The processor can be considered as the true brain of your computer and the different variants that can be offered in the market will determine its performance. Let's review here everything related to AMD processors.
AMD processors: the slow growth of a developer company
The AMD processors they have had to walk a long journey of decades to become an unappealable option within their IT market niche. The eternal rivalry with powerful names like Intel, the various legal lawsuits and the stumbling blocks in the manufacture of its products have created a cycle of false announced deaths and unexpected resurrections in the company. However, at this moment the company seems to finally be experiencing an indefinite moment of fat cows and it is useful to review a little the history of how they got here.
What is AMD?
The acronym for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) designates a company founded more than fifty years ago, in 1969, in California in the United States. Its members, Jack Gifford, Edwin Turney, Jim Giles, Larry Stenger, Frank Botte, Steven Simonsen, John Carey and Jerry Sanders, came from companies with strong history in the field of Silicon Valley integrated circuits, such as Fairchild Semiconductors. So at the beginning, the newly founded company also launched itself into producing logic integrated circuits, also entering, a few years later, the RAM memory market.
The great leap towards what would be their commercial destination took place in 1977, when these entrepreneurs decided to create their own microprocessor from the copy made, by reverse engineering methods, of the Intel 8080 product, naming the result as AMD 8080.
From there, AMD would be busy working in the world of processors, following its first venture with models such as Am2901, Am29116 and Am293xx, specially designed to be expanded by other processors (bit slicing). Soon a different processor would come, the AMD 29k, notorious for being a chip that integrated video graphics units together with EPROM memories.
But until then AMD was still connected to the formats copied from Intel. This would change with future models, first created from scratch: the AMD K5, AMD K6 and AMD K7 processors, released in the late 90s. The latter, the AMD K7 processor, could no longer even share the motherboard of Intel processors, requiring a board and socket unique to its own structure.
Struggle with Intel
This division of its models would have its explanation in the Judicial Courts of a decade earlier, where Intel was accused of breaching a contract signed with AMD in 1982. This consisted of a kind of granting of rights to produce its x86 processor models and satisfy altogether the demand of IBM. Intel soon frowned on the implicit competition posed in the market by AMD's parallel autonomy and refused in 1986 to disclose further technical details of its products.
The lawsuit dragged on in time, forcing AMD to guess with its engineers the operation of Intel products, again through an even more clandestine method of reverse engineering, and then reproduce them in its own way. In the end, Intel would lose the case, paying a billion dollars for breach of contract, but the bad experience had left a bad taste in AMD, which knew that it should seek its own north outside the orbit of Intel.
The AMD processors K5, AMD K6, and AMD K7 were then part of that first independent effort, which would continue with greater success in its early-8st century K64 processor, which added the 86-bit extension to xXNUMX instructions. This fact greatly changed the history of the processors of its time, since all models from that moment applied this same extension, including Microsoft machines. And it would also finally reverse the dynamics with Intel, which would be forced to reverse engineer to capture the new AMD format.
The 64 Athlon 2 X2005 processor model would also bring another major innovation that would praise AMD, dual-core, which greatly increased the product's processing power and capacity when dealing with multiple tasks simultaneously.
This would be the starting gun for other manufacturers to begin over the years to add more and more cores to the processor to increase its power, reaching the current figure of 32 processor cores. But after these two strokes of leadership and innovation, AMD would once again be relegated to second place by the arrival of the famous Intel Core 2 Duo.
More and more cores: the Bulldozer fiasco
AMD would be forced to leap even further to survive in the competition with its eternal rival, launching the 2007 Phenom processor. This consisted of a K8 architecture with a quad-core system, for the first time in the history of these devices.
Three years later, in 2010, AMD was venturing even with the six processor cores in its Phenom II X6, to catch up with Intel, which had already reached four cores. And then, from the purchase of the graphics card manufacturer company ATI Technologies, AMD embarked on the Fusion project, which sought to merge the processor with the graphics card and 16 lanes for peripheral devices in the same capsule.
From this objective the AMD Llano product was born, which allowed the company to put itself ahead of Intel momentarily, due to the adaptability of its creation with the world of 3D PC video games, which needed the greatest possible integration between processors and graphics. Intel couldn't compete with its Westmere offering of lower-powered processors and admitted defeat, while preparing the next creative coup.
This would come through the so-called second generation of Intel processors called Sandy Bridge. Although AMD tried again to go head-to-head with the tech giant through an even larger number of cores, its 2011 Bulldozer product had less power overall than the Sandy Bridge, with far fewer cores. The result was a performance fiasco that led the company into a creative and business-care slump. How to get back in the ring?
A resurrection: the miracle of AMD Zen and Ryzen processors
The answer that the AMD company found was to resort to two fundamental signings to raise its head again. The first was an old friend of the house, engineer Jim Keller, who had been instrumental in the past in the construction of the K8 architecture and in the production of the historic dual-core Athlon 64s. His reincorporation after a long absence was decisive in bringing rigor and inventiveness to a company already stagnant in forward flight.
The other signing, on the other hand, was the now powerful Lisa Su, a Taiwanese businesswoman and engineer who stood as the undisputed leader of AMD as its new CEO. Her work brought a freshness and tenacity to the company that really made it rise from the ashes, leaving behind rumors of bankruptcy, sale and disappearance. No wonder she was named Executive of the Year in 2014 by the prestigious EE Times magazine and was also featured prominently on the list of the World's Great Leaders in the 2017 publication of Fortune magazine.
Lisa Su's strategy was based on the radical diversification of AMD's goals. Despite some experimentation in previous years, the company had focused on producing processors for the PC market, leaving just 10% for products from other niches. The new president proposed raising that figure to 40%, achieving it just three years after joining the company.
