The Core Truth

July 1st, 2008

AMD Phenom gets (a little) faster

Posted by John Morris @ 11:32 am

Categories: Uncategorized, Intel, AMD, Power conservation, Desktops, multicore processors, Hewlett-Packard, semiconductors, quad-core processors, PC gaming, Energy efficiency

Tags: Desktop, AMD Phenom, Quad-core, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., HotHardware, 9950BE, Processors, Semiconductors, Hardware, Components

AMD has rounded out both the high and low ends of its desktop processor line with three new Phenoms. Though the chips have the same basic design, they are targeted at very different audiences by virtue of frequency, power consumption and price. The Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition–now AMD’s fastest quad-core desktop CPU at 2.6GHz–is designed for enthusiasts and gamers. At the opposite extreme, the Phenom X4 9350e and Phenom X4 9150e are much slower (2.0GHz and 1.8GHz, respectively), but they are about as “green” as quad-core CPUs get.

Since the launch of Barcelona last September, AMD has been promising faster clock speeds, but getting there has clearly been a challenge. To reach 2.6GHz, AMD has boosted the TDP, a measure of the maximum power draw, to 140 watts. By comparison, the 2.5GHz 9850BE has a TDP of 125 watts. HotHardware has posted some of the first numbers on the 9950BE, and the results are what you’d expect. It is slightly faster than the 9850BE, and offers similar performance to Intel’s 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600, but it still doesn’t match the performance of Intel’s faster Core 2 Quad and Core 2 Extreme chips, which extend to 3.2GHz. Like all BE versions, the 9950 is designed for easy overclocking using AMD’s OverDrive utility. HotHardware said it was able to crank the 9550BE to 3.1GHz using standard cooling.

Right now both the new 9550BE and 2.5GHz 9850BE are priced at $235, but next week AMD will cut the price of the 9850BE to $205. Eventually AMD will remove the BE designation and features from the 9850 (in fact, the processor price list already reflects this change), but for a short time you’ll be able get an easily overclockable 2.5GHz quad-core for about $200. Though AMD hasn’t announced it yet, the other Phenom X4s such as the 2.4GHz 9750 ($215) and 2.3GHz 9650 ($195), are likely to get price cuts as well. Still Intel’s Q6600 is stiff competition at $199 with a TDP of 95 watts.

AMD announced its first Energy Efficient 65-watt Phenom X4, the 9100e, in March. The 9350e and 9150e, which are based on the newer B3 stepping of the processor, replace the 9100e. Ars Technica tested the 9350e against the 2.5GHz 9850 and, once again, the 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600. Given its relatively low clock speed, it’s no surprise that the 9350e can’t keep up, but it does make AMD’s Spider platform (9350e, 780G chipset, and Radeon HD 4850) “quite attractive to end-users who want quad-core scaling without a higher monthly bill.”

Since there are few mainstream workloads that truly take advantage of multiple cores, however, the customer for PCs based on these slower, but more power-efficient, quad-cores is less clear. AMD says it is designed for two markets: small form-factor PCs, especially for home theaters, and for relatively inexpensive business desktops. By pairing the Energy Efficient X4s with the 780G chipset, OEMs should be able to offer quad-core systems with decent integrated graphics for around $500. HP already sells some desktops with the 9100e, but no major OEMs have announced systems with the 9350e or 9150e yet.

The 9150e and 9350e are priced a $175 and $195, respectively. To make room for them, AMD lowered the prices on the triple-core processors, which previously topped out at $195. The prices now range from $125 for the 2.1GHz Phenom X3 8450 to $175 for the 2.4GHz Phenom X3 8750.

The 9950BE is likely to be the end of the line for the Phenom X4. Given its 140-watt TDP, the current Phenom X4 probably won’t reach frequencies beyond 2.6GHz at acceptable manufacturing yields. And most of the company’s engineers have already moved on to the 45nm Deneb desktop and Shanghai server processors, which should ship by the end of this year. This straightforward processor “shrink” will not only lower manufacturing costs, but it should allow AMD to reach higher frequencies with its quad-core chips and close the performance gap with Intel at the high-end.

