Bulldozer, AMD’s Crash Modernization: Front End and Execution Engine

I remember deliberating between AMD's eight core FX-8150 and the latest Intel Sandy Bridge in early 2012.

Even though lots of people consider Bulldozer to be an AMD misstep, I don't regret my choice: AMD's eight integer cores performed favorably compared with the four real cores plus four hyperthreads of the Intel. Considering I bought it to be used primarily for compiling, it was a good choice.

This is an interesting read, and seeing the design choices with knowledge of how things turned out later makes it even more interesting.

> K8 got the basics right, introduced 64-bit support and an integrated memory controller. And remained reasonably competitive against Netburst.

Eh? Competetive? Athlon64 destroyed the Pentium 4 (cost/performance/heat), and was AMDs last golden years before they went into the wilderness with server focused Phenom architecture, until their renaissance with Ryzen. The Athlon 64 X2 may have been the best CPU ever for it's time.