November 14th, 2008

AMD's Extreme Makeover: What the new roadmaps reveal

Posted by John Morris @ 1:57 pm

Categories: AMD, Desktops, Intel, PC gaming, PC graphics, Servers, multicore processors, notebooks, quad-core processors, semiconductors

Tags: Platform, Plan, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Chip, DDR3, Notebooks, Desktops, Processors, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets

Lost in all of the (inaccurate) commotion yesterday about AMD entering the netbook market were much broader changes in the company’s product plans as it struggles to regain profitability and keep up with a deep-pocketed Intel. In the past year, AMD has announced plans to spin-off manufacturing, abandoned efforts to compete for “all screens” including TVs and smartphones, and at yesterday’s analysts’ meeting, revealed major changes to its server, desktop and notebook roadmaps. The extent of these changes is clear when you compare the new plans to the presentations at AMD’s previous analysts’ meeting less than a year ago.

AMD’s “Market Opportunity”

Last year AMD executives were talking up plans to compete in everything from servers to cell phones. Processors and GPUs for servers, desktops and notebooks would still be the bulk of the business, but the acquisition of ATI gave the company the portfolio to sell more chips for digital TVs and handhelds. These new markets would increase AMD’s TAM, or total addressable market, by a combined $6.4 billion in 2007. The company has since been forced to retrench.

Last month, AMD completed the sale of its digital TV business to Broadcom, and it is seeking a buyer for its handheld division. AMD is now focused strictly on chips for servers, desktops and notebooks–including GPUs–though the total market has grown to $46.5 billion by 2009 according to yesterday’s presentation. (This implies a compound annual growth rate of about 10%–the market for commercial and consumer IT was $38.3 billion in 2007–which seems plausible.) Though it makes for a less interesting product portfolio, this is a smart strategy–AMD simply doesn’t have the resources to compete in all of these areas.

Before (late 2007)

After (now)

The Notebook Roadmap

The biggest changes are in AMD’s notebook roadmap, where executives announced six new processors slated to appear between 2009 and 2011. Last year, the big news was Shrike, the first platform that would include a processor, code-named Swift, with both a CPU and a GPU on the same silicon die. This was set to appear sometime in 2009 on the new 45nm process technology. Now these APUs (application processor units)–for both notebooks and desktops–have been pushed all the way back to 2011 and will debut at 32nm.

Read the rest of this entry »

November 3rd, 2008

Intel's Core i7 gets put to the test

Posted by John Morris @ 11:21 am

Categories: AMD, Desktops, Intel, Semiconductor architecture, multicore processors, notebooks, quad-core processors

Tags: Desktop, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Intel Core Microarchitecture, Core, Processors, Semiconductors, Hardware, Components, John Morris

Intel won’t announce its new Core i7 chips until later this month, but the first real reviews are popping up all over the place today. Based on the early previews, I expected to see good numbers and Core i7, formerly known as Nehalem, delivers.

These first Core i7s are Bloomfield processors designed for high-end desktops. There are three versions corresponding to different market segments: the 3.2GHz Core i7 965 Extreme Edition ($999), 2.93GHz Core i7 940 ($562) performance part, and the more mainstream 2.66GHz Core i7 920 ($284).

The new Core i7s are all quad-core processors (four cores on a single die) and each core can handle two threads. They also have an integrated memory controller and a new three-level cache, including an 8MB shared L3 cache. All of that adds up to a relatively hefty chip with 731 million transistors and a die size of 263 square millimeters. By comparison, a dual-core Penryn Core 2 Duo, which uses the same 45nm process technology, has 410 million transistors and measures 107 square millimeters. AMD’s current quad-core Phenoms–a more accurate comparison since they have four cores and a similar architecture–are even larger at 283 square millimeters, but it is still manufactured at 65nm. AMD’s 45nm Shanghai server processors–also expected later this month–will reportedly be nearly identical in size to Nehalem.

Though it is based on the same process as Penryn, the list of new features is long. Core i7s have three memory channels that support 1,066MHz DDR3; a new high-speed system bus, Quick Path Interconnect (QPI), that connects the processors to other system components (and to one another in multi-socket systems); a new socket; a new supporting chipset (the X58); more sophisticated power management features; a Turbo Mode that transparently pushes more power to the active core when running single-threaded applications; and new SSE instructions.

