by Anton Shilov
11/15/2009 | 09:01 AM
Advanced Micro Devices disclosed details about its forthcoming Bobcat core at its Analyst Day on Thursday. While the chip seems to be very power-efficient, it does not seem to be a performance leader to say at least. Moreover, it will only be available in 2011.
AMD Bobcat x86 core is due to be released in 2011 as part of AMD Brazos platform and AMD Ontario accelerated processing unit (APU, a microprocessor featuring graphics processing unit on the same piece of silicon and/or substrate). According to AMD, Bobcat chips will feature x86-64, virtualization, SSE, SSE2, SSE3 technologies and will be single-threaded with out-of-order execution. The actual Ontario microprocessor will be able to offer 90% of today’s “mainstream performance” in less than half of die area.
“Bobcat is a very low-power x86 processor core first featured in the ‘Ontario’ APU primarily aimed at notebook processing in ultrathin and netbook form factors. ‘Bobcat’ is designed to be an extremely small, highly flexible, single threaded x86 core that easily can be scaled up and combined with other IP in SoC configurations,” an official description of the chip by AMD reads.
The first implementation of Bobcat is a dual-core processor with graphics core code-named Ontario. In fact, it is not completely clear whether Ontario is a system-on-chip (SoC) with graphics engine on the same piece of substrate or a monolith die.
“[Ontario] is a dual-core system-on-chip implementation and APU of the upcoming “Bobcat” core for ultrathin notebooks, netbooks and <20W new market products. Ontario is designed to offer a performance PC experience in a low-power design,” an official claim by AMD says.
Based on the information provided by AMD, the Bobcat seems to be more progressive than today’s Intel Atom. However, without SSE4, SSE5 or AVX the chip is unlikely to offer truly high performance when it is introduced in 2011. Moreover, AMD’s claims regarding “90% of mainstream performance” seem a little strange: it is unclear what exactly AMD considers as “mainstream” today.