This percentage was dedicated to areas considered secondary in previous times, but now becoming areas of unequivocal growth, such as the field of video games (on Xbox One and PS4 consoles), Data Processing Centers and virtual immersion technologies. This mission led the company to work together with greats such as Microsoft and Sony, expanding its field of influence.
Following this new business approach, new products would come. AMD's new triumphant litter would be called Ryzen and would be based on an innovative architecture called Zen developed by engineer Keller. These new products would be the first modular feature processors on the market, with eight very powerful cores this time, betting on individual power rather than quantity extension.
The evolution of the Ryzen series has spanned from 2017 to the present, bringing more than four years of good performance, sales success, and rave reviews, overcoming any initial skepticism about the company. Intel has lagged far behind for having settled in early, having to rush to take action, such as hiring Jim Keller for two years.
The nickname Zen of the architecture of AMD comes, as is known, from the Buddhist philosophy. It preaches meditation, inner strength, and the calm reception of what the universe has to offer. AMD experienced this moment of leisurely reflection after Bulldozer, then skyrocketing into infinity thanks to the providential hands of Jim Keller and Lisa Su.
Not everything has to be definitively lost in the technological and business field, as long as you learn how to surf the rhythms of the evolution of our time. You might also be interested in reading about the 4k graphics card.
How to differentiate AMD processors?
The wide range of AMD processors In these years of technological peak it is so vast that it can be quite disorienting if we are not used to the jargon of the environment. The overlap of generations and names in the history of the AMD catalog is almost unapproachable at times, even if we discard those that are no longer on the market. So we will see a short list of these products with the fastest way to identify them.
If you have a special interest in everything related to digital processors, you may find it useful to visit this other article on our website dedicated to more powerful processors Follow the link!
FX Series, Athlon and Bulldozer Architecture APUs
Despite being part of an outdated past for AMD, the Bulldozer architecture series continues to have a long life for many users, due to its stability of modular structure with cores and because of its low cost at this point in global development.
The first range that needs to be distinguished is the FX series, the top at the time for the company, with versions that range between four and eight cores, with an AM3 + socket. The four-number nomenclature to differentiate each product consists of the following:
- The first number in the series that follows the letters FX indicates the number of cores. For example, an FX 4350 will have four cores, as indicated by the first number 4. The same will happen with the FX 6350 (six cores) and the FX 8350 (eight cores).
- The second number in the series after the FX will indicate the type of architecture under which the product was created. Product number 3 FX 8350, for example, represents an enhancement to the Bulldozer architecture called the Piledriver.
- The third number of the code after the letters FX has to do with the GHz, the working frequency of the processor, the main reason why FX models have been maintained over time. The higher the number, the higher the base frequency of the model. The equivalences are somewhat complicated, but it is enough to state that an FX 4300 model has a frequency of 3,8 GHz-4 GHz. An FX 4350 will have on the other hand 4,2 GHz-4,3 GHz.
With two quad-core modules and FM2 / FM2 + socket, the famous Athlon series should also be reviewed in its classification. While it has lagged far behind in the tide of technological development, it is still quite functional in some basic computing or digital gaming endeavors. Its nomenclature consists of the following:
- The first number of the classification code after the X4 indicates the type of architecture used in its manufacture. Each number symbolizes a different architecture in the company: the number 9 on an Athlon X4 940 represents the Excavator architecture, the 4 on the Athlon X4 750 is again the Piledriver architecture and the 8 on an Athon X4 830 represents Steamroller.
- The second number of the code after the X4, for its part, indicates the different working speeds of the model. An Athlon X4 950, for example, runs at a speed of 3,5 GHz-3,8 GHz. An Athlon X4 940 will run at a speed of 3,2 GHz-3,6 GHz.
The APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) processors developed by AMD, with four cores, two modules, GPU with 512 shaders and FM2-FM2 + socket, also have their own classification codes, which can be summarized as follows:
- The first letter and number represent the number of cores in the model. An A6, as in the case of the A6 9500 APU, will indicate two cores and a whole module, as well as their lower numbers. Instead, an A8, like the A8 9600 APU, will have four cores, just like its top numbers.
- The first number the model refers to the generation and architecture of the model. APUs marked 6000 are from Piledriver, 7000 are from Steamroller, 8000 are from Excavator, and 9000 are from Excavator v2. The generation would come, in the ascending order above, as Terascale 3, GCN and GCN 1.2.
- The second number is also the working speed GHz, with higher numbers representing the higher frequencies.
- On some models the letter K will appear in the code. This indicates processors with the possibility of overclocking by having the multiplier unlocked.
AMD Ryzen processors
Ryzen processors, a true miracle for your company because of the sudden way in which it elevated them in the competition with Intel and because of the low-price quality that it has managed to impose on the market, also has a particular nomenclature. General consumer Ryzen models are classified as follows:
- As in the previous cases, the number one indicates the number of cores in the model. The Ryzen 5 have six cores, the Ryzen 7 have eight and the Ryzen 3, four.
- The second number indicates the generation of the product. There are here two basic generations for this type of model: the ZEN (indicated by the number 1000) or the ZEN + (number 2000).
- The third number is the GHz working speed, with a Ryzen 7 1800X running at 3,7 GHz-4 GHz and a Ryzen 7 1700X clocked at 3,4 GHz-3,8 GHz.
- The letter X, finally, indicates the highest working frequencies with respect to the codes that do not have it. A Ryzen 7 1700, for example, has a lower operating frequency than the Ryzen 7 1700X.
The following video offers us a fairly simple, complete and youthful guide to be able to identify the different ranges and generations of the AMD processors. An audiovisual resource that can expand the information presented in this text.
So far our article on AMD processors. Let's hope that the market competition between different processor companies will continue to usher us into technological eras of unimaginable heights. See you soon