Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 3.44. A block diagram of an eight-core Bulldozer CPU. Source:
Other features in Bulldozer include AMD's Turbo Core (a built-in overclocking feature) and new
CPU instructions (AES, AVX, FMA4, and XOP). These instructions support faster encryption,
floating point math, rendering, and video transcoding on software optimized for them. Bulldozer uses
a 32nm manufacturing process, compared to the 45nm used by most K10-class parts. FX processors
based on Bulldozer are completely unlocked for easier overclocking. AMD sells an optional liquid
cooler for FX Bulldozer and Piledriver CPUs.
Bulldozer processors are optimized for multithreaded software, but performance benchmarks were
disappointing, as most applications were not optimized for Bulldozer's new architecture. Further
specifications for Bulldozer processers are listed in
Table 3.25
.
Table 3.25. AMD FX Processors Using Bulldozer Microarchitecture
Table 3.25
lists the processors using Bulldozer microarchitecture.
AMD introduced an improved version of its Bulldozer architecture, Piledriver, in October 2012.
Compared to Bulldozer, Piledriver includes these improvements:
