CPU Wars: Intel vs. AMD

Intel Granted Patent for Germanium Nanowire Transistors

2012-02-13T08:03:00.000-08:00

Submitted as a patent application in April of 2010, the company first discussed a related invention at the 2010 International Electron Devices Meeting. Intel disclosed that it had developed P-channel transistors made from germanium, which the company said could be combined with complementary III-V N-channel transistors to form a suitable CMOS architecture. The focus on germanium is largely due to the fact that it is more mobile than silicon.

The patent itself reveals the use of a "germanium nanowire channel and the SiGe anchoring regions [that] are formed simultaneously through preferential Si oxidation of epitaxial Silicon Germanium epi layer." Intel leverages a silicon fin as a "template" to align germanium nanowires on a chip while silicon-germanium anchors are used to mount to a silicon substrate.

Intel was granted a patent that covers the use of germanium as a material choice for compound semiconductors that promise faster processors and reduced power consumption.

Submitted as a patent application in April of 2010, the company first discussed a related invention at the 2010 International Electron Devices Meeting. Intel disclosed that it had developed P-channel transistors made from germanium, which the company said could be combined with complementary III-V N-channel transistors to form a suitable CMOS architecture. The focus on germanium is largely due to the fact that it is more mobile than silicon.

The patent itself reveals the use of a "germanium nanowire channel and the SiGe anchoring regions [that] are formed simultaneously through preferential Si oxidation of epitaxial Silicon Germanium epi layer." Intel leverages a silicon fin as a "template" to align germanium nanowires on a chip while silicon-germanium anchors are used to mount to a silicon substrate. Germanium is likely to become a much more critical material in chip manufacturing in the future, as such nanowires "provide better control of short channel effects such as sub threshold slop and drain induced barrier lowering," the patent states.

The extensive use of germanium has been discussed by the semiconductor industry for more than a decade, while first sophisticated germanium processors were predicted 15 years ago to arrive in the 2007 - 2008 time frame (similarly, the first graphene processors are now forecast to become available around 2020 - 2025). The history even goes back to 1959, when Jack Kilby built a microchip with germanium, but it was Intel-co-founder Robert Noyce who chose silicon and overcame. Back then, germanium was found to be limited by greater current leakage. Over the past ten years, the interest in germanium as a transistor material has increased significantly and has resulted in developments such as IBM's 500 GHz GPU.

Source: tomshardware.com

AMD rolls out two more Llano Athlon II X4 CPUs

2012-02-09T07:40:00.000-08:00

In addition to socket FM1 Athlon II X4 631 and 651 CPUs, AMD has silently rolled out two more models, the Athlon II X4 638 and 641. Spotted by CPU-World, the Athlon II X4 641 already seen before has been joined by a totaly new part, the Athlon II X4 638.

In case you are wondering, the Llano Athlon II X4 CPUs are simply Llano dies with a disabled GPU part. The fastest Athlon II X4 641 is a quad-core that works at 2.8GHz, has 4MB of L2 cache and features SSE3, AMD64, Enahnced Virus protection and Virtualization. As noted, the Athlon II X4 641 fits into FM1 socket, has a 100W TDP and has been seen before retailing at around US $95.

Socket FM1 Athlon II X4 638 and 641

In addition to socket FM1 Athlon II X4 631 and 651 CPUs, AMD has silently rolled out two more models, the Athlon II X4 638 and 641. Spotted by CPU-World, the Athlon II X4 641 already seen before has been joined by a totaly new part, the Athlon II X4 638.

In case you are wondering, the Llano Athlon II X4 CPUs are simply Llano dies with a disabled GPU part. The fastest Athlon II X4 641 is a quad-core that works at 2.8GHz, has 4MB of L2 cache and features SSE3, AMD64, Enahnced Virus protection and Virtualization. As noted, the Athlon II X4 641 fits into FM1 socket, has a 100W TDP and has been seen before retailing at around US $95.

The Athlon II X4 638 is also a quad-core FM1 socket CPU that ticks at 2.7GHz, making it the fastest AMD 65W TDP CPU, at least for now. It also packs 4MB of L2 cache and has pretty much the same features and specs as the Athlon II X4 641. Although it is still not available in retail/e-tail, the offical price of the Athlon II X4 638 is set at US $81.

You can check out more here.

Source: fudzilla.com

AMD sales chief jumps ship

2012-02-09T07:39:00.000-08:00

AMD announced Tuesday that long-time chief sales officer and senior vice president Emilio Ghilardi was leaving the company.

The announcement comes after a series of changes at the top and an unparalleled management reshuffle at AMD over the past several quarters. AMD CEO Rory Read will take over Ghilardi’s responsibilities and serve as interim sales chief until a replacement is found.

No reason for Ghilardi’s departure was given and his resignation is effective immediately.

Update: Emilio Ghilardi is out, sacked apparently

AMD announced Tuesday that long-time chief sales officer and senior vice president Emilio Ghilardi was leaving the company.

The announcement comes after a series of changes at the top and an unparalleled management reshuffle at AMD over the past several quarters. AMD CEO Rory Read will take over Ghilardi’s responsibilities and serve as interim sales chief until a replacement is found.

No reason for Ghilardi’s departure was given and his resignation is effective immediately.

Update:

Ghilardi was apparently let go and he did not leave the company to "pursue new opportunities" as AMD claims. John Byrne, Corporate Vice President Sales Americas Mega Region and Darren Grasby, Corporate Vice President Sales will assist Read in the interim. Both are ex-ATI chaps and they are among the few former ATI execs who are still part of AMD's top management.

Source: fudzilla.com

Notebook Makers Integrate Intel Extreme "Sandy Bridge-E" Chips into Laptops

2012-02-09T07:37:00.000-08:00

Several suppliers of high-end laptops have unveiled new desktop replacement (DTR) notebooks that are powered by Intel Corp.'s latest Core i7-series microprocessors in LGA2011 form-factor with up to six x86 cores that power top-of-the-range desktops. At present the systems are available from AvaDirect and Eurocom.

The new DTR systems from AvaDirect and Eurocom powered by Core i7 "Sandy Bridge-E" central processing units (CPUs) and Intel X79 are based on Clevo P270WM chassis. The platform enables to install up to Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme processor, up to two MXM 3.0b graphics cards (up to AMD Radeon HD 6990M, Nvidia GeForce GTX 580M or Quadro 4000M), up to 64GB of quad-channel DDR3 memory, up to three 2.5" hard drives with RAID 0/1/5/10 support, 17.3" display with 1920*1080 resolution and so on.

AvaDirect, Eurocom Unveil Super Laptops with LGA2011 Intel Extreme Processors

Several suppliers of high-end laptops have unveiled new desktop replacement (DTR) notebooks that are powered by Intel Corp.'s latest Core i7-series microprocessors in LGA2011 form-factor with up to six x86 cores that power top-of-the-range desktops. At present the systems are available from AvaDirect and Eurocom.

The new DTR systems from AvaDirect and Eurocom powered by Core i7 "Sandy Bridge-E" central processing units (CPUs) and Intel X79 are based on Clevo P270WM chassis. The platform enables to install up to Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme processor, up to two MXM 3.0b graphics cards (up to AMD Radeon HD 6990M, Nvidia GeForce GTX 580M or Quadro 4000M), up to 64GB of quad-channel DDR3 memory, up to three 2.5" hard drives with RAID 0/1/5/10 support, 17.3" display with 1920*1080 resolution and so on.

"It's a workstation-caliber PC complete with uninterrupted power supply (UPS) in a notebook form factor. It may be large, but this is one extremely fast notebook that replaces desktop based workstation with over 1 hour of built-in UPS battery," said Mark Bialic, president of Eurocom.

The new DTR systems are the first personal computers in mobile form-factors that support LGA2011 microprocessors as well as leading-edge latest multimedia technologies. Potential users of such machines include gamers as well as those, who need extreme-performance mobile workstations and not constrained by budgets.

AvaDirect and Eurocom have begun to accept pre-orders for the X79 high-end gaming notebooks. The base price starts at around $3000 and will feature the Intel Core i7-3930K, GeForce GTX 580M 2GB, 4GB of DDR3 RAM at 1333MHz, 750GB 7200rpm hard disk, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

Source: xbitlabs.com

Intel Updates Sandy Bridge Graphics Drivers

2012-02-09T07:33:00.000-08:00

Intel has posted versions 15.22.54.2622 (32-bit) and 15.22.54.64.2622 (64-bit) of its drivers for the Intel HD-series lineup of integrated graphics processors, which includes both Sandy Bridge and older Nehalem-based chips in both desktop and laptop computers. The drivers are available for all editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Of the Big Three players in the graphics market, Intel is the most erratic about its driver releases - their last generic driver was posted way back in September, and while that driver brought a good number of performance improvements and bug fixes, Intel's latest and greatest fixes just three documented issues: a crashing issue with a program called Interstage Studio Standard J-edition, an issue where the driver would change the refresh rate while on battery power, and an issue where content would appear strangely when rewound. Not terribly exciting, given the wait, but I'm sure that the people experiencing those problems are grateful for the fixes.

AMD Denies Building Chips at IBM's Factories

2012-02-09T07:30:00.000-08:00

AMD: IBM Only Provided Consultations to Boost 32nm Yields

Advanced Micro Devices denied on Tuesday that IBM had started to make chips on contract basis for the company. AMD said that IBM only provided consulting services to Globalfoundries, contract maker of AMD's microprocessors, so that to enable it to boost yields of chips produced using 32nm silicon-on-insulator process technology.

"IBM has given some consulting support to GF, as far as I know they are not producing chips for us," a spokesperson for AMD told X-bit labs.

Since IBM, Globalfoundries, Samsung Electronics and STMicroelectronics are jointly develop various semiconductor process technologies, they usually unify manufacturing processes and can help each other to build chips if needed. For example, Globalfoundries' fab 8 in Saratoga, New York, and IBM's facility in East Fishkill, New York, at present can produce the same chips. Nonetheless, this is not a case when it comes to IBM and AMD's central processing units and accelerated processing units as they are exclusively made at Globalfoundries.

During an event for financial analysts last week, AMD's chief executive Rory Read named IBM as one of AMD's manufacturing partners that helps to solve issues with supply of the company's latest chips, which implied that AMD had quietly added a manufacturing partner.

"We win together and we have a partnership [...] in difficult times and in good times. What we are seeing is the focus on execution, running the test chips through the line, the gathering of data, [...] working with partners from IBM and GlobalFoundries. We're seeing real focus day in and day out on execution improvement. Because of the work we're doing at the partnership level, we're getting the right kind of uptick from their side of the organization as well," said Mr. Read.

Back in 2011 Advanced Micro Devices ran into supply problems with its latest chips, including those made using 32nm SOI process technology - Bulldozer, Llano, etc. The firm had to change its supply agreement with Globalfoundries and worked hard to boost production yields of its APUs and CPUs. The major issues are believed to be solved by now.

Source: xbitlabs.com

Engineers Show Way to Improve Performance of AMD, Intel Hybrid Chips by 20%

2012-02-09T07:27:00.000-08:00

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new technique that allows to improve performance of AMD Fusion or Intel Sandy Bridge hybrid chips by an average of more than 20%. The engineers propose to take advantage of unique features of x86 microprocessors, such as data pre-fetching or large caches, to speed up execution of highly-parallel tasks on graphics processing units.