June 4th, 2008

AMD announces Puma laptop platform, Mobile Radeon 3800 GPU

Posted by John Morris @ 9:43 am

Categories: Intel, AMD, Power conservation, multicore processors, notebooks, dual-core processors, PC gaming, PC graphics

Tags: Mobile, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Laptop Computer, Radeon, GPU, Puma, Radeon 3200, Puma Platform, ATI XGP, Chipsets

Located in the PC component capital of the world, Computex has become the tradeshow for chipsets, so it’s no surprise AMD chose to announce its new mobile platform here in Taiwan today. (You can watch the press conference here.) Known by its code-name Puma, the platform itself doesn’t have a brand name, but it consists of four parts:

• AMD Turion X2 Ultra dual-core processors
  Mobile 7-series chipset: AMD M780G and AMD SB700 with Radeon HD 3200 integrated graphics
• Mobile Radeon HD 3800 series GPUs
• 802.11n controllers from Atheros, Broadcom, and Ralink

Designed for mainstream laptops for both consumers and small- and medium-size businesses (SMB), Puma includes more sophisticated power management features, better 3D graphics and HD video performance, and hybrid graphics–a feature AMD was the first to introduce with the 780 desktop chipset back in March (Nvidia’s new nForce780a desktop chipset also support what it calls Hybrid SLI with GeForce 8800 series GPUs).

On a broader scale, AMD says Puma is a big step toward its vision of an APU that combine the CPU and GPU on a single piece of silicon, a project that would first come to full fruition with a processor code-named Shrike sometime in 2010. It would also validate AMD’s acquisition of ATI.

“There’s only two companies that can generate high-performance, leading-edge microprocessors in volume. And there are only two companies in the industry that can generate leading-edge GPUs in volume,” AMD President and COO Dirk Meyer said. “And we happen to be the only company that can do both.” Read the rest of this entry »

May 29th, 2008

Via finally releases new Nano processor

Posted by John Morris @ 9:55 am

Categories: Intel, Power conservation, notebooks, semiconductors, Nvidia, UMPC, VIA Technologies, Energy efficiency

Tags: VIA Technologies Inc., Watt, Nano, C7, Ultramobile PCs (UMPCs), Processors, Tablets, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Emerging Technologies

Early this morning Via Technologies finally announced is new Nano processor, better-known by its code name, Isaiah. The Nano will deliver two to three times the performance of the current C7 with roughly the same power requirements, according to the company.

Via has spent years working on Nano, which represents a major leap forward from the C7. By now, the technical details are well known. Specifically, Nano has many of the microarchitectural features–64-bit x86 instruction set, superscalar pipeline, speculative and out-of-order execution of program instructions–found in advanced Intel or AMD chips.

Manufactured by Fujitsu using 65nm process technology, Nano has 94 million transistors–roughly twice as many as the C7–and measures 63.3 square millimeters. That translates to about 1,000 chips on a single, 300mm silicon wafer. Nano is significantly larger than both the C7-M (30 square millimeters) and Intel’s Atom (25 square millimeters), which both have a much simpler microarchitecture. Nano is pin-compatible with C7, which means OEMs that already sell small form-factor desktops, ultraportables or UMPCs with Via processors should be able to easily upgrade.

Because Nano offers significantly better performance than the C7, Via is going after a broader market. The L version (for Low Voltage) is designed for mainstream desktops and notebooks, and it will compete directly with Intel’s low-end mobile processors such as Celeron-M and Core 2 Solo. The U version (Ultra Low Voltage) version is designed for mini-notebooks and UMPCs, and it will compete with Intel’s new Atom, aka Silverthorne. All Nano processors have 1MB of L2 cache.

Model	Frequency	FSB	Max power (TDP)	Idle power
Nano U2300	1.0GHz	800MHz	5 watts	100mW
Nano U2500	1.2GHz	800MHz	6.8 watts	100mW
Nano U2400	1.3GHz	800MHz	8 watts	100mW
Nano L2200	1.6GHz	800MHz	17 watts	100mW
Nano L2100	1.8GHz	800MHz	25 watts	500mW

All of the current Nano processors are single-core, though Via has hinted that a dual-core version would be a logical next step. There has also been some speculation that Via will switch to foundry TSMC’s advanced 45nm process technology for the next version of Nano.

