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Displaying items by tag: AMD

Monday, 28 November 2011 06:43

The Race to 28nm Should be Interesting

siliconThe race to 28nm is going to be an interesting one. Both AMD and nVidia already have working silicon models but neither are ready to start shipping parts to the market. The biggest reason for this is the fact that TSMC (Taiwanese Silicon Manufacturing Company) is having problems with the transition to full scale 28nm production. This is despite the fact that they began the move more than three years ago. Back in 2008 TSMC announced they would begin the move to 28nm and start full scale production on 28nm High-K Metal Gate (HKMG) and Silicon Oxynitride (SiON) materials by 2010. We are now moving into the end of 2011 and we are still hearing about issues with yields on these parts.

Published in News

GA-A75-UD4HWith all of the excitement surround a CPU launch from both AMD and then Intel some of the smaller products have been overlooked. These are parts like the A75 chipset and the Llano CPU. We have had one of these up on the test bench for a while now. Mostly to run the performance tests and see where this hardware falls in terms of real performance, but also to try it out and see just what it is like to use.  After all this is a platform that AMD was putting a good deal of stock in for future sales and market share. We wanted to see what it would be like to actually use one. We have already taken a look at the design philosophy and features So without any further preamble we bring you the second half of our Gigabyte A75-UD4H motherboard review.

Published in Consumer Motherboards
Wednesday, 16 November 2011 23:46

AMD and Intel Show off New Server CPUs

serversAt Supercomputing 2011 both Intel and AMD showed off their latest in HPC (High Performance Computing). From AMD we got a look at their new Bulldozer based. These new CPUs will ship in 8 and 16-core varieties. The 16-core flavor called the Opteron 6200 will also have four memory channels (like the Intel 3960X), 1MB of cache per core (level 2), and will top out at 3.3GHz. The 8-Core version will be the Opteron 4200 and will only have two memory channels, but will still have 1MB of L2 cache per core and a top clock speed of 3.3GHz.

Published in News
Monday, 14 November 2011 20:42

AMD trying to get the word out about FMA4 and XOP

AMD_FX_CPU_LogoAMD is an interesting company; on the one hand they have some incredible ideas and can really bring some great features to life. Where they sometimes have an issue is bringing them to market and conclusion. One of the reasons for this is their lack of funds. If you do not have enough money to push your products (like Intel and nVidia usually do) then you have to rely on the community to adopt and support your goals. We have watched this happen multiple times with everything from GPU based Physics (the integration of Ageia PhysX onto the X19xx series GPUs) to OpenCL.  AMD shows off what is capable and then due to lack of support and money has to step back and watch as the “rich kids” run off with the toys.


Published in News
Thursday, 10 November 2011 18:47

Just where is AMD headed?

despdAMD has faced some rough time recently. After their ATi purchase back in 2006 AMD has had one poor leader after another. Under Hector Ruiz we ended up with the ill-fated $5.4 Billion buyout of ATi. This was a purchase that caused AMD to not have a profitable quarter for almost 5 years. In fact if AMD had not gotten a settlement from Intel in late 2010 they would still be operating in the red. Hector Ruiz was also responsible for the shedding of AMD’s foundries.  This split created Global Foundries and forced AMD as a CPU and GPU manufacturer into a Fabless state. They now have to pay to have their processors made by another company.

Published in Editorials

Rory-01Word has reached us that AMD has cut their PR and Marketing department and as of this writing only three unnamed executives are left there from the original team. This is very interesting news for us out here especially anyone that has been dealing with AMD for any length of time. The cuts were originally blamed on a poorly performing PC market and increased interest in tablets and smart phones. This sentiment was shouted down by some in the press who wanted to know how both Microsoft and Intel managed record quarters if the PC market was down. However the original stories (published by some) were quickly updated to tone down these remarks. Of course considering where Read came from and some recent statements (and rumors) that AMD is going to try and push into the SoC market I am not surprised to see this type of spin on some of the articles.

I have to say that I knew something was going south when I received an email from the long time New Products Release Manager (many of you will know who I am talking about) that he was leaving AMD. I was introduced to two new people that I had never heard of before. After that I did not hear anything from AMD until I ventured the question about a possible AMD FX Sample for review. The reply was short, professional and rather cold considering the history I have with AMD (I have been working with them since launch of the Opteron). But as this is a new site and I had ventured out on my own I was not surprised, disappointed yes, but again not surprised.