“Chip manufacturers are now creating processors that have a ‘fused architecture,’ meaning that they include CPUs and GPUs on a single chip. This approach decreases manufacturing costs and makes computers more energy efficient. However, the CPU cores and GPU cores still work almost exclusively on separate functions. They rarely collaborate to execute any given program, so they aren’t as efficient as they could be. That’s the issue we’re trying to resolve,” said Dr. Huiyang Zhou, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering who co-authored a paper on the research.

Researchers Propose Using CPU-Specific Functionality to Improve GPU Computing

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new technique that allows to improve performance of AMD Fusion or Intel Sandy Bridge hybrid chips by an average of more than 20%. The engineers propose to take advantage of unique features of x86 microprocessors, such as data pre-fetching or large caches, to speed up execution of highly-parallel tasks on graphics processing units.

“Chip manufacturers are now creating processors that have a ‘fused architecture,’ meaning that they include CPUs and GPUs on a single chip. This approach decreases manufacturing costs and makes computers more energy efficient. However, the CPU cores and GPU cores still work almost exclusively on separate functions. They rarely collaborate to execute any given program, so they aren’t as efficient as they could be. That’s the issue we’re trying to resolve,” said Dr. Huiyang Zhou, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering who co-authored a paper on the research.

Central processing units (CPUs) have less computational power than graphics processing units (GPUs) – but are better able to perform more complex tasks and have a number of special-purpose units that are not present on graphics processors.

“Our approach is to allow the GPU cores to execute computational functions, and have CPU cores pre-fetch the data the GPUs will need from off-chip main memory. This is more efficient because it allows CPUs and GPUs to do what they are good at. GPUs are good at performing computations. CPUs are good at making decisions and flexible data retrieval,” said Mr. Zhou

In other words, CPUs and GPUs fetch data from off-chip main memory at approximately the same speed, but GPUs can execute the functions that use that data more quickly. So, if a CPU determines what data a GPU will need in advance, and fetches it from the main memory, that allows the GPU to focus on executing the functions themselves – and the overall process takes less time.

In the proposed CPU-assisted GPGPU, after the CPU launches a GPU program, it executes a pre-execution program, which is generated automatically from the GPU kernel using the proposed compiler algorithms and contains memory access instructions of the GPU kernel for multiple threadblocks. The CPU pre-execution program runs ahead of GPU threads because (1) the CPU pre-execution thread only contains memory fetch instructions from GPU kernels and not floating-point computations, and (2) the CPU runs at higher frequencies and exploits higher degrees of instruction-level parallelism than GPU scalar cores. The researchers also leverage the prefetcher at the L2-cache on the CPU side to increase the memory traffic from CPU. As a result, the memory accesses of GPU threads hit in the L3 cache and their latency can be drastically reduced. Since the pre-execution is directly controlled by user-level applications, it enjoys both high accuracy and flexibility. Engineers' experiments on a set of benchmarks show that our proposed preexecution improves the performance by up to 113% and 21.4% on average.

The paper, “CPU-Assisted GPGPU on Fused CPU-GPU Architectures”, will be presented in late February at the 18th International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture, in New Orleans. The paper was co-authored by NC State students Yi Yang and Ping Xiang, and by Mike Mantor of Advanced Micro Devices. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and AMD.

Source: xbitlabs.com

AMD: We Need Third Party IP to Differentiate

2012-02-09T07:19:00.000-08:00

Advanced Micro Devices needs additional technologies to differentiate itself from other companies, according to its chief executive. At the same time, the company clearly does not exclude a possibility to integrate specially designed blocks into its chips in accordance with its clients' demands.

"We are looking for certain pieces of IP to add to our [existing] portfolio," said Rory Read, chief executive officer of AMD, during a conversation with analysts.

The head of AMD did not disclose what exactly he plans to integrate into the company's chips. A natural addition of 4G/LTE support is something expected from a consumerisation strategy that AMD has taken. However, Mr. Read did not talk about chip-based differentiation in general, but about devices-based differentiation in particular without providing details.

AMD Implies on "Major" Tablet Maker as Interested in APUs

Advanced Micro Devices needs additional technologies to differentiate itself from other companies, according to its chief executive. At the same time, the company clearly does not exclude a possibility to integrate specially designed blocks into its chips in accordance with its clients' demands.

"We are looking for certain pieces of IP to add to our [existing] portfolio," said Rory Read, chief executive officer of AMD, during a conversation with analysts.

The head of AMD did not disclose what exactly he plans to integrate into the company's chips. A natural addition of 4G/LTE support is something expected from a consumerisation strategy that AMD has taken. However, Mr. Read did not talk about chip-based differentiation in general, but about devices-based differentiation in particular without providing details.

In fact, it is logical to talk about actual products from AMD. The company is selling made-to-order chips in volume and naturally expects growth of that business with the emergence of Microsoft Corp's Windows 8. In fact, AMD apparently expects a major consumer product maker to use its chips.

"What if you get a large player across tablets, maybe even across smartphones. laptops, desktops, smart televisions? [That player] is creating a chip solution [that weds x86 IP with theirs], that may change the way people buy things in the future," added Mr. Read.

While Mr. Read did not name the company interested in AMD's products, there are only two leading firms producing both traditional and media tablets: Apple and Samsung. Which of them are going to use AMD's was not disclosed at the conference.

Source: xbitlabs.com

AMD's new FX-Series CPUs available for pre-order

2012-02-04T07:40:00.000-08:00

AMD is apparently preparing a refresh to its line of FX-series dekstop CPUs including quad-core FX-4170, six-core FX-6200 and already available eight-core FX-8150 that will now be bundled with liquid cooling.

CPU-World.com scored these pre-order prices and first in line is the FX-4170, a quad-core ticking at 4.2GHz with 4.3GHz Turbo, 8MB of L3 cachce and a 125W TDP. This one has showed up in the USA with a pre-order price set at US $143.77, while in Europe, the pre-order price is set at around €170 (£100 ex. VAT in the UK).

The six-core FX-6200 ticks at lower 3.8GHz with a Turbo set at 4.1GHz and packs same 8MB of L3 cache and the same 125W TDP. The pre-order price of this one in the USA is set at US $188.48 while in Europe it is currently listed at around £130-ish but only in the UK. We expect it to show up in the rest of the Europe with a price set at around €200.

FX-4170, FX-6200 and FX-8150 LCS (WOX)

AMD is apparently preparing a refresh to its line of FX-series dekstop CPUs including quad-core FX-4170, six-core FX-6200 and already available eight-core FX-8150 that will now be bundled with liquid cooling.

CPU-World.com scored these pre-order prices and first in line is the FX-4170, a quad-core ticking at 4.2GHz with 4.3GHz Turbo, 8MB of L3 cachce and a 125W TDP. This one has showed up in the USA with a pre-order price set at US $143.77, while in Europe, the pre-order price is set at around €170 (£100 ex. VAT in the UK).

The six-core FX-6200 ticks at lower 3.8GHz with a Turbo set at 4.1GHz and packs same 8MB of L3 cache and the same 125W TDP. The pre-order price of this one in the USA is set at US $188.48 while in Europe it is currently listed at around £130-ish but only in the UK. We expect it to show up in the rest of the Europe with a price set at around €200.

The last but not the least is a new bundle for the already available FX-8150 eight-core CPU. In case you missed it, this one ticks at 3.6GHz with 4.1GHz Turbo, has 8MB of L3 cache and the same 125W TDP. The bundle is listed under FD8150FRGUWOX part number and in Europe it is simply called FX-8150 LCS. In the USA, this bundle is listed at US $398.29, while in Europe, it starts at £264.62 ex. VAT in the UK and all the way up to around €450 on Amazon.de. For comparison sake, the same CPU, in "boxed" (air-cooled) state, is currently listed at around €226,42 in Germany.

You can check out the original CPU-World post here and you can find those European listings here.

Source: fudzilla.com

Intel pleased with investors questions

2012-02-04T07:38:00.000-08:00

Intel is happy that it is not getting the curly questions flung at it by investors last year.

Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith told Reuters that he likes the questions he is receiving from Wall Street these days. Last year everyone was worried about the PC chip giant's ability to adapt to consumers' growing preference for smartphones and tablets.

They saw falling PC sales and shunned Intel's shares for much of 2011. Now the stock has rebounded since September and recently hit a four-year high. Smith told Reuters last year the concerns were that the drivers of the market weren't going to let Intel grow and that there was something inherent in our architecture that precluded us from being able to participate in fast growing parts of the market.

Means they dont hate us

Intel is happy that it is not getting the curly questions flung at it by investors last year.

Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith told Reuters that he likes the questions he is receiving from Wall Street these days. Last year everyone was worried about the PC chip giant's ability to adapt to consumers' growing preference for smartphones and tablets.

They saw falling PC sales and shunned Intel's shares for much of 2011. Now the stock has rebounded since September and recently hit a four-year high. Smith told Reuters last year the concerns were that the drivers of the market weren't going to let Intel grow and that there was something inherent in our architecture that precluded us from being able to participate in fast growing parts of the market.

This year Intel has alleviated both of those concerns.

Source: fudzilla.com

ULV Trinity defeats Sandy Bridge in 3Dmark

2012-02-04T07:36:00.000-08:00

AMD has released the first performance figures for its upcoming 17W Trinity APUs, which will find they way into ultrathin notebooks later this year.

Intel’s ultrabooks are powered by Sandy Bridge ULV chips and the first Ivy Bridge based designs should start appearing by mid-2012. Current ultrabook parts also feature a 17W TDP, so it seems AMD will be able to match Intel’s current generation in terms of power consumption. In addition, AMD will offer somewhat beefier 25W versions for slightly thicker designs.

According to AMD’s testing, the first A6-series Trinity with a 17W TDP scores 2355 3Dmarks, while Intel’s Core i5 ULV 2537M manages just 1158 marks. AMD estimates next generation Ivy Bridge parts will score about 30 percent more, which will still leave AMD with a comfortable lead, at least in the graphics department. The gap widens for upcoming 25W parts, as the first A10 LV APU scores 3600, or 139 percent more than Ivy’s projected score.

Should end up faster than Ivy Bridge, too

AMD has released the first performance figures for its upcoming 17W Trinity APUs, which will find they way into ultrathin notebooks later this year.

Intel’s ultrabooks are powered by Sandy Bridge ULV chips and the first Ivy Bridge based designs should start appearing by mid-2012. Current ultrabook parts also feature a 17W TDP, so it seems AMD will be able to match Intel’s current generation in terms of power consumption. In addition, AMD will offer somewhat beefier 25W versions for slightly thicker designs.

According to AMD’s testing, the first A6-series Trinity with a 17W TDP scores 2355 3Dmarks, while Intel’s Core i5 ULV 2537M manages just 1158 marks. AMD estimates next generation Ivy Bridge parts will score about 30 percent more, which will still leave AMD with a comfortable lead, at least in the graphics department. The gap widens for upcoming 25W parts, as the first A10 LV APU scores 3600, or 139 percent more than Ivy’s projected score.

AMD also believes it can compete in terms of battery life. Battery life projections for the Pumori reference board show that AMD’s ultrathins should manage up to seven hours of DVD playback or almost four hours of Blu-ray reproduction, which is a pretty impressive score.

You can download the full presentation here.