The results look very good. The Core i7 is the fastest desktop processor across the board on mainstream applications, multimedia tests, games and workstation applications. It looks like the second time’s the charm for Hyper Threading since the performance is especially impressive on applications that can take advantage of simultaneous multi-threading such as video encoding, 3D graphics rendering, and file compression and encryption. On some tests, the sub-$300 Core i7 920 outperformed the current Penryn 3.2GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9770, which sells for $1,399. The current Penryns were already faster than AMD’s fastest quad-core, the 2.6GHz Phenom X4 9950 BE, and Core i7 pads Intel’s lead. Shanghai should close the gap a bit, but at this point it’s hard to see how AMD can catch up anytime soon.

For now, the Core i7 and X58 are strictly for high-priced desktops, but that will soon change. Next year Intel will release server versions, currently known as Nehalem-EX, and eventually more quad-core and dual-core versions for both desktops and laptops. By late 2009, some desktop and mobile packages will also include integrated graphics processing units.

Intel Core i7 reviews coverage:

• Intel Core i7-965 Extreme Edition [CNET Reviews]
• Intel’s Core i7 processors: Nehalem arrives with a splash [The Tech Report]
• Intel Core i7 Review: Nehalem Gets Real [ExtremeTech]
• Intel’s Core i7 920, 945 & 965 processors [bit-tech.net]
• Intel Core i7 ‘Nehalem’ processor and X58 chipset [The Register Hardware]
• First Look: Intel’s Nehalem Smashes Performance Thresholds [ChannelWeb]
• Falcon Northwest Mach V [PC Magazine]

October 11th, 2008

Report: Three Intel Nehalems in November

Posted by John Morris @ 5:40 am

Categories: AMD, Desktops, Intel, Semiconductor architecture, dual-core processors, multicore processors, notebooks, quad-core processors, semiconductors

Tags: Desktop, Mobile, Intel Corp., Chip, Nehalem, Server Processor, Chipsets, Semiconductors, Processors, Network Technology

Intel will launch its first three Nehalem processors on November 17, according to a report on the site Expreview.com. These Bloomfield high-end chips will include the 3.2 GHz Core i7-965XE ($999), 2.93GHz Core i7-940 ($562) and 2.66GHz Core i7-920 ($284).

Nehalem is manufactured using the same 45nm process as current desktop and mobile chips, but it has a new design or microarchitecture. I’ve written previously about some of the new features in Nehalem.

Next year Intel will release mainstream desktop processors, as well as mobile and server versions of Nehalem. Like the Core i7, the Lynnfield desktop and Clarksfield mobile processors will use a separate GPU; the Havendale desktop and Auburndale mobile version will integrate a GPU in the processor package, thought it will also work with a separate GPU. The Lynnfield and Clarksfield processors will have four cores, while Havendale and Auburndale will be dual-core chips. The server processors are currently referred to as Nehalem-EX.

Desktops PCs with these first Core i7 chips will also have new, high-end motherboards based on the Intel X58 (or Tylersburg) chipset. Even though it has several new features such as integrated memory controller and Quick Path Interconnect, the X58 platform will still use a chipset that consists of two separate chips–like current systems that have a Northbridge and Southbridge. Next year’s Ibex Peak (for Lynnfield and Havendale desktop chips) and Ibex Peak-M (for the Clarksfield and Auburndale laptop chips) chipset will in fact be a single chip–or a two-chip solution if you count the processor.

The details on the X58 platform have been slowly leaking out since the Computex tradeshow last June where motherboard makers show off their products. Several enthusiast sites such as Anandtech and Tom’s Hardware have posted previews, but we’ve yet to see any real performance results.

AMD is set to launch its first 45nm processors (code-named Shanghai) sometime this quarter. As with Barcelona, the first versions will be server processors followed by desktop parts most likely in early 2009. The new 45nm process should help AMD reach high frequencies (and cut manufacturing costs), but there’s a big gap between the current 2.6GHz Phenom X4 9550 and a possible 3.2GHz Intel Core i7-965XE, so it seems unlikely that AMD will wrest the performance crown from Intel with Shanghai.

