FX Series is finally making a comeback. In two years time. This surprising revelation was given by AMD at the APU 14 Conference in Beijing. Not only that, but AMD has avowed renewed vigor into establishing itself in the Chinese market, which it considers a very important region for die sales. Now we had already seen some FX labeled APUs in the Mobile Kaveri Lineup but the decision to revive the FX Series completely couldn't come at a better time.
APU14 Conference in Beijing - FX Series Making a Comeback in 2 Years, Establishing Focus on Chinese Market
We dont really have any more details about the upcoming FX Series, apart from the fact that you will definitely be seeing a new high performance x86 (x86-64) architecture within two years. Now the move about AMD concentrating on the Chinese Market is itself very interesting. It is interesting because a big chunk of the Chinese Market is DIY (do it yourself) as opposed to OEM based. This would affect manufacturer tactics of shipping lower end products to OEMs. Infact this very question was raised about Kabini and AMD replied in a negative by stating that Kabini is not meant for the high performance demanding DIY sector and is mostly OEM based so it will not be appearing in the Chinese market anytime soon. We already know AMD has a new architecture planned for 2016 and needless to say the following years are going to become very interesting for Red.
On another note, Mullins fared relatively bad and was not able to score any design wins. Design wins from manufacturers are a much needed part of the life of any product a chipmaker like AMD produces and the fact that Mullins fared as it did hints at a negative trend where the same is concerned. A rethinking of PR and product image might be a wise decision where Mullins is concerned.
Regarding the new architecture itself, AMD did confirm it that they are actually developing a new architecture that will be built from the ground up unlike Excavator, Steamroller and Piledriver which were derivatives of the Bulldozer architecture. AMD's top chip architect confirmed this during the AMD Core Innovation press seminar and revealed that in addition to K12 which is their latest x86 ARM core architecture, the company would also develop a new high-performance architecture that will be geared towards FX line of processors and next gen servers in 2016.
Details remain a mystery, but we detailed how AMD will be ditching their existing modular architecture and go for the Simultaneous Multi Threading (SMT) design. SMT or Simultaneous Multi Threading is a technology whose roots trace back to IBM in the 1970s. However most prominently it is the technology that Intel has employed for a decade, i.e. the force behind Hyper-Threading. AMD also revealed a technology of its own to rival Intel’s SMT and unlike its rival it was Modular in Nature. This technology was homebrewed by AMD and was called the CMT or Clustered Multi Threading. However even at the time that CMT was revealed, critics pointed it out as an unfeasible idea.