Source: fudzilla.com

AMD Trinity for Ultrathins Platform Make Possible 18mm Notebooks for $600 - $800

2012-02-04T07:31:00.000-08:00

At its financial analyst day event on Thursday, Advanced Micro Devices disclosed peculiarities of its forthcoming platform for ultrathin laptops. The code-named Trinity accelerated processing unit in ball-grid array form-factor will let PC makers to create notebooks with premium quad-core CPU and high-quality graphics that are only 18mm thick and that cost just about $600.

At the FAD, AMD demonstrated a prototype of a laptop powered by a unique quad-core AMD quad-core A6 ULV "Trinity" accelerated processing unit (APU) with 17W thermal design power. The prototype was actually a reference design jointly developed by AMD and Compal and was a 13" wide-screen laptop just 18mm thick. Compal, a contract maker of electronics, may start producing notebooks using this design for interested parties, whereas other notebook makers may create their own ultra-thin mobile computers powered by AMD Trinity.

"The 18mm reference design from Compal is what many OEMs are looking at. We believe that this will bring the ultra-thin form-factor into $600 - $800 price-point. This is [an evidence of] the value of APUs because you really have performance that you need at the power envelope that you need at the right price-point," said Lisa Su, general manager of global business units at AMD.

The 18mm thickness for a reference design of an inexpensive laptop is a remarkable achievement. For comparison: Apple Macbook Air is up to 17mm thick, Lenovo ThinkPad X1 is up to 21.5mm thick and the world's thinnest notebook - Samsung Series 9 900X3B - is 12.9mm thick. Unfortunately, AMD's reference design is made of plastic, whereas typical ultra-thin mobile PCs are made of metal. It is likely that AMD specifically recommends its partners to use inexpensive materials to ensure low price of its ultra-thin notebooks, but that will clearly affect quality.

AMD attempts to offer better pricing on Trinity-powered ultra-thin machines in order to successful compete against Intel Corp.'s ultrabook initiative. AMD-based ultrathin notebooks are projected to be at least $200 cheaper than machines powered by Intel Core i 3000-series “Ivy Bridge” microprocessors. Lower price is supposed to compensate lower x86 performance of AMD’s Trinity compared to Intel’s Ivy Bridge. At the same time, AMD-based ultrathin machines will offer faster and more capable graphics engine. Moreover, based on AMD promises, it will offer 17W quad-core microprocessors, which should provide decent responsibility.

At present it is unknown when the laptops with AMD A6 ULV "Trinity" processor with 17W TDP will become available.

Source: xbitlabs.com

More information about some new AMD cores

2012-02-04T07:21:00.000-08:00

In case you haven’t been paying attention, it is roadmap season at AMD, and now it is Desktop CPU time. A big welcome goes out to Vishera, Kaveri, and Kabini.

The roadmap as shown

This time, it isn’t exactly anything we weren’t expecting, with two of the three code names, Kabini and Kaveri, floating for a long time. Vishera is new, but the chip itself is basically a Piledriver server CPU in desktop form. Nothing too spectacular.

AMD FAD 2012: Details, details, details

In case you haven’t been paying attention, it is roadmap season at AMD, and now it is Desktop CPU time. A big welcome goes out to Vishera, Kaveri, and Kabini.

The roadmap as shown

This time, it isn’t exactly anything we weren’t expecting, with two of the three code names, Kabini and Kaveri, floating for a long time. Vishera is new, but the chip itself is basically a Piledriver server CPU in desktop form. Nothing too spectacular.

More interesting is Kaveri, the successor to Trinity. It will have a Steamroller CPU core, likely the first chip on the market with it. It also has a GCN/Southern Islands/HD7000 GPU, plus today’s obligatory catch phrase, HSA. This is where it begins.

A bit lower on the scale is Kabini, the next generation Brazos replacement. It uses Jaguar cores and GCN GPUs shaders, but should be familiar to anyone following the space. Once again, the interesting part is less with the chips themselves, but who else puts IP in their own potential variants. Hang on folks, this is going to be interesting.

Source: semiaccurate.com

AMD Wipe Out 10-Core, 20-Core Server Processors

2012-02-04T07:05:00.000-08:00

Advanced Micro Devices has cancelled its multi-core Opteron server chips code-named Sepang (up to 10 cores) and Terramar (up to 20 cores) that were supposed to be launched in 2012. Moreover, the company decided to keep the existing server platform for its 2012 - 2013 server refreshes, which means that AMD-based machines will not support numerous new features.

In the 2012 - 2013 timeframe AMD plans to release Opteron code-named Abu Dhabi microprocessor with up to 16 Piledriver cores for 4-socket servers, Seoul central processing unit with up to 8 Piledriver cores for 2-socket servers as well as Delhi chip with up to 8 Piledriver cores for 1-socket servers. All the new CPUs will fit into existing socket G34, socket C32 and socket AM3+ and will therefore bring no improvements on the platform level.

AMD to Prolong Lifespan of Current Opteron Server Platform

Advanced Micro Devices has cancelled its multi-core Opteron server chips code-named Sepang (up to 10 cores) and Terramar (up to 20 cores) that were supposed to be launched in 2012. Moreover, the company decided to keep the existing server platform for its 2012 - 2013 server refreshes, which means that AMD-based machines will not support numerous new features.

In the 2012 - 2013 timeframe AMD plans to release Opteron code-named Abu Dhabi microprocessor with up to 16 Piledriver cores for 4-socket servers, Seoul central processing unit with up to 8 Piledriver cores for 2-socket servers as well as Delhi chip with up to 8 Piledriver cores for 1-socket servers. All the new CPUs will fit into existing socket G34, socket C32 and socket AM3+ and will therefore bring no improvements on the platform level. The new processors will be made using 32nm SOI process technology at Globalfoundries. Both chips are currently expected to arrive in the second half of the year.

"This change removes the 20-core [and 10-core] option[s] and postpones the introduction of support for PCI-E Gen 3 until the market is better positioned for wide adoption of that very high-end technology," a statement by AMD reads.

Previously, AMD planned to release Sepang and Terramar chips along with new G2012 and C2012 server platforms in 2012. The new platforms were supposed to bring-in PCI Express 3.0 support as well as triple-channel memory controller for 2P server chips. All-in-all, the previous plan was designed to boost amount of cores per Opteron chip as well as improve AMD servers on the platform level.

The reason for a major change of the Opteron roadmap was not revealed, but AMD indicated that the new lineup "delivers better performance", which is a rather questionable claim. There is a rationale for AMD not to change its server platform and omit any tangible design changes for its processors. The company's share on the server market at present is 5% - 6% and any platform switch will cause either stagnation or even drop of that share due to natural business reasons. Moreover, since 32nm SOI is not a problem-free process technology, a substantial architectural change may reduce yields.

Source: xbitlabs.com

Aria list pre-orders for C2 Intel Core i7 processors

2012-02-04T06:59:00.001-08:00

Aria are certainly on the ball for all you Intel lovers this week. Today they listed the new C2 stepping version 2011 processors. They are available now for pre-order.

ARIA informed us that they will be getting in stock soon, hopefully within the next couple of weeks. Kitguru rate ARIA as one of the best UK stores, especially when it comes to customer support.

The 3960X-C2 stepping CPU, turned up in Japan first. Not a shock really, but heading to UK stores very shortly.

ARIA forums are staffed all day and have technical support people at hand to even help you build the system. I have been a member there for years and they really know how to help their customers, thats why ive stuck around so long.

They are listing the 3960X, 3930K at various price points, from £443.99 inc vat.

You can place your pre-order over here now. First come, first served. The OC on these chips is said to be better and Intel has now fixed the VT-d errata present in the C1 stepping, which is good news for workstation clients.

Source: kitguru.net

Three new Piledriver server code names appear

2012-02-04T06:54:00.000-08:00

AMD FAD 2012: Abu Dhabi, Seoul, and Delhi are Piledrivers

AMD is now talking server roadmaps, and another crop of new names is revealed. This time we have Abu Dhabi, Seoul, and Delhi server CPUs.

F1 tracks or code names?

Not much to say here, all three are based on Piledriver cores, and come in dual chip packages for Abu Dhabi, single for Seoul, and Delhi for smaller boxes. Other than that, nothing exciting.

AMD Assured "Full" Fusion of CPU and GPU in 2014

2012-02-04T06:49:00.000-08:00

At its Financial Analyst Day event on Thursday, Advanced Micro Devices said that its chips in 2014 will be able to automatically decide which of its heterogeneous cores to use for a particular task. The context switching between x86 and stream processing cores will allow AMD to greatly speed up performance of its chips and optimize their power consumption.

"Ultimately, as we complete our roll-out of heterogeneous system architecture, we will have a very fine-grain control of where is computing [performed], it is an optimization," said Mark Papermaster, chief technology officer of AMD.

AMD's Chips in 2014 to Support CPU-GPU Context Switching

At its Financial Analyst Day event on Thursday, Advanced Micro Devices said that its chips in 2014 will be able to automatically decide which of its heterogeneous cores to use for a particular task. The context switching between x86 and stream processing cores will allow AMD to greatly speed up performance of its chips and optimize their power consumption.

"Ultimately, as we complete our roll-out of heterogeneous system architecture, we will have a very fine-grain control of where is computing [performed], it is an optimization," said Mark Papermaster, chief technology officer of AMD.

At present AMD's accelerated processing units - which integrate x86 general-purpose processing cores and highly-parallel stream processors on a single chip - can accelerate certain tasks using Radeon stream processors only when software is made to specifically use them. Given the limitations of the current architecture, x86 and Radeon cores should use dedicated memory, which tends to be inefficient. Essentially, nowadays the software completely controls which compute resources to use and when.

But after years of evolution, which will involve development of both hardware and software/compilers/tools, accelerated processing units in 2014 will be able to dynamically decide (possibly, when it comes to new programs) which task is better to execute on a particular core thanks to new software as well as special features of the chips.

Dynamic context switching between different types of cores will not only greatly speed up performance of such chips, but will also optimize power consumption as the most efficient hardware will be used to perform an operation.

Earlier AMD expected to release "fully fused" Fusion chips in 2015 or beyond.

Source: xbitlabs.com

AMD reveals new client code names

2012-02-04T06:46:00.000-08:00

AMD is talking about client and graphics now, with a few new code names outed. Here are the relevant points.

This is going to cause FUD

The two things that we knew were Kaveri, the follow on to Trinity, and Kabini, the follow up to the now dead Wichita and Krishna. New on that list is Temash, the ultra-low power Bobcat variant for tablets. Not much more to say, it is basically a lower speed version of Kabini. The other new one is “Sea Islands”, and that is going to cause headaches. Sea Islands is NOT the code name, it is Canary Islands (CI). Sea Islands is a placeholder like GCN and S. Islands on a previous slide. That’s about it for the important bits.

AMD FAD 2012: Temash is for tablets

AMD is talking about client and graphics now, with a few new code names outed. Here are the relevant points.

This is going to cause FUD

The two things that we knew were Kaveri, the follow on to Trinity, and Kabini, the follow up to the now dead Wichita and Krishna. New on that list is Temash, the ultra-low power Bobcat variant for tablets. Not much more to say, it is basically a lower speed version of Kabini. The other new one is “Sea Islands”, and that is going to cause headaches. Sea Islands is NOT the code name, it is Canary Islands (CI). Sea Islands is a placeholder like GCN and S. Islands on a previous slide. That’s about it for the important bits.