August 20th, 2008

About Atom: Intel's big plans for its little chip

Posted by John Morris @ 8:47 pm

Categories: Desktops, Energy efficiency, Intel, consumer electronics, multicore processors, notebooks

Tags: Mobile, Intel Corp., Chip, Menlow, Moorestown, Advertising & Promotion, Processors, Marketing, Semiconductors, Hardware

One of the bolder goals Intel set at IDF this week is that within a decade it wants ship 1 billion Intel-based mobile computing devices each year. That’s a big bet when you consider Intel estimates there will be a total of 163 million notebooks shipped this year.

Notebooks have been coming on strong, but the Atom processor for smaller devices is also a key part of this strategy. In a session on Atom, Intel executives discussed the performance of the current Atom processor and its Menlow platform, and gave us a peek at its successor, Moorestown, scheduled to ship next year.

Menlow consists of the Atom processor and a system controller that combines the functions of the north and south bridges including a low-power 3D graphics core. Ticky Thakkar, an Intel fellow and chief architect of the ultra mobility group, showed tests results in which the 1.1GHz Atom Z510 and 1.6GHz Atom Z530 delivered more than twice the performance of the latest ARM processors, which are used in many smartphones. But Menlow is still too big, and uses too much power, for many of the gadgets that use ARM-based processors today. That’s where Moorestown comes in.

A sneak peek at Moorestown
For the next platform, Intel “repartitioned” the architecture to make it more of a System-on-Chip (SoC) design. The Lincroft CPU will still be manufactured using a 45nm process, but it will include the graphics processing, memory controller and video decoding and encoding on a single chip. The Langwell system controller hub will include power management, a full SSD controller and a number of new I/O features “which I’m not going to talk about today,” Thakar said. Finally Moorestown includes a new class of chip, a Power Management IC or PMIC, that handles the power delivery and battery charging circuitry.

At first glance, this would seem to undermine Intel’s goal of a more-integrated design. But the PMIC replaces many of the active and passive elements–what Intel calls “jelly beans”–which sit on a typical system board. This effort started with Menlow, which has about 600 of these jelly beans, compared with 1,100 in a typical laptop, according to Thakar. Reducing these jelly beans cuts cost, and makes it possible to build smaller devices.

One other note on Moorestown: The Echo Peak wireless chipset in Menlow will be replaced with an Evans Peak chipset that adds GPS to a menu that already includes WiFi, WiMax and Bluetooth. “Additionally we will also have a 3G solution in this timeframe,” Thakar said, though he declined to give any details.

Moorestown is on track for 2009-2010. To prove it, during his keynote, Anand Chandrasekher, the senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s ultra mobility group, showed a wafer containing the “first silicon” for Moorestown.

The rise of netbooks
Currently, the Menlow platform is used three different types of gadgets: Mobile Internet Devices or MIDs, netbooks and nettops. Intel continues to show off MIDs from Lenovo, Fujitsu, Clarion and others, but the rollout of a Mobile WiMax wireless broadband–a key enabling technology–is behind schedule and MIDs, like UMPCs before them, still seem like a solution in search of a problem. Instead Atom has found a home in notebooks which have morphed from a “One Laptop Per Child” sort of product to a much broader market–a development that seems to have caught Intel by surprise.

“All of these [netbooks] are wonderful. When we envisioned the netbook, we thought it was going to be predominantly for emerging markets,” said Dadi Perlmutter, Intel’s executive vice president and general manger of mobile platforms, in his keynote. “But we are surprised, happily surprised, to see that this technology is also being desired in mature markets.”

The dual-core Atom processor arrives
Finally, Intel also announced the first dual-core Atom processor, the Atom 330, paired with a new mini-ITX format motherboard–both of which are designed specifically for a third category of Menlow products: nettops. Like their mobile counterparts, these are basic desktops designed for both emerging markets and as a second or third PC in households in mature markets. The Asus Eee Box and MSI Wind PC are two examples. (Intel says the mini-ITX board and Atom chips may also be used in Internet kiosks, thin clients and point-of-sale systems.) One of the problems with these systems is that some mini-ITX components are actually more costly than standard desktop components, so it is tough to build nettops that are much cheaper than full-fledged budget PCs, though if the nettop volumes increase, that will change.