Via’s competitive advantage has been in power efficiency, and the specs for Nano look impressive. The high-end processors consume a maximum of 17 to 25 watts, and the ultra low-voltage versions top out at 5 to 8 watts, depending on the clock speed. When the chip is idle, it consumes anywhere from 0.1 watts for the 1.0GHz U2300 to 0.5 watts for the fastest 1.8GHz L2800. For comparison, here are the specs for the initial Intel Atom processors, announced last month.

Model	Frequency	FSB	Max power (TDP)	Idle power	Price
Atom Z500	800MHz	400MHz	0.65 watts	80mW	$45
Atom Z510	1.10GHz	400MHz	2 watts	100mW	$45
Atom Z520	1.33GHz	533MHz	2 watts	100mW	$65
Atom Z530	1.60GHz	533MHz	2 watts	100mW	$95
Atom Z540	1.86GHz	533MHz	2.4 watts	100mW	$160

How the Nano will actually perform against the Core 2 Solo and Atom is still unclear. Via published a white paper that shows some performance numbers, but they mainly focus on improvements over C7 on synthetic benchmarks. Via told me to expect performance that comes close to the Core 2 Solo with much lower power requirements. Perhaps we’ll get a better idea at Computex next week.

Via says it has already shipped Nano processors to OEMs, and they will start to show up in systems sometime in the third quarter. The pricing hasn’t been announced, though it will almost certainly be very aggressive, as Via is promising the lowest-priced systems capable of handling Blu-ray high-definition movies. Also, watch for some news from Nvidia on its work to develop GPUs, and eventually chipsets, for Nano that should result in some of the lowest-cost DirectX 10-capable systems. There are many mini-notebook and UMPC design based on the C7–including Via’s own OpenBook and the HP 2133 Mini-note–so it’s no surprise that Via also plans to keep it around for a while.

May 21st, 2008

Report: Nvidia GTX 200 series will be one big GPU

Posted by John Morris @ 3:47 am

Categories: AMD, PC gaming, Nvidia, PC graphics

Tags: NVidia Corp., Series, Chip, GPU, Semiconductors, Network Technology, Hardware, Networking, John Morris

More details on Nvidia’s new GTX 200 series GPUs, which are set to launch sometime next month, courtesy of the site TGDaily.

The new chip will reportedly be massive, measuring 576 square millimeters, due to the increased number of processing units and a 512-bit memory controller. All told it will have around 1 billion transistors. By comparison the current G92 (the basis of several GeForce 8800 and 9800 series GPUs) measures 330 square millimeters. Both are manufactured on a 65nm processs by TSMC, the world’s largest foundry.

AMD’s Radeon HD 3800 series (aka the RV670) is significantly smaller, measuring 192 square millimeters with 666 million transistors. It is also manufactured by TSMC, but using a more advanced 55nm process.

The size of the chip determines the manufacturing cost–the smaller the chip, the more you can squeeze onto a single silicon wafer. TGDaily estimates that 100 GTX 280 or GTX 260 GPUs will fit on a single wafer (which has a diameter of 300mm). By my calculations, the actual number would be closer to 94 assuming a perfect yield, so the real figure would be even lower.

In other words, if these specs are accurate, the GTX 280 and GTX 260 will make for some very pricey, albeit powerful, graphics cards. Within the next few weeks, we should get all the details, and find out how it will stack up against the AMD Radeon 4800 series.

May 19th, 2008

AMD announces new PC gaming push

Posted by John Morris @ 4:00 am

Categories: AMD, Desktops, Alienware, PC gaming, Nvidia, PC graphics

Tags: PC, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., AMD Game Ultra, Games, Personal Technology, John Morris

AMD announced today a new program designed to boost sales of mainstream PCs for gaming. The AMD Game logos will appear on AMD-based desktops and notebooks that meet the system requirements to run nearly all of the latest games.

Of the 263 million PC gamers worldwide, only 13 million are the hard-core gamers, according to the PC Gaming Alliance. These are the users AMD and Nvidia battle over. Another 197 million are casual gamers (think Solitaire) who can use any old PC. But there’s about 50 million somewhere in the middle who like to play more demanding PC games. The goal of AMD Game is to make the experience as easy as it is on a console or, as Godfrey Cheng, AMD’s Director of Marketing, Platform Technologies, puts it, “We want to be sure that when ‘Joe Six-Pack’ walks into Wal-Mart and picks up a copy of Deer Hunter Tournament, it’ll play on his PC.”