Source: semiaccurate.com

Intel Exposed First Atom Chips for Micro-Servers

2012-02-04T06:44:00.000-08:00

Intel Corp. has begun shipments of Atom-based system-on-chip for so-called micro-servers. The new processor will likely become available this year and will enable server manufacturers to create ultra-dense machines with low power consumption.

As reported previously, the first Atom-based server offering from Intel will be released sometime in 2012. Although Intel Atom micro-architecture will remain intact and will still have a number of limitations (e.g., lack of out-of-order execution and other drawbacks), it will gain 64-bit capability, virtualization technology, support for error-correcting code, PCI Express, Hyper-Threading and other peculiarities of modern server central processing units. The chip will likely be based on Cedarview micro-architecture, will be dual-core and will be made using 32nm process technology. However, Intel has not confirmed this yet. The product consumes less than 10W of power.

Intel Begins to Sample Server-Class Atom System-on-Chip

Intel Corp. has begun shipments of Atom-based system-on-chip for so-called micro-servers. The new processor will likely become available this year and will enable server manufacturers to create ultra-dense machines with low power consumption.

As reported previously, the first Atom-based server offering from Intel will be released sometime in 2012. Although Intel Atom micro-architecture will remain intact and will still have a number of limitations (e.g., lack of out-of-order execution and other drawbacks), it will gain 64-bit capability, virtualization technology, support for error-correcting code, PCI Express, Hyper-Threading and other peculiarities of modern server central processing units. The chip will likely be based on Cedarview micro-architecture, will be dual-core and will be made using 32nm process technology. However, Intel has not confirmed this yet. The product consumes less than 10W of power.

"[The server-class Atom chip is] at a performance, power and cost level we like, and in 2013 we plan a part an order of magnitude above it," said Jason Waxman, general manager of Intel’s data center group.

According to the Intel executive, the world's largest maker of chips is already sending samples of the chip to server manufacturers, reports EETimes web-site. Unfortunately, it is unclear which of the server makers are actually interested in making machines powered by Atom microprocessors. The only companies known for using Atoms for micro-servers are SeaMicro and Habey.

Micro-servers is a market currently served by proprietary servers from a few companies. ARM and its partners have already disclosed plans to address it with future offerings based on ARM architecture, but Intel and others criticized the approach claiming that in many cases performance of such machines will be too slow for traditional scenarios and more of them will be needed to solve tasks, which will ruin energy savings. Still, companies like Calxeda are developing sophisticated and highly-integrated ARM-based server microprocessors as well as platforms that utilize NAND flash memory as storage and use other means to dramatically reduce power consumption and create ultra-dense machines.

Source: xbitlabs.com

HP Paid Intel $690 Million to Keep Itanium Alive - Court Findings

2012-02-04T06:37:00.000-08:00

In a bid to secure its mission-critical HP-UX platform, Hewlett-Packard has paid Intel Corp. around $690 to keep Itanium microprocessor alive till 2017 and update it in timely manner, court findings reveal.

Back in 2008 the maker of servers paid Intel $440 million in order to keep producing and updating Itanium microprocessors from 2009 to 2014. In 2010, the two companies signed another $250 million deal, which obliged Intel to continue making Itanium central processing units for HP's machines till 2017, according to Wired. Under the terms of the agreements, HP has to pay for chips it gets from Intel, whereas the latter launches Tukwila, Poulson, Kittson and Kittson+ chips in a bid to gradually boost performance of the platform.

HP Pain Intel to Keep Itanium on Life Support Till 2017

In a bid to secure its mission-critical HP-UX platform, Hewlett-Packard has paid Intel Corp. around $690 to keep Itanium microprocessor alive till 2017 and update it in timely manner, court findings reveal.

Back in 2008 the maker of servers paid Intel $440 million in order to keep producing and updating Itanium microprocessors from 2009 to 2014. In 2010, the two companies signed another $250 million deal, which obliged Intel to continue making Itanium central processing units for HP's machines till 2017, according to Wired. Under the terms of the agreements, HP has to pay for chips it gets from Intel, whereas the latter launches Tukwila, Poulson, Kittson and Kittson+ chips in a bid to gradually boost performance of the platform.

Given the fact that Itanium is essentially on life support, it is not surprising that software makers, including Microsoft and Red Hat have already stopped developing software for Itanium. Large makers of servers, Dell and IBM, dropped Itanium back in 2005. In early 2011 Intel discontinued support for Itanium in its C/C++ and Fortran compilers. In fact, Intel has even relocated engineers developing Itanium products onto Xeon-related projects, another signal that the platform will hardly evolve substantially going forward.

Oracle believes that HP mislead its customers by not disclosing peculiarities of Itanium's future and that Oracle's own decision to stop developing new software for Itanium was fully legitimate. HP believes that Oracle breached a contract and did so in a bid to improve competitive landscape on the business-critical server market in favour of its own Sun SPARC servers. The court found both companies acting unfairly.

Hewlett-Packard needs to keep Itanium microprocessor alive and improving for several years from now because its mission-critical platforms, such as HP-UX, OpenVMS or NonStop, rely on those chips and it will take years before they are ported to Intel Xeon architecture. But HP may need to speed-up its porting efforts as sales of its Integrity and Superdome IA64-based machines have been declining for several consecutive quarters now.

Source: xbitlabs.com

AMD works harder for less in 2011 – annual results in

2012-01-26T19:15:00.000-08:00

Against a backdrop of global economic crisis over the past 4 years, any increase in revenues should be met with good cheer. You would think. Not in Sunnyvale or Wall Street however.

While AMD does have a channel presence, there’s no doubt that it has been doing much better with the Multi-National Corporations (MNCs) like Dell, Acer, HP etc. Indeed, El Presidente, Rory Read was keen to say “AMD shipped more than 30 million APU’s in 2011, resulting in record annual notebook revenue”.

So that’s a plus for the Fusion product and the MNC team, powered by sales athletes like John Byrne – no surprises there.

Against that, sales of GPUs into notebooks dropped by around 10%, showing a movement in the market as a whole, toward single chip solutions where possible. Taiwanese manufacturers chasing production savings? Shocker.

Also, internally, AMD had hoped for a lot more from its Bulldozer development teams – especially with Intel on the verge of kick-starting its Ivy Bridge business around CeBIT in March. This time last year, Intel was in the throws of the Cougar Point recall for Sandybridge.

To help counter the onslaught of Intel and the all-conquering approach of the Cuppertino crew, AMD has brought in former Apple/Cisco top tech Mark Papermaster. Given that he’s been a familiar site around 6th Street in Austin since his college days, he should find it easy to integrate and get to grips with AMD’s processor teams. The question is, “Can he do anything useful to help AMD prepare for Haswell in 2013 – or is it already too late?”

So far, AMD’s focus has been on adding more and more cores to each chip – but each core hasn’t managed to deliver enough work per cycle to effectively challenge the Core 2 processors. AMD will be hoping that the recruitment of former Intel engineer Rajan Naik as its new Head of Strategy will help.

Losing 24 cents per share is relatively small compared to some of AMD’s past financials, but the real problem is that they have announced their new figures around the same time as Apple. Each Apple share has just attracted a dividend of around $8.50 – in a world that’s claiming financial distress, this seems unreal.

Commenting on a year that’s seen income increase from $6.49 to $6.57 billion, while delivering a loss of $177 million, Read said “We begin 2012 clear on our priorities and opportunities. We are building an AMD that consistently delivers on its commitments”. When you consider the kind of opposition he’s up against, that’s superhero talk. Wall Street must be crossing its fingers for a resurgence.

Source: kitguru.net

AMD Quietly Adopting "Tick-Tock" Model for Micro-Architectures

2012-01-26T19:02:00.000-08:00

Intel Corp.'s so-called "tick-tock" model of transitioning to new manufacturing processes and micro-architectures has proved to be very efficient in making Intel the maker of the highest-performance microprocessors. Apparently, its smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices is also plotting something similar, but a bit differently.

As it appears from AMD's documents observed by an X-bit labs reader (in the comments for this news-story), starting from Piledriver micro-architecture and going forward, AMD's Fusion accelerated processing units (chips that integrate both x86 and stream processing cores) will feature "reduced", or "early" micro-architectural feature-set, whereas central processing units (CPUs) based on new designs will feature "full" or "late" feature-set. As a result, x86 performance of the former will be lower than x86 performance of the latter.

AMD to Use Slightly Different Micro-Architectures for APUs and CPUs

Intel Corp.'s so-called "tick-tock" model of transitioning to new manufacturing processes and micro-architectures has proved to be very efficient in making Intel the maker of the highest-performance microprocessors. Apparently, its smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices is also plotting something similar, but a bit differently.

As it appears from AMD's documents observed by an X-bit labs reader (in the comments for this news-story), starting from Piledriver micro-architecture and going forward, AMD's Fusion accelerated processing units (chips that integrate both x86 and stream processing cores) will feature "reduced", or "early" micro-architectural feature-set, whereas central processing units (CPUs) based on new designs will feature "full" or "late" feature-set. As a result, x86 performance of the former will be lower than x86 performance of the latter.

AMD wants APUs to be released earlier than fully-fledged CPUs since they are aimed at broader segment of the market. Therefore, x86 cores of Fusion chips will sport "reduced" next-generation micro-architecture (and will fully support previous-gen features and capabilities) in order to cut their development time and reduce their die size. CPUs will come to market several months after APUs and will feature more advanced x86 cores that will support more new instructions and therefore will offer better x86 performance.

For example, only fully-fledged "late" Piledriver inside Viperfish (code-name of next-gen server/desktop die design, the successor of Orochi that powers FX and Opteron chips) will be able to execute numerous new instructions as well as will receive instructions per clock (IPC) increase. Even though reduced "early" Piledriver inside code-named Trinity APUs will be more advanced than the original Bulldozer, the x86 cores are projected to be slightly less efficient than those of the full Piledriver.

The "tick-tock"-like approach is expected to allow AMD to reduce time-to-market of its new products and ensure that innovations do not negatively affect yields. On the other hand, it will create difficulties for software makers who will have to take into account that x86 cores within one generation of APUs and CPUs are slightly different. In addition, it should be noted that AMD's "tick-tock" has nothing to do with transitions to newer process technologies and is almost completely about micro-architectures.

AMD did not comment on the news-story, but the company is projected to reveal more about its future plans at the forthcoming financial analyst day on the 2nd of February, 2012.

Source: xbitlabs.com

AMD pulls "blind test" at recent show

2012-01-26T18:59:00.000-08:00

AMD has been in sailing through some rough PR waters recently, especially over the overhyped FX-series CPU launch, but has now pulled a rather interesting and good PR stunt at the AMD and HardOCP FX GamExperience held in Dallas, Texas a few days ago. The test was interestingly named AMD Reality Check and was consisting of two groups of similar priced systems running on two different CPUs where users, not knowing which one is Intel and which one is AMD, could decide the better one in this blind-test.

For a first test, AMD has setup two US $500 priced systems. First one was running Intel's Core i3-2105. ASRock's H61 and Intel HD Graphics 3000 while the second one was running AMD's A8-3850 Llano APU with its Radeon HD 6550D graphcis and ASRock A55 motherboard. The rest of the components were the same and this comparison was rather doomed for Intel it is pretty much clear that AMD will take the victory.

