How Fusion fits into Torrenza

AMD’s Torrenza initiative is slowly taking shape, with first products surfacing here and there. While Torrenza encourages hardware developers to create devices such as accelerators around AMD processors, Fusion will become the heart of an “accelerated Torrenza platform”. In AMD’s vision, a Fusion (accelerated)  processor could be directly connected to either (1) a third party HTX accelerator or (2) to a third party socket compatible accelerator (for example on a dual-socket motherboard.)

There is also the idea of connecting PCI Express-based accelerators to the chipset, which has to deal with latency issues and a certain amount of data overhead. However, this specific connection appears to be the favored foundation for first generation Torrenza systems: For example, Tarari has developed an accelerator card with the sole purpose of accelerating virus scans: While four Opteron cores are able to process about 300 Mb/s virus scan data through the Kaspersky anti-virus software package on 50% processor load, the Tarari card achieves about 6.2 Gb/s on about 2% processor load, AMD said.

The second socket on the Wahoo board for Agena FX quad-core processors could also be used for a third party accelerator.

Torrenza may go into different ways over time, as the platform model is established through a “learning by doing” approach, according to AMD.

 
Manufacturing challenges

AMD has enjoyed massive growth in recent months, if we forget the last two quarters for a moment. But that growth came with growing pains as well. Some of these growing pains can be found in the firm’s manufacturing.

AMD underestimated the demand for its Turion 64 X2 processors in the fourth quarter of last year and overestimated the demand for its desktop processors on the other side. As a result, the company ended up with the wrong mix of products, which put the company in the inconvenient position of having to choose whom to send the Turions and whom not. The company decided to provide preferred treatment to its new Tier 1 customers (Dell, Lenovo) and disappoint smaller customers, who ended up buying Core 2 Duos from Intel.

Assumed that Fusion will really go into the direction that AMD has laid out and assumed that Fusion will spread out into a number of different processors across different product segments, reaching from high performance computing down to the notebook and from the DTV down to portable devices, then AMD will certainly need much more production flexibility than it has today.

Currently, the company produces processors in two AMD fabs (Fab 30/38 and Fab 36 in Dresden, Germany), as well as in three contracted fabs from Chartered, TSMC and UMC. However, only Fab 30, which will become Fab 38 after the conversion for 300 mm wafer capability, Fab 36 and Chartered are able to produce processors based on SOI, which Fusion is expected to use. The fabs of UMC and TSMC are currently utilized for “bulk” production of former ATI products such as graphics processors, handheld media processors and chipsets.

Fab 30 in Dresden, Germany

Comments (54)