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.

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September 2nd, 2008

Report: AMD to challenge Nvidia's $60 graphics

Posted by John Morris @ 3:35 am

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

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

The cost of good graphics is going down fast.

AMD plans to release new versions of its ATI Radeon 4000-series graphics processing units (GPUs) for entry-level graphics cards, according to the site TGDaily. The new cards are a response to Nvdia’s new 9400 GT, which was announced last week, and is available in graphics cards starting at $60. These entry-level cards are the first step up from systems using chipsets with integrated graphics from Intel, as well as AMD and Nvidia.

The competition to offer better graphics at lower prices seems to affecting the business at all levels. In its recent quarterly call, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang admitted that the company had underestimated the price-performance of AMD’s high-end Radeon 4800 series, which forced Nvidia to cut prices on its competing GTX 260 and GTX 280 GPUs shortly after launching them. While these high-end GPUs get most of the glory, graphics cards costing less than $100 account for the bulk of sales, and a head-to-head battle at $60 could push average prices even lower.

Several sites have reported that AMD will release two new GPUs on September 10: the Radeon HD 4650 and Radeon HD 4670 with 512MB and 1GB GDDR3 memory, respectively. Tom’s Hardware reported that these GPUs will compete directly with Nvidia 9500 GT, which is available in cards costing $70 to $100. AMD either thinks that it will offer better performance to justify a slightly higher price, or it will push the Radeon HD 4650–or a similar GPU–down to about $60 to match the 9400 GT.

It will be interesting to see how these stack up to one another, as well as to the best integrated graphics solutions such as AMD’s 780G.

[Update 9/2/2008 9:00AM PST: Expreview has posted what appear to be the first performance test results for the Radeon HD 4650 and Radeon HD 4670.]

August 18th, 2008

Before Intel's big show, AMD launches an attack

Posted by John Morris @ 7:54 am

Categories: AMD, Data centers, Desktops, Intel, Nvidia, PC gaming, PC graphics, Semiconductor architecture, multicore processors

Tags: Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Graphics, Intel Corp., Attack, Imitation, Processors, Semiconductors, Hardware, Components, John Morris

With Intel’s annual conference set to start this week, AMD launched a pre-emptive strike in a press conference on Friday.

AMD executives said the processor innovations you’ll hear about next week are imitations of technology they introduced as much as five years ago, and Intel’s Larrabee graphics architecture remains little more than a PowerPoint slide. For its part, AMD did not announce any new products or changes to its roadmap, but they said the company had gotten its “swagger” back, releasing a string of competitive PC platforms and graphics products this year.

This week Intel will release more details on its Nehalem architecture, the first iteration of which is now known as Core i7. Randy Allen, the senior vice president of AMD’s computing division, said many innovations in Core i7 are really imitations of features such as the integrated memory controller and HyperTransport already in AMD processors.

“I guess on one level it is sort of gratifying. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” Allen said. “But on another level it is somewhat annoying . . . [Nehalem is] not rewriting the book, but rather imitating or photocopying our innovations.”

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August 12th, 2008

Review roundup: AMD's Radeon 4870 X2 delivers

Posted by John Morris @ 7:41 am

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

Tags: Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Graphics, Radeon, GPU, Radeon 4870 X2, Games, Video Cards, Personal Technology, Hardware, Components

AMD has been on a roll lately with its Radeon 4800 series GPUs, and with the official introduction of the Radeon 4870 X2, it can now claim the world’s fastest 3D gaming card.

The Radeon 4870 X2 combines two of AMD’s fastest GPU, the RV770, each clocked at 750MHz on a single graphics card for a total of 1,600 stream processors. It is also the first card to offer 1GB of GDDR5 graphics memory, which supports higher data rates than GDDR3. Asus, Diamond Multimedia, Gigabyte, MSI, Palit, Sapphire and several other board makers will offer Radeon 4870 X2 graphics cards for around $550. These should be available immediately. AMD also announced a dual-GPU version of the Radeon 4850 (625MHz GPUs, 1,600 stream processors and 2GB GDDR3 memory), which will be available in September at around $400.