FX-8150 gets more votes than Core i7-2700k

AMD has been in sailing through some rough PR waters recently, especially over the overhyped FX-series CPU launch, but has now pulled a rather interesting and good PR stunt at the AMD and HardOCP FX GamExperience held in Dallas, Texas a few days ago. The test was interestingly named AMD Reality Check and was consisting of two groups of similar priced systems running on two different CPUs where users, not knowing which one is Intel and which one is AMD, could decide the better one in this blind-test.

For a first test, AMD has setup two US $500 priced systems. First one was running Intel's Core i3-2105. ASRock's H61 and Intel HD Graphics 3000 while the second one was running AMD's A8-3850 Llano APU with its Radeon HD 6550D graphcis and ASRock A55 motherboard. The rest of the components were the same and this comparison was rather doomed for Intel it is pretty much clear that AMD will take the victory. Out of 143 users, five voted for Intel, two have seen no difference and 136 voted for AMD one.

The second group was a bit more interesting as we were looking at two high-end systems both running with AMD's latest Radeon HD 7970 Tahiti graphics card in Eyefinity setup. The first one was powered by Intel's Core i7-2700k CPU on AsRock's P67 Fatal1ty motherboard while the second one was running AMD's FX-8150 CPU on Asrock 990FX Fatal1ty motherboard. More surprisingly, AMD was aiming to get a "no difference" feedback here, especially because the FX-8150 retails at US $269.99 and Intel's Core i7-2700k is priced at US $369.99.

Out of 141 users, only 28 said that there was no difference between two systems. AMD was surprised to see that 73 votes went to AMD FX-8150 system and 40 went for Intel's Core i7-2700k. Quite a suprise and a good PR stunt by AMD's team.

Of course, we don't know any details behind the test other than what AMD is saying and what we've seen at sites that were covering the event.

You can check out more details over at Legitreviews.com.

Source: fudzilla.com

AMD Celebrates Shipment of Over Thirty Million Fusion APUs

2012-01-26T18:54:00.000-08:00

Although Fusion accelerated processing units (APUs) and Bulldozer micro-architecture are in many ways revolutionary, Advanced Micro Devices has failed to take a major advantage of its latest technologies in 2011, based on the recent annual financial report of the company. AMD's annual sales totaled $6.57 billion, only 1% higher compared to 2010.

But the year 2011 was not a complete failure for the Sunnyvale, California-based chip designer. The company did ship thirty million of its Fusion APUs, which let AMD to seriously enter on the market of netbooks and address notebooks with competitive solutions. The company also finally managed to start mass production of chips powered by Bulldozer micro-architecture and expects to regain market share on the server front. Finally, the firm stabilized its presence on the graphics cards market.

AMD's Sales Grow 1% Year-on-Year

Although Fusion accelerated processing units (APUs) and Bulldozer micro-architecture are in many ways revolutionary, Advanced Micro Devices has failed to take a major advantage of its latest technologies in 2011, based on the recent annual financial report of the company. AMD's annual sales totaled $6.57 billion, only 1% higher compared to 2010.

But the year 2011 was not a complete failure for the Sunnyvale, California-based chip designer. The company did ship thirty million of its Fusion APUs, which let AMD to seriously enter on the market of netbooks and address notebooks with competitive solutions. The company also finally managed to start mass production of chips powered by Bulldozer micro-architecture and expects to regain market share on the server front. Finally, the firm stabilized its presence on the graphics cards market.

"AMD shipped more than 30 million APU’s in 2011, resulting in record annual notebook revenue. The unmatched combination of computing and graphics capabilities in our low-power ‘Brazos’ platform has made it our fastest ramping platform ever, paving the way for continued growth in key segments and geographies. Our server business has re-gained momentum, delivering two consecutive quarters of strong sequential growth," said Rory Read, AMD president and chief executive officer.

AMD reported Q4 2011 revenue of $1.69 billion, net loss of $177 million, or $0.24 per share, and operating income of $71 million. The company blames poor sales of discrete graphics cards in the fourth quarter as well as restructuring charges in its Q4's loss.

Computing Solutions segment revenue increased 2% sequentially and 7% year-over-year to $1.3 billion. The sequential increase was driven by double digit growth in server and chipset revenue. The year-over-year increase was driven by higher mobile processor and chipset revenue. In Q4 2011, APUs accounted for nearly 100% of mobile microprocessors shipped, and more than 60% of total client microprocessors shipped. AMD also achieved quarterly record client revenue driven by an increase in supply of Llano APUs. Operating income of CS group was $165 million, compared with $149 million in Q3 2011 and $91 million in Q4 2010.

Graphics segment revenue decreased 5% sequentially and 10% year-over-year to $382 million. The sequential decrease was driven primarily by a decline in mobile graphics processor unit (GPU) shipments, partially offset by a seasonal increase in game console revenue. The year-over-year decrease was primarily driven by decreased desktop and add-in board (AIB) graphics revenue. Operating income was $27 million, compared with $12 million in Q3 2011 and $68 million in Q4 2010. GPU ASP increased sequentially and year-over-year.

AMD expects revenue in Q1 2012 to decrease 8%, plus or minus 3%, sequentially for the first quarter of 2012. Operating expenses are expected to be approximately $590 million.

Source: xbitlabs.com

Intel calls the successor to Romley……

2012-01-26T18:47:00.000-08:00

What do you call the successor to Romley, aka Sandy Bridge-EP? It is Homley? Courtley? Tepidly? Rapidly? No, the Haswell-EP platform is called Grantly, possibly spelled Grantley. Either way, Intel isn’t talking about it yet, they seem to still be in shock that the name Haswell was released officially. Expect more when the palpitations die down in Santa Clara, probably in Q3 sometime.

No, it isn't Garishly as some have suggested

What do you call the successor to Romley, aka Sandy Bridge-EP? It is Homley? Courtley? Tepidly? Rapidly? No, the Haswell-EP platform is called Grantly, possibly spelled Grantley. Either way, Intel isn’t talking about it yet, they seem to still be in shock that the name Haswell was released officially. Expect more when the palpitations die down in Santa Clara, probably in Q3 sometime.

Source: semiaccurate.com

Intel to produce Atom SoCs with 4G

2012-01-26T18:36:00.000-08:00

Chipzilla hopes to steal a march on AMD by producing Atom SoCs with built-in 4G support.

CEO Paul Otellini reportedly told financial analysts that wireless wide area network (WWAN) functionality will be integrated into its SoCs developed from smartphones and tablets. He said that this will help Intel's SoC solution look a bit different from ARM's non-x86 design which is currently used in chips offered by Nvidia, and Qualcomm.

Otellini said that he wanted to grow Infineon wireless technology capability up by integrating the apps processor and the communication processors onto the same chip, while driving initial positions in apps processors from the top down.

Will make us better than AMD

Chipzilla hopes to steal a march on AMD by producing Atom SoCs with built-in 4G support.

CEO Paul Otellini reportedly told financial analysts that wireless wide area network (WWAN) functionality will be integrated into its SoCs developed from smartphones and tablets. He said that this will help Intel's SoC solution look a bit different from ARM's non-x86 design which is currently used in chips offered by Nvidia, and Qualcomm.

Otellini said that he wanted to grow Infineon wireless technology capability up by integrating the apps processor and the communication processors onto the same chip, while driving initial positions in apps processors from the top down.

Intel bought Infineon a year ago with the aim of merging Intel’s existing communication portfolio with wireless mobility and cellular platforms.

He said it would bring together Intel’s strengths in WiFi and 4G WiMAX with WLS’ leadership in 2G and 3G, and a combined path to accelerate 4G LTE.

Source: fudzilla.com

Arctic Cooling Reportedly Plans to Sue AMD for "Fusion" Trademark

2012-01-26T18:33:00.000-08:00

Arctic Cooling, a well-known supplier of power supply units (PSUs), cooling systems and other PC accessories, has reportedly decided to sue Advanced Micro Devices in a bid to prohibit the chip company from using Fusion name to describe its chips that integrate x86 processing cores with Radeon stream processors on the same piece of silicon.

Arctic has been using Fusion brand to sell its power supply units for some time now and first applied for registration of the trademark back in early 2006. According to Heise.de web-site, Arctic attempted to negotiate with AMD, but the latter continues to use the word "Fusion" to classify its initiatives and products. The maker of PSUs, coolers and other products believes that usage of "Fusion" trademark infringes its rights.

Arctic Wants AMD to Stop Using "Fusion" Trademark

Arctic Cooling, a well-known supplier of power supply units (PSUs), cooling systems and other PC accessories, has reportedly decided to sue Advanced Micro Devices in a bid to prohibit the chip company from using Fusion name to describe its chips that integrate x86 processing cores with Radeon stream processors on the same piece of silicon.

Arctic has been using Fusion brand to sell its power supply units for some time now and first applied for registration of the trademark back in early 2006. According to Heise.de web-site, Arctic attempted to negotiate with AMD, but the latter continues to use the word "Fusion" to classify its initiatives and products. The maker of PSUs, coolers and other products believes that usage of "Fusion" trademark infringes its rights.

While Arctic may own rights for the Fusion trademark, it is hardly unlikely that AMD will be ordered to stop selling its popular Fusion chips since it is pretty hard to prove that buyers acquire processors instead of PSUs or wise-versa. In fact, the industry knows a lot of examples when the same trademark is used for different products. For example, Art Lebedev studio sells Optimus keyboards, LG Electronics ships Optimus smartphones and Nvidia Corp. calls its power consumption optimization technology as Optimus.

AMD did not comment on the news-story.

Source: xbitlabs.com

ARM Doesn't See Intel as a Competitive Threat

2012-01-26T18:25:00.000-08:00

Following Intel's announcement of its Medfield smartphone processor for 2012 commercial products, ARM played down the potential impact of Intel's debut product and Intel's competitive strength. In an article posted by Digitimes, Jeff Chu, ARM's director of consumer, client computing, implied that Intel cannot succeed because it does not offer different products for different purposes. As a result, Intel cannot support the needs of market segmentation, ARM said.

Intel has mainly been beating the drums of performance as an advantage of Medfield over ARM products, and is using its social channels to aggressively convey the message. ARM does not seem to be very concerned, at least not publicly, which is somewhat reminiscent of AMD's communication strategy just prior to the introduction of Intel's Core 2 processors in 2006, which was a turning point for the consumer CPU market.

Saber rattling is often a sure sign for two parties preparing their armies for a bloody battle.

Following Intel's announcement of its Medfield smartphone processor for 2012 commercial products, ARM played down the potential impact of Intel's debut product and Intel's competitive strength. In an article posted by Digitimes, Jeff Chu, ARM's director of consumer, client computing, implied that Intel cannot succeed because it does not offer different products for different purposes. As a result, Intel cannot support the needs of market segmentation, ARM said.

Intel has mainly been beating the drums of performance as an advantage of Medfield over ARM products, and is using its social channels to aggressively convey the message. ARM does not seem to be very concerned, at least not publicly, which is somewhat reminiscent of AMD's communication strategy just prior to the introduction of Intel's Core 2 processors in 2006, which was a turning point for the consumer CPU market. It is difficult to say how ARM and Intel really view each other, but the current PR strategy appears to be showing confidence while virtually ignoring obvious strengths of the rival. Market position, credibility, available platforms and vendor support are on ARM's side, while manufacturing as well as engineering prowess are on Intel's side.

2012 will reveal more of those core strengths and their values when ARM enters the subnotebook race with Windows 8 support and Intel enters the smartphone arena.

