Displaying items by tag: AMD

AMD has begun shipping their 28nm GPUs to OEMs in preparation for the official launch in January at the 2012 CES. This news is good for AMD as they have been promising to be first to market with 28nm for most of the year. It is also good to know that some of the issues with TSMC’s 28nm process that we have heard about are not going to slow things up.

It looks like mobile is the way to go these days; well really it has been for some time. Back in 2009 or so nVidia saw that and turned their attention toward the mobile world by developing the Tegra SoC (System on Chip) at the time many people slammed them for dropping out of the chipset business and fans of their GPUs became annoyed that this new product was taking priority over development of faster and better products for their games. Now, after a rocky start and three generations into it (plus a design win that could put Tegra on the moon), no one is laughing at the tiny little chip any longer.

Is Microsoft Changing its mind about Windows on ARM? That is the question that many people would like to know now. After hearing that Microsoft was committed to Windows 8 on the ARM platform due to consumer desire for a Windows based tablet (and after they have pretty much designed a tablet OS) many were under the impression that Microsoft would follow suit with other desktop products for the new mobile platform. However, after some new information was conveyed by a Microsoft Executive this might not be the case.

Well now, it looks like there are two leaked pictures on the Internet that are reportedly of AMD’s new Tahiti GPU. The first was leaked onto the Beyond3D Forums.  The image there appeared to show two of the next generation GPUs running in Crossfire. The image was enhanced to indicate where the memory chips were on the board and showed a total of 12 chips (again using small squares as indicators). These pictures much rampant speculation about what the memory architecture is as well as debate about the power requirements of this new GPU.

If you were looking for any additional confirmation that AMD is reorganizing for a major rally then the announcement that they are canceling CPUs before they are launched might be of interest for you. It appears that AMD will be outright cancelling their Krishna and Wichita 28nm CPUs. The stated reason, Global Foundries will not be ready with 28nm in time.

Ok... remember how we told you that we had a suspicion that AMD might be working on an x86 based SoC.  We have already seen several signs pointing to a major push on something new and we know that AMD is VERY excited about their Brazos and Llano products. If you add this on top of AMD CEO Rory Read’s fondness for small, low-powered mobile devices you can begin to see a picture emerging. The picture is still fuzzy, but we are finding more signs that could back up our case for AMD’s x86 SoC.

You knew this would happen (as it does almost every time a new CPU is ready to hit the market). In the hype leading up to the release we always start to see “leaked” slides that contain pricing, technical details and even launch dates. It is the same story over and over again and it is one that is, in some cases, perpetrated by the manufactures themselves or a partner bent on getting some good pre-launch press.

It looks like AMD might be taking a leaf out of HP’s book. According to a report from ZDNet Asia AMD will begin to shift its focus away from the desktop to the server side where the margins are much higher per unit. This latest news plays into some additional rumblings that AMD is getting out of the x86 market (which is not true at all). We have already told you that AMD is planning to shift its consumer line up toward the mobile market where AMD feels they have an advantage over Intel and the Atom.

The Internet is all a buzz with the news that AMD is now releasing memory that has the AMD brand  on it (it is rumored that Patriot is actually making the RAM). Many seem to be surprised by this new product release, although we are not exactly sure why. When we first saw the press release on this it really did not seem like news at all. AMD branding memory is nothing new and is something we have seen them do in response to other companies RAM certifications in the past.

AMD’s Llano is not a new product; it is one that has been out on the market for long enough that all of the major hype and press has already been written. We recently wrapped up our long term testing of an AMD A6-3650 combined with a Gigabyte A75 motherboard. We were rather impressed with the performance that we saw, even if the numbers did not match up to the overall feel. Now we are taking a look at the same CPU, but taking a step down the ladder to the A55 chipset. This time the victim is the A55M-DS2 motherboard.  You are losing a few items with this shift like USB 3.0, SATA 3.0  and a PCIe slot, but we wonder if that will really impact performance. So let’s take a look at the design and the features that you can expect to get when you pick up one of these.