Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday officially confirmed intention to use the "AMD FX" product brand for its desktop code-named Zambezi microprocessors powered by Bulldozer micro-architecture due out later this year. The FX-series chips will be primarily aimed at gamers and performance-demanding computer enthusiasts.

“AMD’s FX brand will enable an over-the-top experience for PC enthusiasts. By combining an unlocked, native eight-core processor, the latest in chipset technology, and AMD’s latest graphics cards, FX customers will enjoy an unrivalled feature set and amazing control over their PC’s performance," said Leslie Sobon, vice president of worldwide product marketing at AMD.

The FX brand has been traditionally associated with AMD’s fastest processors and most powerful platforms - those designed for unrestrained PC performance for the ultimate gaming and HD entertainment experiences. The company dropped the FX moniker for its central processing units (CPUs) in 2007 after rival Intel started to ship Core 2-series chips that offered overwhelming advantage compared to solutions by AMD.

Even though AMD did re-unveil the FX brand at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) trade show in the U.S., actual shipments of the Zambezi microprocessors will only become available in September due to technical issues that caused insufficient clock-speeds.

AMD believes that its multi-core Zambezi FX CPUs will allow it to compete head-to-head with Intel's high-end Core i-series "Sandy Bridge" processors that can sell for as much as $300 and more per chip.

AMD Orochi design is the company's next-generation processor for high-end desktop (Zambezi) and server (Valencia) markets. The chip will feature up to eight processing engines, but since it is based on Bulldozer micro-architecture, those cores will be packed into four modules. Every module which will have two independent integer cores (that will share fetch, decode and L2 functionality) with dedicated schedulers, one "Flex FP" floating point unit with two 128-bit FMAC pipes with one FP scheduler. The chip will have up to 8MB L2 cache, shared 8MB L3 cache, new dual-channel DDR3 memory controller and will use HyperTransport 3.1 bus. The Zambezi chips will use new AM3+ form-factor and will require brand new platforms.

Tags: AMD, Zambezi, Bulldozer, 32nm