Source: tomshardware.com

Intel insurance inside for overclocked processors

2012-01-26T18:09:00.000-08:00

The rather un-sexily titled ‘Performance Tuning Protection Plan’ that is being offered by Intel, gives you the chance to experiment like never before – to release the evil boffin inside you and zap your expensive ship with more volts than a Monty Python parrot.

In the past, you’ve held back because of worries about what would happen if you push the processor too far.

No more.

Intel’s clever little insurance pack takes the natural 3-year warranty of the processor if ‘Used under sensible conditions and within the parameters of normal’ – and gives it a nice shot of steroids.

‘The Plan’ allows you a single processor replacement, hassle-free, from our customer support. In other words, if your ‘K’ processor fails because you channelled half the national grid through it with on a stock cooler for comfort… then Intel’s minions will still replace it without quibble.

So how much does the Performance Tuning Protection Plan cost?

With Intel’s revenues around one Billion below where it was hoping, it looks like they have ‘pulled a Dixons’ and brought out insurance that most overclockers will never need. Still, with the chips costing so much, can you ignore the offer. We have it on good authority from sources close to Intel’s PR department, that Don Otellini has horses heads lined up for anyone who thinks they can ignore this offer. Or was that Don Huddy? We claim omerta.

Source: kitguru.net

Intel Core i7-3820 comes on February 13

2012-01-09T07:55:00.000-08:00

The first and only quad-core Sandy Bridge E processor is scheduled to launch on February 13th. Intel sometimes likes and needs to adjust the launch date, but this one looks to be a solid date.

The new CPU will be affordable quad core with 3.6GHz clock and 3.9GHz turbo ability, quad-channel memory support as well as 10MB cache. The suggested retail price is $285 which is much better than the $999 that you have to spend for the six-core i7 3960 clocked at 3.3GHz.

The new Core i7-3820 socket 2011 with its $285 price is also much better than $583 that Intel charges for the current Core i7 socket 2011 runner up, the Core i7 3930 CPU clocked at 3.2GHz, and cache trimmed to 12MB.

That is the plan

The first and only quad-core Sandy Bridge E processor is scheduled to launch on February 13th. Intel sometimes likes and needs to adjust the launch date, but this one looks to be a solid date.

The new CPU will be affordable quad core with 3.6GHz clock and 3.9GHz turbo ability, quad-channel memory support as well as 10MB cache. The suggested retail price is $285 which is much better than the $999 that you have to spend for the six-core i7 3960 clocked at 3.3GHz.

The new Core i7-3820 socket 2011 with its $285 price is also much better than $583 that Intel charges for the current Core i7 socket 2011 runner up, the Core i7 3930 CPU clocked at 3.2GHz, and cache trimmed to 12MB.

The big date is February 13th and we believe the Core i7-3820 looks like a pretty good deal.

Source: fudzilla.com

Z77 Ivy Bridge boards could launch today

2012-01-09T07:53:00.000-08:00

Motherboard manufacturers are telling us that some of their Z77 based motherboards are ready and could launch today.

They have been testing them for months now and silicon ready for production is already available. Our sources indicate that if Intel had enough CPUs, they would simply launch the boards within weeks. The big thing that this platform brings is native USB 3.0 support, something that we’ve all been missing for a while, at least on Intel platforms.

In real life Z67 or any other 6-series boards had USB 3.0 via third party controllers, but for the most part this one was working quite fine. Let’s see if Intel’s implementation can make things faster, and cheaper for that matter.

CPUs still not ready

Motherboard manufacturers are telling us that some of their Z77 based motherboards are ready and could launch today.

They have been testing them for months now and silicon ready for production is already available. Our sources indicate that if Intel had enough CPUs, they would simply launch the boards within weeks. The big thing that this platform brings is native USB 3.0 support, something that we’ve all been missing for a while, at least on Intel platforms.

In real life Z67 or any other 6-series boards had USB 3.0 via third party controllers, but for the most part this one was working quite fine. Let’s see if Intel’s implementation can make things faster, and cheaper for that matter.

Despite this, Intel still looks like a winner, as it will simply overtake its own part of the market, currently dominated by 6-series chipset. Intel also has business version of chipset in the works, and talking a lot of care about security these days is quite appealing for business users.

The Z77 looks like a decent chipset and platform, provided you can wait for new CPUs.

Source: fudzilla.com

Commentary: FX Marketing

2012-01-09T07:46:00.000-08:00

AMD’s (NYSE:AMD) marketing has been the center of much community ire as of late. Issues like the mismatch between expectations for, and the actual performance of, its FX series CPU have cost AMD dearly in terms of credibility in the enthusiast community. Despite this, rumors have been floating around that sales of AMD’s FX CPU have actually met their targets. With sales targets at around ten percent of revenue AMD’s sales reps are definitely worthy of some praise for managing to convince OEMs to adopt the arguably minor improvement that the FX series represents over the older Phenom II branded processors. But the way that AMD is marketing its long awaited “Bulldozer” is bothering me.

Trading enthusiast mind share for consumer sales

AMD’s (NYSE:AMD) marketing has been the center of much community ire as of late. Issues like the mismatch between expectations for, and the actual performance of, its FX series CPU have cost AMD dearly in terms of credibility in the enthusiast community. Despite this, rumors have been floating around that sales of AMD’s FX CPU have actually met their targets. With sales targets at around ten percent of revenue AMD’s sales reps are definitely worthy of some praise for managing to convince OEMs to adopt the arguably minor improvement that the FX series represents over the older Phenom II branded processors. But the way that AMD is marketing its long awaited “Bulldozer” is bothering me.

Let review the background first. I’m sure that you all know about the performance issues of AMD’s FX series CPUs which have been widely covered. A recent Tom’s Hardware article confirmed that AMD was unable to make good on its promises of significantly improved efficiency over the last generation of AMD CPUs. Saying that, “We’re pretty sure something went wrong along the way.” So now that we’re all firm on the general feeling of meh that the FX series of processors engender let’s get back to the way AMD’s marketing them.

“Unlock and load.” Okay, overclocking and gun references, doing good… “Blow away the competition…” Hmm, I doubt any of the reviewers that have FX-8150′s and I5-2500K’s running side by side would say that Intel got blown away… “…with the unrestrained power of an AMD FX processor.” More than silly internet memes though, it’s really hard to take this ad seriously because of how out of touch that statement is with the competitive landscape that AMD is trying to navigate.

With the Phenom II series AMD didn’t tell us that it’s ~$250 CPU blew away with competition with unrestrained performance. Instead they offered a product that, while often slower than their Intel based competition, offered more cores, unlock-able cores, and pricing that made those processors a strong value proposition. Admittedly, this ad gets better as it goes along. These CPUs are fully unlocked and arguably their pricing is competitive. Although, it’s a bit of a stretch to call the performance levels of the FX series aggressive. And as far as “lighting fast responsiveness” goes, pretty much any semi-modern desktop computing platform will offer that if you drop an SSD into it. So basically what we’re left with is an ad that turns off anyone that bothered to read a review of AMD’s FX and then proceeds to some give actual reasons to buy it only after the point that everyone would have quit reading it anyway. *Sigh*

This is not to say that AMD marketing efforts for FX processors is worse than its campaign for the old Phenom II. On the contrary the red, black, and white color scheme is a keeper. But AMD really needs to treat its enthusiast customer base with more respect. The overclocking events and give aways are great tools to build momentum and customer support, but white washing the competitive situation with increasingly flashy buzz words is taking a short term gain at the expense of building long term trust. Is this the right way to make the best of tough competitive position? In my opinion no. But obviously someone at AMD thinks that it is, and I hope for the sake of AMD’s long term CPU business that they did their homework.

Source: semiaccurate.com

Exclusive: Anyone curious about Trinity?

2012-01-09T07:42:00.000-08:00

A few things stand out, and likely many more will be posted in the forums. First up, you can see cores, and there are two ‘Piledriver’ modules, not four ‘Stars’ cores. This should save a bit of space, but we haven’t fully looked at it pixel by pixel yet. In any case, that savings seems to have been taken up by more GPU, never a bad thing in our opinion.

There is a dual-channel DDR3 controller up top, and the same rough count of PCIe lanes on the bottom, along with a display controller. This part looks very different from the older Llano, more in arrangement than anything else, the lane count still adds up to the same number.

Trinity in its glory

A few things stand out, and likely many more will be posted in the forums. First up, you can see cores, and there are two ‘Piledriver’ modules, not four ‘Stars’ cores. This should save a bit of space, but we haven’t fully looked at it pixel by pixel yet. In any case, that savings seems to have been taken up by more GPU, never a bad thing in our opinion.

There is a dual-channel DDR3 controller up top, and the same rough count of PCIe lanes on the bottom, along with a display controller. This part looks very different from the older Llano, more in arrangement than anything else, the lane count still adds up to the same number. The blocks themselves are different enough to suggest PCIe3 instead of PCIe2, but that could very well be an artifact of the arrangement or the die shot itself.

In the same rough spot near the DDR3 controller we have the North Bridge nestled between the cores, and the UVD and video encode blocks up in the top right. The shaders are as-yet unidentified origin, but don’t look to be Evergreen/VLIW5.

As has been rumored, the chip will come in three flavors, chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. If anyone is still paying attention to this story after shiny pictures, the die size is within an hair of 240mm^2. Enjoy.

Source: semiaccurate.com

Rumor: Intel Discontinuing Over 25 Desktop CPUs

2012-01-09T07:38:00.000-08:00

Intel is reportedly making room for the flood of new Ivy Bridge CPUs slated to arrive in April.

ZoomUnnamed industry sources in Taiwan claim that Intel has updated hardware partners with a new schedule that sees the halt of over 25 existing desktop CPU models. The cease in production will reportedly start in 1Q12 in order to make room for the new 22-nm Ivy Bridge processors slated to launch sometime around April 8, 2012.

According to the sources, Intel has issued a notice to cease production of the following CPUs:

1Q12
- Core i7-875K/860S
- Core i5-760/750S/655K
- Celeron 450/430

2Q12
- Celeron E3500
- Celeron E3300
- Core i7-960/950/930/870
- Core i7-880S/870S
- Core i5-661/660
- Core i5-2300/680/670
- Core i3-530
- Core Duo E7500/E7600
- Pentium G960
- Pentium E6600/E550
- Pentium E5700

As previously reported, Intel is slated to launch Ivy Bridge on April 8. On the whole, Intel is expected to release a total of 25 models including 17 CPUs for the desktop and 8 for notebooks and ultrabooks. The first desktop flood will include the Core i7-3770K, 3770, 3770S, 3770T CPUs, the Core i5-3570, 3550 and 3450 CPUs, and the Z77, H77, Z75 and B75 chipsets. Then in May, Intel will unleash the Core i5-3470T CPU along with the Q77 and Q75 desktop chipsets.

As for notebooks, Intel will reportedly release the Core i7-3920QM, 3820QM and 3720QM CPUs along with the HM77, UM77, HM76 and HM75 notebook chipsets (followed by the QS77 and QM77 chipsets in May). Sources claim that other models including the Core i5-3520M, 3360M and 3320M CPUs for notebooks, and the Core i7-3667U and Core i5-3427U CPUs for ultrabooks will officially be unveiled at a later date

Source: tomshardware.com

AMD sued by Quanta over heat related chip issues

2012-01-09T07:36:00.000-08:00

Quanta have filed a lawsuit against AMD in a California court due to claims of using faulty processors in some computers. AMD are disputing these claims.

