AMD has pushed out its all new Bulldozer CPU architecture until 2010. AMD's graphics subsidiary ATI has also adjusted its roadmap, delaying the R700 family of GPUs until 2009.
At AMD's annual analyst's meeting in December, senior AMD suits made a series of candid admissions regarding the poor performance of its new quad-core Opteron and Phenom CPUs. Speaking about the troubled chips, AMD CEO was particularly candid, saying, "we blew it and we are very humbled by it."
At the meeting, revised product roadmaps detailing AMD's plans through the end of 2009 were released. Notable by its absence was Bulldozer. It was as recently as July that the Bulldozer processor architecture was announced, described as AMD's first ground-up new processor core since the K7 of 1999.
At the time, AMD did not reveal in depth details but did divulge that Bulldozer would pack up to 16 cores using its new M-SPACE modular architecture.
Highest performing CPU ever?
AMD also claimed it would be "the highest performing single and multi-threaded compute core in history." It slated the new Bulldozer core for an early 2009 release as part of the upcoming Fusion family of processors. Fusion is AMD's name for a new generation of PC processors that combine a traditional CPU and graphics core in a single chip.
However, Ruiz revealed last week that AMD has decided to take a more conservative approach in response to customer demands for fewer design risks and more timely product launches. As a result, Fusion chips will now be based on the K10 architecture. As for Bulldozer, it will now arrive in 2010 in server chips with desktop variants to follow later.
A close inspection of the new roadmap also suggests that ATI's R700 series of graphics will not now appear until 2009. Just like AMD's troubled K10 CPU design, ATI's current R600 graphics family has taken a beating from its main competition in the DirectX 10 video chipset market, Nvidia's GeForce 8 Series.
The R700 family had been expected to redress the balance next year. Given that Nvidia is thought to be preparing to launch its GeForce 9 range of GPUs, any delay in the arrival of the R700 range is not good news.
