1. The Next Generationof Microprocessors Senior ASIC Design Engineer Central Engineering AMD igor.ikodinovic@amd.com Igor Ikodinović

2. A Paradigm Shift New inflection point in computing industry driven by: • Energy efficiency becoming increasingly important • New applications using parallel algorithms • Scarce resources for parallel application development Market trends: • Balance of performance, energy efficiency, and cost • Equalizing hardware and software costs • The move to virtualization • Emergence of stream processing • Diverging system requirements

3. x86 Processor Generations Different Methods for Improving Application Performance 2010 1990 1985 2000 Generation two: Homogeneous Multicores Generation three: Heterogeneous Multicores Generation one: Frequency & Architecture Improved throughput = Better performance Higher frequency = Better performance Best hardware for the task = Better performance, energy efficiency, and lower cost

4. Fusion CPU-centric approach • Extending the standard x86 instruction set • Not optimal in terms of cost/performance/energy GPU-centric approach • All processing delegated onto GPUs • Not optimal for fine-grain parallelism Balance and optimization approach • AMD: Fusion = CPU + GPU + MM accelerators • Intel: CPU + C/GPU grid (Larrabee)

5. Key Issues Power • Static: HVT cells, voltage islands, power gating • Dynamic: voltage & clock throttling (power controler) Performance • CPU architecture: SMP, MCM, # cores/CPU, # ALUs/core, cache hierarchy • System architecture: NUMA, system memory, point-to-point I/O links Cost • Design for yield • Test & verification: Months x 100s of platforms

6. Design & Technology Design • Shift from custom to standard cell • Flow automation • Worldwide team collaboration Technology • New technology nodes: 45nm, 32nm, 22nm, … • New litography techniques: immersion litography • Old story: SOI (AMD CPUs) vs Bulk Si (rest of world) • High-k gates (to address gate leakage) • Work adapted to a given process (Fab)