However, looking back I think that was an indicator that things were not as they should have been. After all you do not just up and leave after 10+ years for no reason.  Something had to clue him into changes being made. Then the response (or lack of response) to my emails after the terse “sorry we do not have any more CPUs, good luck” email was also surprising as even when I have annoyed people at AMD they have always communicated with me.

Still with this move I have to hope that this is a change for the better. In the past AMD has been exceptionally xenophobic about who they talk to, and who they work with. They ended up dragging ATi into this way of thinking as well and pushed many good PR and Marketing people off into other less impressive positions. We can only hope that the three people left in charge are not the ones that I have recently dealt with, if they are then Rory Read’s sweeping action may just end up getting him more of the same and possibly end up netting him even less coverage for the products that AMD is pushing out or will push out.

In the end it is sad that some 1400 people are out of work and that AMD continues to step all over their own feet with one bad move after another. We just hope that this one is not another blunder to go into AMD’s top ten.

Source TechReport

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Published in News

AMD_FX_CPU_LogoNormally I do not think that a CPU running at a massive clock speed is very news worthy. This is even more true when the speed in question cannot do much more than verify “yes this was my clock speed”. However, when the same model and style of CPU breaks a world record twice in around two months… well that is something a little different. I decided to take a look and see what was going on.

It seems that back in September an overclocker by the name of Macci (aka AMD_FX-FX_chew*_macci_hardman_64NOMIS_AJS) posted a verified CPUz for the AMD FX-8150 Octo-core CPU of 8.429.38 MHz (8.429GHz). This speed was achieved by using a staggering 2.016 volts on an Asus Crosshair V Formula. This is not a bad clock at all, but we did notice something very interesting.

macci
If you look at the screen shot above you notice that despite being listed as an “AMD FX-8150 Eight-Core Processor” CPUz only lists two cores and two threads. This would seem to indicate that to reach this speed Macci had to shut off three other cores (there are two “cores” per “core) bringing it down to just the two single cores inside one CPU module on the processor die. Now, before you fire off that nasty email of start warming up the flame thrower, I want to be clear on something; this speed is extremely impressive. No matter how thin you slice it, but it does bring up something though. On the Phenom the crossbar that talked between CPU cores would often fail to respond in a timely manner between all cores. This would cause a BSOD and mean that that high clock speed you were going for was out of the question.  (Before anyone says anything, I know this happens on Intel CPUs as well it is just not as common).
andrew
Last week another overclocker by the name of Andre Yang pushed the FX-8150 (Dual Core) CPU past the 8.42 mark to 8.46GHz. This time the high Clock speed was reached with a voltage of only 1.992 Volts, but still using the same motherboard.  These two clock speed are very impressive in terms of simply going for that top spot, but what is missing right now is the performance side of overclocking. Where are the low SuperPi Scores, the high PCMark Scores, and PiFast numbers?  

While I would never take away from the accomplishments of these two overclockers, I will say to AMD that overclocking is not only about the clockspeed. You have to have performance to match these numbers, and from what we are seeing… it just isn’t there yet.

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Published in News
Friday, 28 October 2011 06:43

AMD Earnings Up 7% Over Q2, the PC Is Not Dead

17Over the last few months I have watched a few analysis articles hit the internet with comments about the “stale” PC market and how the desktop PC is dying. These predictors of doom and gloom have always been around and in many cases I have a feeling they are saying these things because they want you to believe them. The funny thing is that the reality of the PC market is quite different from these fairy tales. If you need proof of that you need look no further than the earnings results from the two main CPU manufacturers. Intel posted a record quarter and even AMD is profitable and managed an increase in revenue over last quarter.

AMD has finally started to turn things around on their own. For a little while they were running off of the settlement that they received from Intel and we watched with interest as they dipped back down from profit to loss. However they had a rebound in Q2 and managed a $61 million in net income in Q2. For Q3 AMD has seen a very nice improvement. Their total revenue was $1.69 Billion with a 7% new income increase of just over 7% bringing the Q3 income up to 97 Million. This is a HUGE improvement over Q3 2010 where they posted a $118 Million Dollar loss. Of course this was taken care of in Q4 by the Intel settlement which let AMD post their first positive quarter in something like 5 years.

