AMD's Bulldozer architecture to battle Intel's Core i7

(PhysOrg.com) -- AMD's upcoming four-, six- and eight-core processors, code name Zambezi, is based on its Bulldozer architecture and will target Intel’s flagship 9000 series six-core desktop CPU’s. AMD's Zambezi processors will feature AMD's TurboCore 2.0 technology and will be listed under their FX line-up.

At present AMD is not able to compete in performance against Intel’s Core i7 series “Sandy Bridge” but aims to go to battle with its next generation Bulldozer-chips.

According to report from X-bit Labs, leaked AMD documents reveal that Zambezi processors offer similar capabilities to Intel’s Core i7 Sandy Bridge processors. The report also states that AMD’s Zambezi features more over-clocked cores, dual graphics, OpenCL and GPU capabilities. This makes Zambezi more of an integrated graphics chip than a desktop CPU.

AMD’s Zambezi chip will feature eight processing engines with its cores packed into four modules. The Bulldozer architecture includes two integer units, along with one floating-point unit and two threads on separate integer units instead of the single-core solution.

Because of Intel’s manufacturing processing error discovered in their Series 6 Sandy Bridge Support chipsets, AMD hopes to gain some market share utilizing their Bulldozer micro-architecture.

According to IDC’s latest estimates, Intel holds an 80.8 percent share of the PC processor market in the fourth quarter which is a 0.4 percent increase. AMD, on the other hand, only holds a market share of 19.9 percent and is down 0.4 percent.

AMD plans to come out fighting by leveraging their Zambezi processors utilizing their Bulldozer architecture. An AMD spokesperson told CRN, on Monday, that their Zambezi CPU carrying the FX brand is planned to be introduced in Q2 of this year.