New architecture promises to be completely different from Phenom, and capable of brand new features
AMD has squeezed an awful lot out of its AMD64 architecture since it first materialised in 2003, and even the latest K10 core used in the Phenom chips uses basically the same architecture with a different cache system. However, the company says that it’s now looking at a whole new architecture for the next generation of CPUs.
AMD’s technical director of sales and marketing for EMEA, Giuseppe Amato, told Custom PC that ‘if I look at the next generation architecture of our CPU, then it will definitely not be, how can I say, comparable with the Phenom. It will look completely different.’ Amato was unable to give us any specific details of the new architecture, but did add that it would ‘solve problems that today we think can never be addressed by hardware.’
The AMD64 architecture introduced us to new features such as 64-bit desktop computing, as well as the integrated memory controller. It gave Intel’s NetBurst architecture a good for its money too, consistently out-performing Pentium 4 chips in our benchmarks. However, the new AMD64-based Phenom chips are unable to compete with Intel’s new Core 2 Quad chips at the top end of the market, with AMD positioning even the top-end Phenom chips at a similar price to Intel’s Core 2 Quad Q6600.
Intel also decided to go back to the drawing board in terms of its CPU architecture when it went from NetBurst to Core, which was interestingly more like Intel’s ancient P6 Pentium Pro core than a Pentium 4 chip. What would you like to see in a new CPU architecture from AMD? And what sort of problems could be solved by the architecture that ‘we think can never be addressed by hardware?’ Let us know your thoughts.
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