AMD has stopped Phenom II X2, X4 production

The latest rumor regarding AMD claims that the company has already pulled the proverbial plug on the production run for their budget-minded Phenom II X2 and X4 processors.

The rumor comes courtesy of Kitguru who claims to have heard “something very interesting about AMD’s traditional CPU lines”, although at the end of the article the author hints that the rumor could possibly be self-generated. Valid or not, the story brings up some very good points about the present and future of AMD’s processor lineup.

It’s extremely likely that AMD has plenty of X2 and X4 processors in inventory and the same can be said for outlets across the globe. Odds are also high that AMD could indeed halt production on these lines today and still have enough stock to feed demand and cover warranty claims. Moving production away from these aging pieces of silicon would free up resources that could be used to manufacture next generation Fusion and Bulldozer CPUs.

It's worth noting that this jives with inside sources cited by DigiTimes in late June. At the time, it was reported that Athlon II chips would drop from 70% of AMD's total processor shipments in the second quarter to 40% in the third, 30% in the fourth and the series would be retracted by early 2012. Various Phenom II chips were pegged for a similar fate with X2, X4 and X6 parts expected to disappar over the next six to eight months.

AMD Fusion APUs have been in production since 2006 when the company acquired ATI. AMD released theBrazos mobile solution in February and followed it up with Llano in June.

The 8-core Bulldozer-based FX-8130P has already been publically benchmarked last month. In general, performance seems better than Intel's top Sandy Bridge offering. Early indications point to a September 19 release date for the new FX-series processors.

Socket AM2+ Phenom II chips have been in circulation since December 2008 with Socket AM3 chips finding their way to market in February 2009.

AMD's next-gen Corona desktop platform to fuse CPU with Northbridge

It has been revealed via a leaked roadmap that AMD’s next generation enthusiast-level desktop platform will combine the processor silicon with the Northbridge. According to marketing slides obtained by Zol.com.cn, the new platform is codenamed Corona and will use Komodo CPUs.

The document indicates that Komodo will have up to 10 Piledriver CPU cores, feature AMD Turbo Core 3.0, DDR3 memory and will use the FM2 infrastructure. Piledriver is the name of the new CPU architecture that will be the successor to Bulldozer, also commonly referred to as the second generation of Bulldozer.

The Hudson D4 FCH (Fusion Controller Hub) will provide up to eight SATA 6Gb/s ports, RAID 0/1/5/10 support, 10 USB 2.0 ports and four USB 3.0 ports. Although it’s not specifically stated, it’s safe to assume that the new FM2 infrastructure won’t be backwards compatible with AM3+.

Next generation AMD discrete graphics will also accompany the new platform, but at this time not much else is known about AMD’s plans aside from a 2012 release date. In the meantime AMD fans have the first Bulldozer release to look forward to, which could come as early as September 19.

AMD is resurrecting their FX moniker for use on high-end processors, a throwback to enthusiast-level products with the same branding dating back to 2003. Turkish website DonanimHaber got their hands on an engineering sample earlier this month and broke NDA by releasing benchmarks from a FX-8130P CPU. Pricing for this particular CPU is said to be around $320.