AMD plans to go 12-core in 2010, compete with Intel’s 8-core

An announcement made just the other day by AMD indicates that their previous 8-core processor roadmap has now been pitched into the bin. The future holds a 12-core chip from AMD, coming in the second half of 2010. Dubbed Magny-Cours, the server world will see the benefits of what could easily be called “extreme multi-cores”. In an attempt to satiate the massive bandwidth required by a 12-core chip churning away at high speed, Magny-Cours will receive a seemingly lightweight 6MB of L3 cache shared among all cores. The chip will support DDR3 memory and, according to AMD, is easier to make than an 8-core chip.
A 6-core version, called Sao Paulo, will also be coming out in 2010. The 6-core chip will be a single package, similar to Barcelona’s 4-core chip. The 12-core version will include two 6-core chips alongside each other in a single package.
AMD has not been doing well financially, and is currently planning on laying off more than 1,600 workers by the third quarter of 2008. AMD is planning this 12-core version to compete with Intel in that time frame. Intel’s current road map will have a 6-core Xeon out this year, with an 8-core version as their follow-on in 2009. AMD’s desire to introduce the 12-core chip is an attempt to gain market share in server spaces. Today, Intel accounts for 78.5% of all x86-based sales in server spaces.
Read more at New York Times.com.