A news report by Bloomberg highlights that Quanta have accused AMD of selling chips that can not tolerate specific heat levels, making them unusable in some NEC laptops manufactured by Quanta. The problems have caused some machines to malfunction.

AMD spokesman Michael Silverman has said that the company have not been served with the complaint yet, but said that the allegations are without merit.

He said in an email “AMD is aware of no other customer reports of the alleged issues with the AMD chip that Quanta used, which AMD no longer sells. Quanta has itself acknowledged to AMD that it used the identical chip in large volumes in a different computer platform that it manufactured for NEC without such issues.

According to Bloomberg, the lawsuit also claims breach of warranty, negligent misrepresentation, civil fraud and interference with a contract.

Quanta also make notebooks for Dell, Acer and Hewlett Packard.

Source: kitguru.net

Intel Atom Set to Get Four Cores in 2013 - Slide

2012-01-09T07:34:00.000-08:00

Intel Corp. plans to introduce a version of ultra low-power Atom processor with four processing engines. The chips will likely be aimed at the so-called micro-servers, but will also likely be used in nettops or ultra-portable notebooks that require more horse-power than dual-core Atom options have to offer.

The quad-core Intel Atom processors will support ECC memory for servers along with other improvements, according to a slide (presumably from an Intel's document) published by ComputerBase web-site. The Atom chips due in 2012 will belong to a brand new family of Intel's ultra low-voltage chips code-named Saltwell that are supposed to bring performance of Atom on a new level.

Intel Preps Quad-Core Atom Chip for Launch in 2013

Intel Corp. plans to introduce a version of ultra low-power Atom processor with four processing engines. The chips will likely be aimed at the so-called micro-servers, but will also likely be used in nettops or ultra-portable notebooks that require more horse-power than dual-core Atom options have to offer.

The quad-core Intel Atom processors will support ECC memory for servers along with other improvements, according to a slide (presumably from an Intel's document) published by ComputerBase web-site. The Atom chips due in 2012 will belong to a brand new family of Intel's ultra low-voltage chips code-named Saltwell that are supposed to bring performance of Atom on a new level.

Back in May, 2011, the world's largest chipmaker announced that in the following 36 months it would release three major updates for its Atom family of solutions. The first one will be code-named Saltwell and will be made using 32nm process technology; the second is currently known as Silvermont and will be manufactured using 22nm/tri-gate fabrication processor; the third major improvement of the Atom is code-named Airmont and is designed 14nm fabrication process.

With four processing engines, new memory controller and probably new graphics adapter, Intel will be able to address higher-end systems with its Atom chips. Moreover, the company's recently established mobile and communications group (MCG) division will likely help the chipmaker to better address brand new markets of consumer electronics with its Saltwell and other Atom chips.

Intel did not comment on the news-story.

Source: xbitlabs.com

Intel to roll out crippled Sandy Bridge

2012-01-02T09:01:00.000-08:00

Intel is planning to introduce three new Sandy Bridge SKUs that won’t feature integrated graphics, in an apparent attempt to get rid of dodgy cores ahead of the Ivy Bridge launch.

According to VR Zone, the new GPU-less parts will feature a P suffix in their designation. The Core i5-2380P is a 3.1GHz part, overclockable to 3.4GHz on Turbo, while the Core i5-2450P ends up at 3.2GHz/3.5GHz. The Core i5-2550P will be the fastest of the lot, with a stock clock of 3.4GHz, or 3.8GHz on Turbo.

There’s no word on an exact launch date, or pricing for that matter. However, the new chips could be an interesting choice for all users who really don’t need integrated graphics, as they will probably save a few pennies over plain Sandy Bridge parts with similar clocks.

Three SKUs sans graphics

Intel is planning to introduce three new Sandy Bridge SKUs that won’t feature integrated graphics, in an apparent attempt to get rid of dodgy cores ahead of the Ivy Bridge launch.

According to VR Zone, the new GPU-less parts will feature a P suffix in their designation. The Core i5-2380P is a 3.1GHz part, overclockable to 3.4GHz on Turbo, while the Core i5-2450P ends up at 3.2GHz/3.5GHz. The Core i5-2550P will be the fastest of the lot, with a stock clock of 3.4GHz, or 3.8GHz on Turbo.

There’s no word on an exact launch date, or pricing for that matter. However, the new chips could be an interesting choice for all users who really don’t need integrated graphics, as they will probably save a few pennies over plain Sandy Bridge parts with similar clocks.

Source: fudzilla.com

Intel ships 'Cedar Trail' Atom processors for netbooks

2012-01-02T08:54:00.000-08:00

Intel has officially started shipping its next-generation low-power Atom processor for netbooks. Part of the Cedar Trail platform, which already saw two chips released in September for low-powered desktop solutions, the new Atom N2600 and N2800 processors are based on Intel's 32nm Cedarview architecture and will replace the existing N455 and N475 Pine Trail models on small and cheap laptops.

This third generation of Intel Atom processors reportedly offers double the graphics performance of its predecessor thanks to a new PowerVR SGX 545 engine sourced from Imagination Technologies. There's only mention of DirectX 9 support on the press presentation for the new chips, which seems to validate rumors that they failed Microsoft's certification for DirectX 10.1.

They do offer a dedicated media engine for hardware-accelerated decoding of motion video, including support for 1080p H.264, in addition to support for Intel Wireless Display technology -- though the latter will be available depending on the system and price point according to AnandTech.

The move to a 32nm process allows for reduced power consumption in spite of the more powerful GPU. The N2600 is clocked at 1.6GHz with a TDP of just 3.5 watts, while the N2800 is clocked at 1.86GHz and it has a TDP of 6.5W. Both are dual-core, four-thread parts and are meant to be paired with the company's pre-existing NM10 chipset. Intel claims netbooks based on the new chips will feature up to 10 hours of battery life.

Intel is expecting the vast majority of Cedar Trail netbooks to be sold in the $199 - $229 price point, while models featuring Intel's WiDi and potentially fanless designs could arrive later in 2012 for around $399.

Source: techspot.com

Intel Formally Introduces Next-Generation Atom Microprocessors

2012-01-02T08:52:00.000-08:00

Intel Corp. on Wednesday formally introduced its new family of microprocessors aimed at low-cost netbooks and similar affordable personal computers. Although media tablets are slowly, but surely ousting netbooks from the market, the world’s largest maker of chips believes that the new Atom processors will be able to successfully address more advanced PCs thanks to improved multimedia capabilities.

Intel Atom 2000-series “Cedarview” system-on-chip with two new Atom cores features integrated Graphics Media Accelerator 3600/3650 DirectX 10.1-capable graphics engine that also supports integrated high-definition video decoder (in order to enable Blu-ray disc playback on all Atom-based systems), improved DDR3 memory controller, digital interfaces for displays along with other improvements. The SoC is made using 32nm fabrication process.

Netbooks Not Yet Dead: Intel Officially Ships of Atom 2000-Series

Intel Corp. on Wednesday formally introduced its new family of microprocessors aimed at low-cost netbooks and similar affordable personal computers. Although media tablets are slowly, but surely ousting netbooks from the market, the world’s largest maker of chips believes that the new Atom processors will be able to successfully address more advanced PCs thanks to improved multimedia capabilities.

Intel Atom 2000-series “Cedarview” system-on-chip with two new Atom cores features integrated Graphics Media Accelerator 3600/3650 DirectX 10.1-capable graphics engine that also supports integrated high-definition video decoder (in order to enable Blu-ray disc playback on all Atom-based systems), improved DDR3 memory controller, digital interfaces for displays along with other improvements. The SoC is made using 32nm fabrication process. The new Intel Atom processors provide a lower thermal design power (TDP) and power management features such as Intel Deeper Sleep and Intel SpeedStep Technology that enable lower power designs.

The dual-core Intel Atom processor N2600 and Intel Atom processor N2800 are paired with the Intel NM10 chipset and feature a small form factor package size that saves system board real estate and enables thinner netbook designs. In addition to the mobile processors, Intel offers the Intel Atom processor D2500 and D2700 for entry-level desktop and all-in-one designs, as well as intelligent system solutions.

Intel incorporated several new features into the platform, such as Intel Wireless Display and Intel Wireless Music, which allow sharing videos or photos wirelessly from netbooks to specially-designed televisions, or stream music through their home stereo speakers.

Intel claims that the new Atom chips provide improved system responsiveness and an improvement in graphics performance up to two times compared to the previous generation platform.

Systems based on the new Intel Atom processors may have up to 10 hours of battery life and weeks of standby, allowing for all-day use between charges. Additionally, Intel increased processor and overall system performance while reducing power consumption up to 20% compared to the previous platform.

Netbooks and ultra-portable netbooks powered by Intel Atom 2000-series microprocessors will be available in early 2012 from major OEMs including: Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and Toshiba.

The platform supports a range of operating systems including: Windows, MeeGo, Tizen and a range of embedded OSs.

Source: xbitlabs.com

Intel to launch 22nm Ivy Bridge processors on April 8

2012-01-02T08:49:00.000-08:00

Intel is reportedly preparing to launch the upcoming 22nm Ivy Bridge series of processors on or around April 8. The company is expected to release a total of 25 Ivy Bridge chips during this time frame, according to PC makers in Taiwan as reported by DigiTimes.

17 of the CPUs set for launch are desktop models while the remaining eight will be designated for notebook and ultrabook use. Desktop parts include quad-core Core i7-3770K, 3770, 3770S, 3770T, and Core i5-3570, 3550 and 3450 models with prices ranging from $184 to $332. The Core i5-3470T should be available in May for $184. Desktop chipsets on the agenda include Z77 ($48), H77 ($43), Z75 ($40) and B75 ($37), with Q77 ($44) and Q75 ($40) coming on May 13, the sources said.

Notebook processors Core i7-3920Qm, 3820QM and 3720QM will be ready in April for $1,096, $568 and $378, respectively. Other models including Core i5-3520M, 3360M, 3320M and ultrabook-specific Core i7-3667U and Core i5-3427U will be unveiled at a later date. Accompanying notebook chipsets HM77 ($48), UM77 ($48), HM76 ($43) and HM75 ($40) are coming in April. QS77 ($53) and QM77 ($48) are expected in May.

Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors were originally rumored for a March 2012 release, according to a tip from motherboard manufacturers but it seems that Intel (or board makers) weren’t able to meet that deadline. The chips are expected to offer a 20 percent overall performance boost over comparable Sandy Bridge CPUs on the processing side. A reworked internal GPU will produce 30 to 60 percent better overall graphics performance with DirectX 11 and OpenCL 1.1 support.

Source: techspot.com

Happy New Year CPU-WARS!

2011-12-31T06:48:00.001-08:00

Have a Blessed Year 2012 to Everyone!

Have a Blessed Year 2012 to Everyone!

Source:

Intel extends lead over AMD

2011-12-24T10:40:00.000-08:00

Intel is ending the year with an increasing lead over chief rival AMD. According to IHS, Intel’s share worldwide revenues in Q3 rose to 83.7 percent, a 1.2 percent jump over Q2. Meanwhile AMD’s market share dipped 0.3 percent to 10.2 percent.

Of course, we are talking about revenues, not unit sales. Due to higher average selling prices, Intel’s revenue share is greater than the overall market share. Analyst Matthew Wilkins noted that the tablet boom had both upsides and downsides for Intel. Although the vast majority of tablets aren’t based on Intel chips, Intel still benefited from the trend by boosting sales of server chips used in data centers for cloud computing.

