According to Turkish site DonanimHaber, AMD's new Bulldozer platform will be branded with the old FX branding not officially seen since the Athlon 64 FX-70 in 2006.
The Zambezi 8-core CPU may be named 'Vision Black FX' and the 4 and 6 core Bulldozer variants are proposed to be named 'Ultimate Vision FX'. This appears not to follow the traditional FX branding, which was indicative of only the extreme high end processors, which had a price tag to suit. More information on the upcoming platform from a leaked road map is available here.
AMD has not yet confirmed these reports
It is expected that the Bulldozer platform will be available this year in Q2, utilising the AM3+ pin configuration with the upcoming AMD 9xx series chipset. Current information suggests that previous AM3 processors will be compatible with the AM3+ motherboards, but any level of compatibility of Bulldozer processors with previous AM3 boards is yet unconfirmed. With this being the most radical change of processor architecture since AMD's K8 (2003), it would be a safe assumption to say that Bulldozer will not be backwards compatible with AM3, certainly not without certain elements restricted or disabled.
Whether Bulldozer will be a competitor to Intel's new Sandy Bridge platform or even the Gulftown 8-core remains to be seen. What do you think? Let us know by sharing your thoughts in the forums.
Source: DonanimHaber
