AMD Barcelona Arrives, The Processor War Heats Up

This moment was a long time coming. We've heard about the Barcelona line of processors from AMD for some time now, but the release date kept getting pushed further and further back due to unnamed "complications." In a world where dual core has become the norm, AMD is pushing the envelope by providing us with four cores of processing. The new quad-core Barcelona Opteron processors are supposed to be faster, more efficient, and more powerful than anything that AMD has offered in a consumer-level desktop.

As you may already know, Intel released their version of the quad core processor back in November 2006, placing AMD nearly a full generation behind its primary competitor. Talk to any AMD representative, however, and they'll tell you that they're actually ahead of the game, not behind it. This is because the Intel quad-core processor really just pulls two dual core processors and melds them into a single package. By contrast, the AMD solution is that of a "native" quad-core design. They say that this design will outdo Intel not only in terms of performance, but also power efficiency.

John Fruehe, worldwide business development manager for AMD's server and workstation division, said that "the fact that it has four cores is probably the most boring part." He goes on to describe such features like the "new 2MB level 3 cache that all four cores can share, [and] each core continues to have its own independent level 2 cache, so that you get better performance." This is all a part of the three-stage cache architecture. The L1, L2, and L3 cache are 64KB, 512KB, and 2MB respectively with the first two caches being core-specific. AMD feels that this design "is better suited for the coming age of virtualization."

Comparing Barcelona with current AMD processors, the improvements are substantial. The SSE execution width goes from 64 bits wide to 128 bits wide; the instruction fetch bandwidth increases from 16 bytes to 32 bytes per cycle; the data cache bandwidth improves from 2x64 bit loads/cycle to 2x128 bit loads/cycle; the L2 cache/memory controller bandwidth is now 128 bits/cycle rather than 64 bits; and the floating-point scheduler depth goes from 36 dedicated x 64-bit ops to 36 dedicated x 128-bit ops.

In many ways, Barcelona is not a wholly new architecture as much as it is an improvement over current designs. AMD took what they already had and made it better, rather than creating something completely new altogether. It will be interesting to see actual systems in action, comparing AMD's quad-core solution against those offered by Intel, the company that still outsells AMD by a fairly significant margin.

In fact, on the same day that AMD finally announced the availability of the Barcelona microprocessors (today), Intel decided to rain on their parade by issuing a statement telling the world that Intel processors are selling better than ever and are doing much better than expected. Normally, this wouldn't be a cause for alarm for AMD, but given that Intel wasn't scheduled to make an earnings announcement until October 16th, it is clear that today's statement was pure strategy. In it, Intel exclaims that demand for its products was "brisker than originally thought" and the margins would be higher than expected.

And the processor war continues. I've seen a lot more AMD-powered computers than I have in the past, so just based on my personal experience, I'd say that AMD is slowly taking away some market share from the giant Intel. Where do you stand? Are you an AMD aficionado, an Intel loyalist, or do you just grab whatever's best at the time?