AMD talks upcoming Bulldozer, Hemlock, and Fusion chips

The company laid out its road map for the next two years, including new netbook and chips as well as x86 architectures

If chipmakers competed on the basis of code names rather than products, then Advanced Micro Devices might have beaten Intel a long time ago.

At its financial analyst day Wednesday, AMD laid out its plans for a dizzying array of upcoming PC chips with names like Bulldog, Bulldozer, Danube, Brazos, and Ontario.

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The onslaught starts with a high-end graphics chip code-named Hemlock that will go on sale next week, priced at about $400 to $500. It comprises two GPUs and delivers five teraflops of graphics computing power, according to Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager of AMD's products group.

Four new PC processors will follow in the first half of next year, including a quad-core notebook chip that aims to give seven hours of battery life, and a six-core chip for high-end desktops that includes AMD's Eyefinity multidisplay technology for gamers, Bergman said.

AMD also described plans to bring its new Fusion chips to desktop and laptop PCs in the first half of 2011, starting with a product code-named Llano.

Fusion, which AMD has been talking up for several years, will combine a graphics chip and a general-purpose CPU on the same piece of silicon, which AMD says will lead to faster performance and lower power consumption.

Llano, the first Fusion chip, will have about a billion transistors and be manufactured on a 32-nanometer process, Bergman said. For comparison, AMD's current Phenom II processor has 758 million transistors and is made with a 45-nanometer process.

Llano will appear in mainstream laptops in 2011 as part of a platform called Sabine, which will have four CPU cores and support DDR3 memory and DirectX 11 graphics, Bergman said.

For mainstream desktops, Llano will appear at about the same time in a platform called Lynx, which will also support DDR3 memory and include up to four CPU cores.

AMD also discussed two new x86 architectures it is developing -- Bulldozer, for larger and more powerful chips that will go in servers, desktops, and laptops, and Bobcat, which is designed to use less power for ultrathin laptops and netbooks.

Bulldozer will appear first in 2011 as part of the Scorpius platform for high-end enthusiast desktops. It will be offered in four- and eight-core versions and be coupled with DDR3 memory and a discrete graphics chip. A dual-core Bobcat processor will also come in 2011, as part of a platform called Brazos, which will include a Fusion chip known as Ontario.

Having spun off its manufacturing facilities earlier this year, AMD is redoubling its efforts to design new products that can help with its perennial task of clawing away market share from Intel.

President and CEO Dirk Meyer suggested that the antitrust cases against Intel, which have been waged in Europe and Asia and recently began afresh in the United States, will create a more level playing field for AMD.

"I’m looking forward to a future where our ability to succeed in business is governed by the quality of our products and our customer relationships. That hasn't always been true in the past but in the future it will be," he said.

It's an uphill battle for AMD, however. Intel extended its share of CPU shipments to 81.1 percent in the third quarter, while AMD's share declined slightly to 18.7 percent, according to figures from IDC.