News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on AMD's Bulldozer server benchmarks are here, and they're a catastrophe.

Re:AMD's Bulldozer server benchmarks are here, and they're a... by zdw on Monday November 21, 2011 @11:49PM (#3264131)
AMD's problem is that they can't compete either in the low power high performance (the 45w and under laptop chips), or high power high performance markets (like the high end Xeons).

So they build massively parallel chips, and try new stuff like the Bulldozer platform, which creates a bunch of trade offs. It's very similar in concept to the Sun/Oracle Sparc T-series, with lots of great performing integer cores, and (at least on the first models) less than stellar floating point.

The best thing they ever did was to acquire ATI, which gave them great integrated graphics and allowed fairly balanced and inexpensive platforms. Their long term problem is that the really lucrative parts of the business are all being taken by Intel.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:AMD's Bulldozer server benchmarks are here, and they're a... by bad_user on Tuesday November 22, 2011 @02:24AM (#3264520)
They did the same thing back in the days of AMD K6 ... fast integer ops, poor floating point. Then AMD Athlon came, built on the same foundation and Intel never knew what hit them.

Don't dismiss Bulldozer just yet. AMD has this uncanny ability to make short term compromises that benefit them in the long term.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:AMD's Bulldozer server benchmarks are here, and they're a... by gjm11 on Tuesday November 22, 2011 @06:47AM (#3265126)
I worry that you're saying they have "this uncanny ability" on the basis of one instance where they've done it. The other possibility would be that they just got lucky once (helped by Intel's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad P4 design) and haven't had similar luck success before or since.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:AMD's Bulldozer server benchmarks are here, and they're a... by lucian1900 on Tuesday November 22, 2011 @05:43AM (#3264957)
I would say the have the best you can get on the market for low power, high performance with the Fusion chips. I have one in my Thinkpad and it has great CPU performance, excellent GPU performance and the battery lasts 7h.
[ Parent | on HN ]