and call it a day.
I Jedi
February 24, 2012 at 6:03pm
I agree. Unless you're running complex equations or something, you're not going to need a 4Ghz processor. I'd rather know what the processor can support on its own, such as PCI 3.0.
ashinms
February 24, 2012 at 2:33pm
This should be nice. It must be why they upped their per core performance projections by 10 percent awhile back. Probably why they dropped the extra module, too; it wasn't needed to hit per chip performance figures. This should put it within range to properly compete with Ivy. Good for competition. Mabey I can afford an upgrade, now.
warptek2010
February 24, 2012 at 11:57pm
It wasn't too long ago we were saying the same thing about Intel at one point. Remember 'Netburst'? You guys have seem to bought into a faulty premise here. When did competition turn into a bad thing??? I could only imagine what Intel chips would cost if AMD weren't around any longer.
Arlips
February 25, 2012 at 6:31am
Netburst was a decade ago, hate to break it to you. Intel learned a lot from that debacle and AMD has been getting further and further away from Intel's lead ever since. Their Athlon glory days are a distant memory and they can no longer rely on Intel to screw up in order to gain market share.
Thanks to the massive success of the Core architecture and dominance of every Intel CPU since, Intel's R&D team is likely an order of magnitude larger and better funded than AMD's. We won't be seeing another Netburst again, especially with AMD pumping out more and more mediocre chips and disappointments like Bulldozer.
SkinnyZeroOne
February 26, 2012 at 11:56pm
@Arlips & @I Jedi Below - That's it in a nutshell -- well said my friends, well said.
I Jedi
February 25, 2012 at 11:59am
It truly is shame that AMD isn't on par with Intel anymore. To be honest, I don't see how they ever could be anymore. They're far behind, and again, short on results. Look at the debacle that just happened with their recently released Bulldozer CPU not being able to utilize all its cores properly in Windows 7.
yagermonster
February 24, 2012 at 12:34pm
hope it brings the new chip set with PCI-E 3.0 for AMD we been waiting for
Supall
February 24, 2012 at 12:28pm
In b4 the AMD hate wagon.
We'll see how much AMD improves with Piledriver. Hopefully, the performance will justify the cost when they get released. (Piledriver will be AM3, right?)
EKRboi
February 24, 2012 at 1:42pm
I sure hope they will be AM3, though I have read mixed things. I pretty much upgraded mobo's in order to be ready for bulldozer.. but ended up sticking with my 1090t after they came out.. I do know that the APUs that will be sporting piledriver cores will be a new FM2 socket.. maybe someone with definite info could chime in?
Gezzer
February 24, 2012 at 9:41pm
Kind of like the AM2+?
Yeah I got bitten by that one myself, twice. In theory a AM2+ processor will run in a AM2 board if, and that's a real big if, you get a BIOS update. Well neither my ASUS or my MSI got one, and that was another reason I jumped ship to Intel.
I'd rather they say "needs a new MB" then "may work with your old MB". AMD's "backwards compatibility" is more marketing then actuality in my experience, but your experience may vary.
Strhopper
February 25, 2012 at 4:11pm
I don't know what you are talking about? Intel releases new sockets much more often then AMD. Bulldozer was am3+ and so will piledriver. That's two generations on the same socket.
Supall
February 24, 2012 at 11:44pm
I don't know how you got screwed with the BIOS update, but I had an MSI K9A2 (the first iteration) and I was able to utilize an AM3 processor on it after a BIOS update.
Connect with MaximumPC
Featured Content
The gang discusses the GTX 690, Trinity, Ivy Bridge, Amazon, big-box stores, MMOs,...
This month's issue
Feature
Build a PC On Any Budget
Feature
Cloud Services Showdown
How-To
Encrypt Your External Drive
Build It
Upgrade an X58 Rig
Most Commented Articles
Latest Max PC Tweets
- maximumpc: Original RickRoll Video Returns to YouTube After 24-Hour Copyright Hiatus http://t.co/MaH9Sxyy20 hours 39 min ago
- maximumpc: Corsair has decided not to go forward with its $78 million IPO, citing weak equity market conditions http://t.co/A5a4DAzj20 hours 48 min ago
- maximumpc: Want to work at Maximum PC? Our Online Managing Editor, Alex, is moving away, so we need a new one. http://t.co/9Z7JCh0E2 days 18 hours ago