The Radeon 4870 X2 competes directly with Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 280. When Nvidia launched the GTX 280 and GTX 260 in June, it said the high-end cards would cost about $650, but you can now find them for significantly less.

Given the strong performance of the Radeon 4850 and 4870 (also launched in June), it is little surprise that dual-GPU versions would post impressive scores (several enthusiast sites jumped the gun and posted previews last month). The final reviews confirm that AMD has grabbed the lead in performance–at least for now. The difference is clear, especially on demanding games such as Crysis at high resolutions with high-quality settings.

The Radeon 4870 X2 and 4850 X2 can be used in CrossFireX mode (two cards), but the performance here did not scale as you would expect. In the press release, AMD states CrossFireX will deliver about three times the performance of a single Radeon 4870 graphics card on “some games,” but few games really take advantage of the extra GPUs, and in some cases, a single Radeon 4870 X2 graphics card outperforms three GPUs. Eventually drivers and games will be better-optimized for CrossFireX and Nvidia’s SLI, but since the Radeon 4870 X2 provides plenty of horsepower for nearly all current games, it’s hard to complain too much about CrossFireX.

AMD ATI Radeon 4870 X2 reviews:

• CustomPC
• DriverHeaven.net
• ExtremeTech
• HotHardware
• Neoseeker
• PC Perspective
• The Tech Report
• TechGage
• The Guru of 3D
• Tom’s Hardware
• TweakTown

August 5th, 2008

The lowdown on Intel's Larrabee

Posted by John Morris @ 7:32 am

Categories: AMD, Desktops, Intel, Nvidia, PC gaming, PC graphics, Semiconductor architecture, multicore processors

Tags: NVidia Corp., Intel Corp., GPU, Larrabee, John Morris

With Siggraph 2008 starting next week and IDF (Intel Developer Forum) on its heels, Intel is revealing more details of its mysterious Larrabee project. Intel has finally stated unequivocally that its “many-core” architecture will be used in desktop add-in boards for 3D gaming that compete directly with AMD and Nvidia GPUs–at least initially, though there are other applications as well.

The latest presentation has a lot of technical detail on the architecture–which is very different from the typical massively-parallel GPU–but it raises as many questions as it answers. The exact number of cores (8 to 32?), the size of the chip, how much power it will consume, and of course how it will actually perform on 3D games all remain big question marks. In his Speeds and Feeds blog, Peter N.Glaskowsky notes that a Larrabee chip with 32 1GHz cores could theoretically exceed a teraflop–around the performance of today’s fastest GPUs, Nvidia’s GX280 and AMD’s ATI Radeon HD 4870–but it would probably be commercially impractical even for Intel. Curiously there’s little mention of ray-tracing anymore. Larrabee uses the same DirectX and OpenGL APIs as ordinary GPUs to run games, but it goes about it in a very different way; Ars Technica has a nice analysis of how Larrabee renders 3D frames in software, rather than in hardware as in a GPU.

Since Larrabee-based add-in boards won’t be available until early 2010, it is little surprise that product details are still sketchy, and it is too early to tell how it will really stack up to true discrete GPUs , a market completely dominated by AMD and Nvidia. Intel has failed here before, but given its vast resources, you can’t count it out. In a research note, industry analyst Jon Peddie predicted that Intel will ship 46 million Larrabee “GPUs” in 2010. The total market for discrete GPUs was 350 million units last year.

More coverage of Larrabee:

• Larrabee: Intel’s biggest leap since the Pentium Pro [Ars Technica]
• Intel’s Larrabee–more and less than meets the eye [Speeds and Feeds]
• Intel details future ‘Larrabee’ graphics chip [Nanotech: The circuits blog]
• Intel’s Larrabee Graphics To Take On Nvidia, ATI … In 2010 [ChannelWeb]

July 1st, 2008

AMD Phenom gets (a little) faster

Posted by John Morris @ 11:32 am

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

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.