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.
| General information | |
|---|---|
| Launched | early 2011 |
| Discontinued | present |
| Common manufacturer(s) | |
| Architecture and classification | |
| Technology node | 40 nm |
| Instruction set | AMD64 (x86-64) |
| Physical specifications | |
| Socket(s) |
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| Products, models, variants | |
| Core name(s) | |
| History | |
| Successor(s) | Jaguar - Family 16h |
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".