Piledriver (microarchitecture)
| Produced | From mid-2012 to present |
|---|---|
| Common manufacturer(s) | |
| Min. feature size | 32 nm SOI GB |
| Instruction set | AMD64 (x86-64) |
| Socket(s) |
|
| Predecessor | Bulldozer - Family 15h |
| Successor | Steamroller - Family 15h (3rd-gen) |
| Core name(s) |
AMD Piledriver Family 15h is a microarchitecture developed by AMD as the second-generation successor to Bulldozer. It targets desktop, mobile and server markets. It is used for the AMD Accelerated Processing Unit (formerly Fusion), AMD FX, and the Opteron line of processors.
The changes over Bulldozer are incremental. Piledriver uses the same "module" design. Its main improvements are to branch prediction and FPU/integer scheduling, along with a switch to hard-edge flip-flops to improve power consumption. This resulted in clock speed gains of 8–10% and a performance increase of around 15% with similar power characteristics. FX-9590 is around 40% faster than Bulldozer-based FX-8150, mostly because of higher clock speed.
Products based on Piledriver were first released on 15 May 2012 with the AMD Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), code-named Trinity, series of mobile products. APUs aimed at desktops followed in early October 2012 with Piledriver-based FX-series CPUs released later in the month.Opteron server processors based upon Piledriver were announced in early December 2012.
Piledriver includes improvements over the original Bulldozer microarchitecture:
The K suffix denotes an unlocked A-series processor. All FX-series processors are unlocked unless otherwise specified.
Leaked roadmaps showed Piledriver CPUs featuring up to ten cores as part of the Komodo platform. Komodo was to launch in 2012 on the FM2 socket, but this never happened. AMD kept the AM3+ socket for the FX series and put the Piledriver-based APUs on FM2.
In 2010 AMD revealed that the 2nd generation was scheduled for 2012; AMD referred to this generation as Enhanced Bulldozer. This later generation of Bulldozer core was codenamed Piledriver.
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