AMD’s ATi division also saw improvement where they posted a net income of $12 Million. In Q2 this division was down and posted a $7 Million loss. Right now AMD is pointing toward the Llano APUs as the reason for this increase in cash. Another factor in this (according to the AMD press release) is an increase in adoption of the AMD platform in notebooks. They specifically mention Asus, Acer, Dell, Lenovo, HP and others saying that they have globally increased their offerings with AMD APUs.
Things do look up for AMD, but there is an interesting statement in their PR which leads me to think that all is not beer and pizza. Looking at their forecast AMD is predicting only a 3% growth with a 1-2% margin of error. This means that despite the launch of a new Opteron, the new FX Series CPUs and additional OpenCL adoption they are only expecting a 1% revenue increase in Q4. This is not what I would call confidence in newly launched products. We will see if AMD is able to pull off a better increase or if the launch of Intel’s next CPU will put a damper on their Q3 increases and end 2011 for AMD on a down quarter.

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Published in News
Wednesday, 31 August 2011 22:33

Does anyone really know what AMD is doing next?

230HP-Bulldozer-MD23There is a ton of contradictory information on the net today about just exactly what AMD and Globalfoundries are going to do with the next process. As we already know AMD’s next gen CPU Bulldozer will be a 32nm 8-core monster that has the potential to turn things around for AMD (at least on paper) that is if they can correct some of the past issues with memory performance.  What happens from there we are not so certain about, nor is anyone else for that matter. This is despite the fact that multiple journalists ended up at a press event hosted by Globalfoundries.

So far the rumors run something like this; AMD and Globalfoundries are moving away from SOI (Silicon on Insulator). SOI has been the basis for AMD CPUs for some time and to see them move away from this is a little shocking. Oh, wait; that rumor was contradicted by Globalfoundries who now say they will be sticking with SOI moving forward. Next we hear that AMD won’t move to the next node (28nm) until 2013. This is actually somewhat believable as AMD tends to try and get the most money out of any process move. After all they have been on 45nm for a number of years! To think they won’t move to the next process node until 2013 is not unreasonable (although I really think 22nm is much more likely).

To add to this are the usual suspects commenting back and forth about what they think of each article or the writer in general. It makes trying to find out real information a tad tedious.  To be honest about the only thing we know for certain is that AMD will launch Bulldozer sometime between the middle of September and the end of the Year. It will have 8 physical cores (in four CPU clusters) improved core to core communication and a few other tricks up its sleeve. We do not know much about the memory controller, but it appears from looking at the design to be a slightly modified revision of the one in the Phenom II. If this is the case and the optimizations are not spot on we could see this hinder what is certainly a bold CPU design from AMD. I guess we will all find out what is going on around the middle of September. We hope to be on the very short list of sites to review this new CPU for you, but again time will tell on that.

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Published in Editorials
Tuesday, 30 August 2011 21:31

Globalfoundries talks up AMD's Trinity APU

RUBY5_lrgThere were some interesting announcements for AMD at the Globalfoundries event today; although it was not AMD that made these, but Greg Bartlett, Senior VP of Technology and Integration Engineering at GF.  Gregg was showing off a few slides of upcoming technology that GF will be involved in and let some things out. We are certain these were previously approved by AMD that would like as much press as possible about their new APUs (which appear to be very good).

The things that were let to slip were the fact that AMD’s next generation Trinity will be 32nm instead of 22nm or even 28nm. The new Trinity will be based on a derivative of the Bulldozer core architecture and, according to AMD, will be roughly 50% faster than the current Llano APUs. The new APUs will feature AMD’s next generation 28nm HD7000 series graphics (which was another confirmation although not a formal announcement). The trinity parts are slated to be pushed towards the mobile market (where AMD seriously needs a better offering) and should begin shipping in early 2012.

It will be interesting to see AMD and Intel compete for this new market space. We have already watched some entertaining Facebook posts from both sides about this very issue.

Source Fudzilla

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