AMD’s next-gen 32nm Roadmap leaked!

The Manhattan and Northern Island should be nearing the end of the pipeline

The AMD Roadmap to 32nm

Intel has been showing off its 32nm roadmap at various conferences around the world for quite some time now. Don’t expect AMD to be left behind. Folks at Brightsideofnews.com got their hands on a couple of slides that shows a very exciting Road-map to counter Intel in coming years. Also these slides reveal something which is believed to be otherwise till now.

If these are actually official slides, as the Japanese site ASCII.jp claims, we can safely confirm that AMD plans to launch two 32nm next-generation graphics architectures in 2010 and 2011. There are no desktop upgrades, only notebooks. The only new GPU parts planned to debut are 32nm Manhattan ones, targeted to be a discrete mobile platforms in 2010. The reason for this could be a trial run by the new chip contractors, Globalfoundries, in successfully running the 32nm platform. If this trial fails to impress, the chips could still come out from TSMC in 2010. TSMC is currently having issues with their 40nm manufacturing process.

Manhattan is a discrete GPU option for Danube and Nile notebook platforms, accompanied by a quad-core Champlain and dual-core Geneva processors. Danube and Nile notebooks support DirectX 10.1 and can be upgraded to support DirectX with one of three Manhattan GPUs - Park, Madison and Broadway. Following NVIDIA’s strategy, AMD is also planning to first shrink the 40nm platforms to 32nm, and then start making 32nm processors independently. NVIDIA is expected to do the same with its 40nm platforms in 2010.

Next, AMD plans to debut Northern Islands in 2011 – which should be their true next-generation part. It is quite arguable whether Evergreen will pull off DirectX 11.1 by then, which is unsure – but 2011 winter should see the dawn of a completely new architecture.

Unlike Manhattan, Northern Islands should be available in both desktops and notebooks. It makes sense as AMD is expected to sort out the 32nm manufacturing program schedule by then. The Fusion CPU+GPU coming next year would use a Bulldozer core for high-end and Bobcat core for ultra-low power CPUs, and the Llano in between. Llano is a combination of already existing STARS cores [K10, K10.5 i.e. Agena/Deneb] and the Northern Islands GPU, all 32nm architecture.

Llano itself is a combination of already existing STARS cores (K10, K10.5 i.e. Agena/Deneb) and the Northern Islands GPU, all manufactured in 32nm. On the other hand, AMD is targeting netbook/smartbook platform with Brazos platform, featuring Ontario APU - next-gen Bobcat CPU cores and again, a Northern Islands GPU. Both Llano and Ontario will be paired with next-gen Southbridge codenamed "Hudson" – as reported by brightsideofnews.