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Bobcat (microarchitecture)

The AMD Bobcat Family 14h is a microarchitecture created by AMD for its AMD APUs, aimed at a low-power/low-cost market.^[1]

It was revealed during a speech from AMD executive vice-president Henri Richard in Computex 2007 and was put into production Q1 2011.^[2] One of the major supporters was executive vice-president Mario A. Rivas who felt it was difficult to compete in the x86 market with a single core optimized for the 10–100 W range and actively promoted the development of the simpler core with a target range of 1–10 W. In addition, it was believed that the core could migrate into the hand-held space if the power consumption can be reduced to less than 1 W.

Bobcat cores are used together with GPU cores in accelerated processing units (APUs) under the "Fusion" brand.^[3][4] A simplified architecture diagram was released at AMD's Analyst Day in November 2009. This is similar in concept with earlier AMD research in 2003,^[5] detailing the specifications and advantages of extending x86 "everywhere".

Design[edit]

The Bobcat x86 CPU core design has since been completed and implemented in AMD APU processor products with a TDP of 18 W or less. The core is targeted at low-power markets like netbooks/nettops, ultra-portable laptops, consumer electronics and the embedded market. Since its launch, Bobcat-based CPUs have also been used by OEMs on larger laptops. Architecture specifics:^[6]

• 64-bit core
• Out-of-order execution
• Advanced branch predictor
• Dual x86 instruction decoder
• 64-bit integer unit with two ALUs
• Floating-point unit with two 64-bit pipes
• Single channel 64-bit memory controller
• 32 KiB instruction + 32 KiB data L1 cache
• 512 KiB - 1 MiB L2 cache
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4A, ABM

In February 2013, AMD detailed plans for a successor to Bobcat codenamed Jaguar.

Features[edit]

APU features table

Processors[edit]

In January 2011 AMD introduced several processors that have implemented the Bobcat core. This core is in the following AMD Accelerated Processors:^[6][7][8]

^ E-Series & C-Series are standard parts, G-Series are embedded parts

See also[edit]

• Bulldozer, a new core for the 10 to 125 Watt TDP range.
• List of AMD processors with 3D graphics

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Dailytech report
• RegHardware report
• Bobcat presentation (video) ^{[permanent dead link]}atISSCC 2011
• AMD Home Page