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We have some good news for everyone who would like to see AMD make a big comeback in style. Since the time when Athlon used to be a high-end brand, and by that we mean the good old K8 core, it's been a while since AMD had a high end part capable of competing with Intel on a par. However, initial test scores that slipped to a hands of industry source are suggesting that Bulldozer should come really close to new Core i7 six-core CPUs. Bulldozer has both six and eight cores in the pipeline and they should be launching...

Roadmap claim According to a roadmap leaked by a Swedish forum, the desktop version of Bulldozer comes by April. Engineering samples of Zambezi AM3+ CPU are expected in December 2010 and hopefully this has already happened. Production candidate 32nm silicon should be ready by February 2011 and the CPU should be production ready by March 2011. The launch should take place in April, which is the first month of Q2 2011. Many people expected this CPU at a later date, and this up to 8-core processor series might be something to get AMD much needed traction and attention.

I spoke too soon. Earlier today I outlined AMD’s roadmap for 2010 - 2011. In 2011 AMD will introduce two next-generation microarchitectures: Bulldozer for the high end desktop and server space and Bobcat for the price/power efficient ultra mobile market. I originally said that AMD wasn’t revealing any more about its next-gen architectures, but AMD just proved me wrong as they unveiled the first block diagrams of both cores.****************************snip****************************** First up, Bulldozer. I hinted at the architecture in this afternoon’s article: “A major focus is going to be improving on one of AMD’s biggest weaknesses today: heavily threaded performance. Intel...