Piledriver (microarchitecture)
AMD Piledriver Family 15h is a microarchitecture developed by AMD as the second-generation successor to Bulldozer. It targets desktop, mobile and server markets. It is used for the AMD Accelerated Processing Unit (formerly Fusion), AMD FX, and the Opteron line of processors.
| General information | |
|---|---|
| Launched | mid-2012 |
| Common manufacturer(s) | |
| Architecture and classification | |
| Technology node | 32 nm SOI GB |
| Instruction set | AMD64 (x86-64) |
| Physical specifications | |
| Socket(s) |
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| Products, models, variants | |
| Core name(s) | |
| History | |
| Predecessor(s) | Bulldozer - Family 15h |
| Successor(s) | Steamroller - Family 15h (3rd-gen) |
| Support status | |
| iGPU unsupported | |
The changes over Bulldozer are incremental. Piledriver uses the same "module" design. Its main improvements are to branch prediction and FPU/integer scheduling, along with a switch to hard-edge flip-flops to improve power consumption. This resulted in clock speed gains of 8–10% and a performance increase of around 15% with similar power characteristics. FX-9590 is around 40% faster than Bulldozer-based FX-8150, mostly because of higher clock speed.
Products based on Piledriver were first released on 15 May 2012 with the AMD Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), code-named Trinity, series of mobile products. APUs aimed at desktops followed in early October 2012 with Piledriver-based FX-series CPUs released later in the month. Opteron server processors based upon Piledriver were announced in early December 2012.