There are two levels: AMD Game includes systems with an Athlon X2 5600+ processor, 2GB of memory, Radeon HD 3650 graphics, and an AMD 770 or Nvidia nForce 500 series chipset or better. AMD Game Ultra requires a minimum of a Phenom X4 9650, 2GB of memory, a Radeon HD 3870, and an AMD 770 chipset.

AMD says many systems costing $1,000 to $2,000 will meet these requirements and be capable of playing a list of top-selling games in four different genres at 30 frames per second (see the slide below) or better. You can configure an Alienware Aurora desktop that meets the Game Ultra requirements for about $1,350. The complete list of tested configurations is here. AMD has also tested many other system components, including motherboards, power supplies and input devices, to ensure that they will support AMD Game systems and are compatible with the most popular games.

AMD doesn’t currently offer a CPU that can match the fastest Intel chips (or arguably a single GPU that can match the Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX), which is one of the reasons it has been preaching a “balanced platform” approach. AMD’s CPU-GPU platform does offer a lot of performance for the price, and AMD’s Game initiative is a logical extension of the balanced platform push. But whether it will succeed in getting the word out to a group that is difficult to market to–or meet the fate of logo programs such as AMD Live and Intel Viiv–remains to be seen.

May 16th, 2008

Fight card: AMD Radeon 4800 vs. Nvidia GTX 200

Posted by John Morris @ 8:44 am

Categories: AMD, PC gaming, Nvidia

Tags: Card, NVidia Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Graphics, Radeon, GPU, John Morris

The high-end graphics card market isn’t the straightforward, mano-a-mano battle it used to be. Graphics cards with dual GPUs, systems with multiple cards in CrossFire or SLI implementations, and most recently hybrid graphics have all muddied the picture. Meanwhile, Intel has improved its integrated graphics and has long-term plans in Larrabee to challenge AMD and Nvidia in discrete graphics.

But next month we should get a good, old-fashioned GPU showdown when AMD and Nvidia release entirely new, high-end GPUs. Details of these GPUs, AMD’s RV770 and Nvidia’s G200, and the graphics cards based on them, are trickling out.

The RV770, or ATI Radeon 4800 series, will launch on June 16, according to several sites. Graphics cards based on the first GPU in the series, the Radeon 4850 with 512MB GDDR3 memory, will be available immediately for $230. This GPU is the follow-up to the current Radeon 3850. Higher-end cards based on the Radeon 4870 with 512MB GDDR5 and the dual-GPU Radeon 4870 X2 with 1,024MB GDDR5–a first–will be announced on June 23. The Radeon 4870 cards won’t ship immediately because of the lack of availability of GDDR5 memory, but when they do show up prices should be around $350. The Radeon 4870 X2 cards won’t show up until early 4Q and will cost about $550.

One of the more intriguing specs of the Radeon 4800, according to the site TGDaily which has many details on the 4800 series, is “physics processing capabilities.” Physics is used to define how objects in a game move and interact. It can deliver a more realistic, compelling experience, but few games are designed to take advantage of physics.

There are really only two players here: Havok, which makes software for game developers and movie editors, and Ageia, a competitor best known for pioneering the PhysX Accelerator boards for gamers. Intel purchased Havok in September 2007, and Nvidia completed the acquisition of Ageia in February and plans to integrate the PhysX Accelerator into its GPUs. ATI previously worked with Havok on physics (and AMD reportedly considered buying Ageia late last year), but it is unclear where AMD is getting the physics technology now. (There have been some reports that AMD borrowed a programming language developed at Stanford University for the GPUs that power the Folding@home research project and extended it to support game physics.)

Nvidia’s G200 will reportedly launch on June 18 (some sites put it in early July). This GPU family was previously known at the GeForce 9900 series, but several sites are now reporting that Nvidia will switch to a new naming scheme: the GTX 200 series. Initially this should consist of two products, the GTX 280 and GTX 260, but otherwise there are few details aside from the fact that G200s supposedly contain more than 1 billion transistors (not including memory), use GDDR3 memory with a 512-bit interface, have an updated Unified Shader architecture, and will be in cards that cost $450 or more.

With the massive Computex tradeshow in Taipei coming the first week of June, I suspect we will know a lot more about these new GPUs before the rumored announce dates.