The Hot Chips Conference at Stanford University Tuesday witnessed Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) unveil the technical details of two of its forthcoming microprocessor architectures that have been codenamed “Bobcat” and “Bulldozer.”

Marking AMD’s first update of the microarchitecture of processing cores in almost seven years, the “Bobcat” is a microprocessor core design for laptops and other portable devices; the “Bulldozer” is chiefly geared towards server systems and high-end desktops and workstations.

Going by the detailing of the technical components of these two chips by AMD engineers at the Hot Chips conference, the “Bobcat” microarchitecture is a rather straightforward advancement in the sense that the chip can run with a sub-one watt thermal envelope.

AMD’s “Bobcat”, which evidently will compete with Intel’s Atom processor, is a cut above its rival Intel chip because of its out-of-order execution engine that can break data apart and allow for instructions to run in parallel, along with offering a much enhanced performance.

Meanwhile, the “Bulldozer” is a more complicated microarchitecture that can probably deliver 33 percent more cores and a 50 percent increase in throughput as compared to AMD’s current 12-core Opteron 6100.

To be built with 32-nanometer manufacturing, the more energy-efficient “Bulldozer” will support up to 256-bit floating point execution, which is increasingly significant for high-performance computing applications.

According to the information forwarded at the conference, samples of “Bobcat” and “Bulldozer” microprocessor architectures will likely begin shipping to AMD’s OEM partners by 2010 end, with the first actual processors probably hitting the market by early next year.