Gigabyte Technology, one of the largest makers of mainboards in the world, on Monday unveiled a lineup of mainboards with AM3+ socket designed for AMD FX-series microprocessors code-named Zambezi and powered by AMD's next-generation Bulldozer micro-architecture.

Gigabyte AM3+ "Black Socket" mainboards are powered by AMD's current-generation core-logic sets, including AMD 7-series and AMD 8-series. The new motherboards - which feature a black CPU socket - fully support AMD's next-generation FX-series microprocessors with up to eight cores and made using 32nm process technology. the platforms also support existing AMD Athlon II and AMD Phenom II chips in AM3 form-factor with dual-channel DDR3 memory controllers.

Gigabyte is the first company in the world to release mainboards with AM3+ socket. Meanwhile, Asustek Computer claims that even its AM3 motherboards will support AMD FX-series "Zambezi" processors with Bulldozer micro-architecture.

The first breed of AMD FX8000, FX6000 and FX4000 currently known under Zambezi code-name will completely support all the advantages that the Bulldozer micro-architecture is supposed to bring, including new Flex FP floating point processing unit. The new chips in maximum eight-core configurations are projected - by AMD's internal documents - to offer roughly 50% performance improvement over Phenom II-series microprocessors in multimedia applications.

AMD Orochi design is the company's next-generation processor for high-end desktop (Zambezi) and server (Valencia) markets. The chip will feature 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 shared L3 cache, new dual-channel DDR3 memory controller and will use HyperTransport 3.1 bus.

The Sunnyvale, California-based chip designer plans to introduce AMD 900-series chipsets compatible with Zambezi processors in Q2 2011. The Bulldozer processors, Radeon HD 6000 "Northern Islands" discrete graphics cards  and AMD 900-series core-logic sets will power AMD's next-generation enthusiast-class platform code-named Scorpius.

Tags: Gigabyte, AMD, Bulldozer, Phenom, 32nm, Orochi, Zambezi