Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors
AMD introduced the quad-core AMD Opteron (see Figure 3) in September of 2007. It included
several innovations:
• A new core microarchitecture – K8L (true quad-core on a single die)
• Extensions to AMD64 instruction set – bit manipulation and SSE, SSE2, SSE3, and SSE4
• 128-bit FPU for improved floating point and graphics performance
• AMD Smart Fetch Technology Support for DDR2 memory
• Dedicated 64-KB L1 cache and 512-KB L2 cache for each core
• 2-MB to 6-MB L3 cache shared among all cores
• 65 nm silicon process technology
• Enhanced AMD PowerNow! with Independent Dynamic Core Technology and Dual Dynamic
Power Management
• AMD-V™ with Rapid Virtualization Indexing
Figure 3. The Socket F (1207) design supports Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processors.
9