Still it’s clear that the primary market for Atom is mobile devices. During his keynote, Perlmutter showed Intel’s estimates for worldwide computer shipments through 2012, which illustrate just how fast notebooks, and increasingly Atom-based mobile devices, are expected to grow–and how important they’ve become to Intel’s strategy.

August 20th, 2008

The news on Intel's Nehalem; chips with integrated GPUs up next

Posted by John Morris @ 7:49 am

Categories: AMD, Desktops, Intel, Power conservation, Semiconductor architecture, multicore processors, notebooks, quad-core processors

Tags: Core, Intel Corp., Chip, GPU, Nehalem, Processors, Semiconductors, Hardware, Components, John Morris

Intel has given new details of what it calls the biggest change in its processor platform in a decade.

The new information on Nehalem, discussed in keynotes and presentations at the Intel Developer Forum this week, was expected. Nehalem isn’t a single product, but a family of products all based on a new microarchitecture. The first products, due to ship in the fourth quarter, will be performance and “extreme” desktop chips bearing the name Core i7. Nehalem will also be used in processors with four cores for servers and workstations (Nehalem-EP), followed by mobile processors for laptops. In his keynote, senior vice president Pat Gelsinger first showed a silicon wafer of Nehalem-EX processors each with eight cores scheduled for the second half of 2009.

Intel didn’t provide much in the way of performance comparisons for Nehalem, partly because it is not a single product, but also, I suspect, because it is saving the numbers for the launch of the Core i7 chips. In general terms, the goal of Nehalem was to increase system performance, while using about the same or less power than the current Core 2 and Xeon platforms. “High performance and energy efficiency are not mutually exclusive. They may sound mutually exclusive but if you innovate enough, it is possible,” said Rajesh Kumar, an Intel fellow in a separate Nehalem presentation. “We want to give you a racecar that gives you the miles per gallon of an economy car.”

The changes to the memory architecture in Nehalem are well-known at this point. It has a memory controller integrated on the die and uses a new interface, Quick Path Interconnect or QPI, which links the cores to one another and to the I/O hub, or Southbridge. (The Northbridge, a memory controller that was part of a separate chipset, and the Front Side Bus are headed for the Computer History Museum.) Nehalem also uses DDR3 memory, which operates at higher frequencies (1,066MHz initially) and at lower voltage, which saves power. All of these changes boost system bandwidth (by 3.4 times, according to an Intel presentation) and decrease latency, the time it takes for a processor to retrieve information from memory. AMD is quick to point out that it has had many of these features in its processors for years.

The cache also has a big impact on system latency, and this is becoming a bigger problem in systems with four or eight cores, each of which in the case of Nehalem can process two instructions simultaneously (multi-threading). To address this, Nehalem adds a third level of cache. Intel also made some lower level changes to the cache–new error correction algorithms, independent power control and the use of low-voltage 8-T SRAM in place of the usual 6-T SRAM–so that the entire system can operate at lower voltages without running into memory errors.

The power management features of Nehalem were not as well known until now. Nehalem’s turbo mode can automatically turn cores on and off depending on the workload. This happens at a low level so it is invisible to the operating system and user. Intel says this will provide optimal performance with both single-threaded applications–by shifting all the power to a single core–and on highly multi-threaded applications which can take advantage of four or even eight cores with two threads each.

To make turbo mode work, Intel said it designed “new transistors and silicon technology” so that a power gate at each core can shut down power completely, and added a Power Control Unit–a separate microcontroller with more than 1 million transistors of its own–to control the gates. In a not-so-subtle knock at competitor AMD and its “asset-smart” plans, Kumar said the new power management features showed why close cooperation between process technology engineers and chip designers was so important in advanced microprocessors.

Intel also dropped some hints about how the technology in Nehalem will be used in other products, most notably processors that have both general-purpose x86 cores and GPUs on the same silicon die. For example, the QPI can be used to connect the CPUs to the GPUs and turbo mode can be extended to control the GPUs as well, so that you can have any combination of x86 cores and GPUs running depending on the applications you are using. There will be both desktop (Havendale) and mobile (Auburndale) processors with GPUs onboard; the desktop and laptop versions without integrated graphics are code-named Lynnfield and Clarksfield, respectively. These are all due in the second half of 2009.

