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.

It was revealed during a speech from AMD executive vice-president Henri Richard in Computex 2007 and was put into production Q1 2011. 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. 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, detailing the specifications and advantages of extending x86 "everywhere".

Design

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:

• 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

APU features table

Processors

In January 2011 AMD introduced several processors that have implemented the Bobcat core. This core is in the following AMD Accelerated Processors:

File:AMD CMC60.jpg

AMD C-60

Series ^	Model	CPU clock (MHz)	CPU cores	TDP (W)	L2 cache (KiB)	Radeon cores	GPU clock (MHz)	DirectX version	UVD	DDR3 speed
C-Series	C-30	1000	1	09	512	80	277	11	UVD 3	1066
	C-50		2		2*512		276
	C-60	1000/1333 (turbo)					276/400 (turbo)
	C-70
E-Series	E-240	1500	1	18	512		500
	E-300	1300	2		2*512
	E-350	1600					492
	E-450	1650					508/600 (turbo)			1333
	E1-1200	1400					500			1066
	E1-1500	1480					529
	E2-1800	1700					523/680			1333
	E2-2000	1750					538/700
G-Series	T-24L	0800	1	05	512		?			1066
	T-30L	1400		18						1333
	T-40N	1000	2	09	2*512		276	11	UVD 3	1066
	T-44R	1200	1		512
	T-48E	1400	2	18	2*512		280
	T-48L						?
	T-48N						492	11	UVD 3
	T-52R	1500	1		512
	T-56N	1600	2		2*512
Z-Series	Z-01	1000		5.9			276
	Z-60			4.5			275

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

See also

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

External links

• Dailytech report
• RegHardware report
• Bobcat presentation (video) at ISSCC 2011
• AMD Home Page