AMD K10 family is the latest generation of AMD x86 microprocessors.
The first nine microprocessors from this family, quad-core Third
Generation Opterons, were introduced on September 10 2007. 2 months
after that AMD released first desktop Phenom quad-core
microprocessors, and the first triple-core Phenom X3 CPUs were
released in March 2008. At this moment (March 2008) there are no
budget or mobile families based on K10 micro-architecture.
K10 microprocessors include many performance improvements. The most
important ones are listed below:
- Support for up to 4 cores per CPU.
- Level 3 cache shared between all cores.
- Faster HyperTransport link.
- Improved integrated memory controller which may be configured as
dual-channel controller, or as two single channel controllers.
- The width of AMD Floating Point unit was increased to 128 bits.
When combined with other core improvements (ability to load two
128-bit values per cycle, faster instruction decoding) this allows
the CPU to process up to two 128-bit SSE instructions per cycle.
- Enhanced power management features. The CPU can dynamically adjust
frequency of individual cores depending on their load, change voltage
of integrated memory independently from core voltage of CPU cores,
and includes other power-saving features.
- Enhanced branch prediction and out-of order execution.
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