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 11th, 2008

Via stops making chipsets for Intel, AMD systems

Posted by John Morris @ 8:49 am

Categories: AMD, Desktops, Intel, Nvidia, PC graphics, VIA Technologies, multicore processors, semiconductors

Tags: via technologies inc., advanced micro devices inc., intel corp., chipsets, semiconductors, hardware, components, john morris

And then there were three . . .

After months of rumors, Taiwan-based Via Technologies has confirmed that it will stop producing chipsets for PCs that use Intel and AMD processors. A company spokesperson told the hardware site Custom PC that the third-party chipset business was on its way out, and said Via would instead focus on developing entire PC platforms.

Via is best-known for producing the chipsets and low-power processors found in small-form factor desktops. More recently, it has received a lot of press for its work on netbooks. HP uses Via’s C-7 chip in its Mini-Note 2133, and at the Computex tradeshow in June, Via announced a new chip, the Nano, which competes head-to-head with Intel’s Atom.

With chipsets, however, the writing was on the wall. In the second quarter, Via and its S3 Graphics joint venture combined shipped 1.1 million GPUs, or 1% of the total market; in the same quarter last year it shipped 6.26 million, representing nearly 8% of the market, according to Jon Peddie Research. Meanwhile Intel has grown its share to more than 47% of the total GPU market, followed by Nvidia and AMD.

The introduction of new graphics technology, such as SLI/CrossFire and hybrid graphics, as well as the new memory interface in Intel’s upcoming Core i7, have made it more challenging for third parties to license the necessary technology and develop chipsets.

Via said it will continue to develop chipsets for its own Nano chip, following the trend set by Intel, and more recently AMD, of selling entire platforms, rather than individual PC components, which are becoming increasingly commoditized. Earlier this month the newswire DigiTimes reported that Nvidia had told motherboard makers it was preparing to exit the chipset business as well, but the company quickly denied it.

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]