AMD has its own version of this CPU-GPU tandem, which it refers to as Fusion, though initial versions will put the CPU and GPU in the same overall package, but not on the same physical piece of silicon.

July 9th, 2008

Samsung ships 128GB SSDs with cheaper flash memory

Posted by John Morris @ 11:27 am

Categories: Alienware, Apple, Dell, Intel, UMPC, consumer electronics, flash memory, notebooks, semiconductors

Tags: NAND Flash, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., NAND, MLC, SSD, Memory, Flash Memory, Semiconductors, Hardware, Components

Samsung announced today that it has begun manufacturing 64GB and 128GB SSDs based on a less-expensive type of NAND flash known as MLC. The company also said it was still on track to deliver a 256GB version by the end of this year.

Samsung has been shipping first-generation PC drives based on SLC, or single-level cell, NAND flash for some time. Dell and Alienware were the first OEMs to begin offering these 64GB drives in some laptops starting last September. But they’ve been slow to catch on, in part because they are so costly relative to conventional hard disk drives. That is why the shift to MLC is significant. MLC, or multi-level cell, NAND flash currently stores two bits of information in each cell, which effectively cuts the cost of the chips nearly in half. Samsung is shipping 1.8- and 2.5-inch drives in both capacities.

Samsung isn’t the first to mass produce MLC-based SSDs. Toshiba announced in March that it was shipping 128GB SSDs using MLC NAND flash, initially for use in Toshiba-branded laptops. Earlier this month, OCZ announced a Core line of 32GB ($169), 64GB ($259), and 128GB ($479) SSDs built on Samsung’s MLC flash chips. (Samsung hasn’t announced pricing for its MLC-based drives yet.) And SanDisk and Intel have announced lower density SSDs with a PATA (parallel ATA) interface using both SLC and MLC flash and targeted at handhelds and ultra low-cost PCs.

The catch with MLC is that it has slower performance and a shorter lifespan (significantly fewer read/write cycles). There are techniques to compensate for this, but they require sophisticated controllers that are still in the early stages of development. Samsung said its latest drives can write data at 70MB per second and read data at 90MB per second, which is close to the performance of current SLC drives for PCs (SLC drives for enterprise storage applications from companies such as STEC are much faster). Samsung also claims its MLC-based SSDs will last about 20 times longer than the typical laptop.

While SSDs offer many theoretical advantages, it seems the honeymoon is over, not only because of the sky-high cost and lower density, but also because the first crop of drives have failed to live up to performance expectations. The enthusiast site Tom’s Hardware recently caused a stir when it published test results showing laptop battery life with SSDs was actually shorter–not longer–than with a conventional 25-inch, 5,400rpmHDD. (The four SSDs it tested, however, were all early 32GB models with a SATA 1.5-gigabits-per-second interface that won’t see any widespread adoption. Most newer PC drives–including Samsung’s–use a SATA-II 3.0Gbps interface.) In an interview with ComputerWorld this week, a Fujitsu executive said SSDs and hybrid drives would remain a niche market for the next couple years. “Two years ago, a lot of our competitors were hyping these drives, Fujitsu elected not to release the product we developed in the laboratory after benchmarking it because there’s no value proposition for this drive,” said Joel Hagberg , Fujitsu’s VP of business development.

Still Samsung remains bullish on SSDs. It expects SSD sales to grow 800% in the next couple of years and says the drives will be the flash industry’s fastest growing segment. Gartner predicts unit sales will increase from 635,000 units last year to 33 million units in 2012, a compound growth rate of 117%. Even if the market grows at a slower pace, it’s easy to see why SSDs are so critical given the density compared with other flash devices such as cards and USB drives. A single 128GB Samsung SSD consists of 64 16Gb NAND flash chips. And in an industry that cranks out 2.5 times more NAND flash every year, it’s going to take more than a few million 16GB iPhones to use up all those bits.

[Samsung press release]