83.7 percent share

Intel is ending the year with an increasing lead over chief rival AMD. According to IHS, Intel’s share worldwide revenues in Q3 rose to 83.7 percent, a 1.2 percent jump over Q2. Meanwhile AMD’s market share dipped 0.3 percent to 10.2 percent.

Of course, we are talking about revenues, not unit sales. Due to higher average selling prices, Intel’s revenue share is greater than the overall market share. Analyst Matthew Wilkins noted that the tablet boom had both upsides and downsides for Intel. Although the vast majority of tablets aren’t based on Intel chips, Intel still benefited from the trend by boosting sales of server chips used in data centers for cloud computing.

However, Atom sales suffered a great deal from the shift from netbooks to tablets. According to Intel, Atom sales dropped 32 percent year-over-year in Q3.

Source: fudzilla.com

Who will take over AMD marketing for 2012?

2011-12-24T10:39:00.000-08:00

After quite a few years pushing the company’s CPUs and, more recently, graphics products – it seems that Nigel Dessau is taking the long walk into the land of the lawless. KitGuru ponders what effect this will have on the thorn in Intel’s side.

Nigel was one of those unusual marketing chiefs, who did not really seem to meet with press or customers. There’s more than one way to market, and no one way will suit all companies, but in a world of fierce competitors and fine lines between success and victory, you’d imagine that the marketing VP that spends the most time on the road, shaking the most hands, will win.

Now, according to the uber-scribes at TechEye, Nigel’s no longer got the choice.

In the four year period from 2006 to 2009, AMD’s revenues remained relatively static. Tough to take, when Apple/Arm/Intel/RIM were all making dough like bakeries on steroids.

If you hold steady in a steady market, then everyone will say that you’re doing well, you are solid company – to be trusted.

Alternatively, if the market is booming in new and various ways, but your company is solidly focused on the models, channels and strategies that worked so well in the past, but are becoming dated, then you have a problem.

Struggling to dent Intel is no shame. The company is a monolithic giant with marketing and R&D budgets that are probably bigger than the whole of AMD’s turnover. However, nVidia’s move from a stumbling/hot/sweaty GTX480 launch – to being ‘the man who can’ integrate Tegra into a wide variety of fast-developing products – is nothing short of amazing.

From the time AMD bought ATI, the level of staff turnover – top to bottom – has been stunning.

Two changes of CEO was just the start. There has also been a lot of movement in the CTO and engineering areas (significantly, to Apple). Now, finally, we’re seeing the older marketing folk like Nigel Dessau, Rick Bergman and Pat Moorehead move onto other projects.

AMD may well be reducing its overall wage bill, but will it end up with a team that can win in 2012?

Internally, the VP elect for Nigel’s still-warm seat is ex-Dell lady, Leslie Sobon. If Dirk was still CEO. But he isn’t. Rory Read will have his own opinions, so we’ll have to wait and see if Leslie’s hit a glass ceiling or breaks through to the top marketing spot.

As the world moves from being a geeks-only-use-PC culture to a computing-for-everyone environment, it might prove very useful for AMD to have her kind of perspective.

Source: kitguru.net

Intel drops Sandy Bridge CPU prices

2011-12-24T10:34:00.001-08:00

Chipzilla has dropped its mates a Christmas card telling them that it will cut the price of Sandy Bridge-based processors. It is looking like some Core i3 and i5 series processors to see a drop of 10-15 per cent.

According to Digitimes which has been chatting with notebook makers since Intel is set to announce its next-generation Ivy Bridge-based processor in April of 2012, the company is hoping the price reduction could stimulate the market demand. Lenovo, Asustek Computer and Acer have already dropped their Core i5-2430 equipped notebook model to below US$659 and Core i3-equipped models have also fallen in price.

Cheaper than chips

Chipzilla has dropped its mates a Christmas card telling them that it will cut the price of Sandy Bridge-based processors. It is looking like some Core i3 and i5 series processors to see a drop of 10-15 per cent.

According to Digitimes which has been chatting with notebook makers since Intel is set to announce its next-generation Ivy Bridge-based processor in April of 2012, the company is hoping the price reduction could stimulate the market demand. Lenovo, Asustek Computer and Acer have already dropped their Core i5-2430 equipped notebook model to below US$659 and Core i3-equipped models have also fallen in price.

Vendors will be expected to hack about the prices of the first-generation Core i5-based ultrabooks to US$799-899 in January of 2012 to empty the inventory and prevent these machines killing off the next generation ultrabooks. Next-generation 22nm Ivy Bridge-based processors including Core i5-3450, Core i7-3370, are expected to be priced between $184-332, which are only 10-15 more than some of Intel's existing CPUs.

So Chipzilla really has to get the Sandy Bridge inventory out of its warehouse before it kills off its newer platform.

Source: fudzilla.com

AMD May Be Preparing Phenom II X8 Microprocessors

2011-12-24T10:30:00.001-08:00

BIOS updates for mainboards made by Elitegroup Computer Systems and Jetway reveal that Advanced Micro Devices may be preparing a new line of multi-core microprocessors called Phenom II X8. Based on alleged specifications of the products, the new central processing units (CPUs) will be aimed at cost-sensitive segment of the market.

Based on CPU support list of Jetway HA18 mainboard based on AMD 9-series chipset and AM3+ socket, AMD is preparing a series of new microprocessors based on Zambezi design (Bulldozer micro-architecture, 4, 6 or 8 cores) of different revisions with rather low clock-speeds and with 95W thermal design power.

BIOS Updates Reveal AMD Phenom II X8 Chips

BIOS updates for mainboards made by Elitegroup Computer Systems and Jetway reveal that Advanced Micro Devices may be preparing a new line of multi-core microprocessors called Phenom II X8. Based on alleged specifications of the products, the new central processing units (CPUs) will be aimed at cost-sensitive segment of the market.

Based on CPU support list of Jetway HA18 mainboard based on AMD 9-series chipset and AM3+ socket, AMD is preparing a series of new microprocessors based on Zambezi design (Bulldozer micro-architecture, 4, 6 or 8 cores) of different revisions with rather low clock-speeds and with 95W thermal design power. Jetway lists the new processors as "engineering samples", but a well-known Japanese observer/blogger Northwood.blog60.fc2.com points to an alleged ECS A890GXM-A2 CPU support list that calls the chips as AMD Phenom II X8.

The list of AMD Phenom II X8 microprocessors includes four models:
•AMD Phenom II X8 2420: 2.40GHz, 95W, ZD242046W8K43
•AMD Phenom II X8 3020: 3.00GHz, 125W, ZD302051W8K44
•AMD Phenom II X8 2520: 2.50GHz, 95W, ZD252046W6443
•AMD Phenom II X8 2820: 2.80GHz, 95W, ZD282046W8K43

The "Phenom II X8" microprocessors can be actual early engineering samples of chips that now belong to AMD FX premium product line, however, listing of their support now implies that AMD is cooking something new.

Although AMD FX family does not play in the ultra high-performance segment of the market where microprocessors cost $400 or more, the Sunnyvale, California-based company clearly positions the chips as premium products. Therefore, the company is not interested in selling products with relatively low performance under the FX brand.

It is known that AMD does have a lot of Zambezi processors that have all cores functional, but which cannot work on high clock-speeds and therefore provide premium "FX-class" performance, but AMD is definitely interested in selling those chips. In a bid not to harm the appeal of the FX brand, the chip designer may sell low-frequency Zambezi processors with disabled Turbo Core dynamic clock-speed acceleration technology and/or cut-down L2/L3 cache under Phenom II X8 brand. AMD already sells some processors based on Llano APU design with disabled graphics engine under Athlon II and Sempron monikers, thus, a refresh of the Phenom II line should not be a complete surprise.

With low frequencies and without Turbo Core, the new eight-core Phenom II X8 will likely be considerably slower than the existing six-core Phenom II X8 processors based on Thuban design.

Source: xbitlabs.com

Ivy Bridge brings even better overclocking

2011-12-24T10:18:00.001-08:00

Initial reports from the Far East indicate that Ivy Bridge parts will offer even better overclocking performance than their predecessors.

The new 22nm CPUs have lower TDP per clock and can do more calculations, which means you can push the clocks even higher. Ivy Bridge comes in March / April 2012 and normally it can work at the same clock as current generation Sandy Bridge parts, but with a lower wattage.

The 3.4GHz quad core with eight threads should be possible even at 77W, but our sources were not sure about the official designation used for 77W parts. They said it should look like Core i7 3000 series with a K suffix. Such parts should be selling for around $350.

22nm looks good

Initial reports from the Far East indicate that Ivy Bridge parts will offer even better overclocking performance than their predecessors.

The new 22nm CPUs have lower TDP per clock and can do more calculations, which means you can push the clocks even higher. Ivy Bridge comes in March / April 2012 and normally it can work at the same clock as current generation Sandy Bridge parts, but with a lower wattage.

The 3.4GHz quad core with eight threads should be possible even at 77W, but our sources were not sure about the official designation used for 77W parts. They said it should look like Core i7 3000 series with a K suffix. Such parts should be selling for around $350.

Naturally top performance freaks will want go after Sandy Bridge E, Core i7 3900 series currently ruled by the 3.3GHz/ 3.9GHz Core i7 3960X.

Ivy Bridge also looks good for notebooks, but as you may imagine, there won’t be much overclocking happening in the notebook arena, at least not in mainstream notebooks, but superior performance per watt will allow vendors to improve battery life and come up with thinner designs.

Source: fudzilla.com

Llano shortage might be a thing of the past

2011-12-24T10:12:00.000-08:00

The lengthy AMD Llano shortage could be coming to an end, months after the original A6- and A8- series APUs were launched.

Analyst Nathan Brookwood points to the launch of several new variants as s telltale sign of improved production, but it will take some time before we see the effects in the retail market.

"The new parts are basically speed bumps, and I am taking the fact AMD can ship faster versions of A-series chips as an indicator they may be able to improve their availability," he told EE Times.

New SKUs point to improved yields

The lengthy AMD Llano shortage could be coming to an end, months after the original A6- and A8- series APUs were launched.

Analyst Nathan Brookwood points to the launch of several new variants as s telltale sign of improved production, but it will take some time before we see the effects in the retail market.

"The new parts are basically speed bumps, and I am taking the fact AMD can ship faster versions of A-series chips as an indicator they may be able to improve their availability," he told EE Times.

Brookwood notes that Intel’s Sandy Bridge CPUs still have the upper hands in terms of sheer CPU performance, but AMD has a clear advantage in integrated graphics. Speaking of next generation chips, he expects Intel won’t meet its 22nm launch schedule, so Trinity and Ivy Bridge parts could launch at roughly the same time.

Source: fudzilla.com

Quick Note: AMD's Powers up With Stronger, Overclockable "Fusion" CPUs

2011-12-24T10:10:00.000-08:00

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) has had a mixture of bad news and good news of late. On the plus side it finally managed to get its Sandy Bridge competitor, Bulldozer, out the door (though it wasn't the performance monster most were hoping for). On the other hand, it scrapped its ultra-low voltage tablet/netbook Deccan platform. It also downgraded its plans for 2012 on the desktop side.

But despite its struggles, AMD has one product that is selling particularly well -- Fusion. Fusion "advanced processing unit" (APU) chips consist of a CPU and GPU, integrated onto a single die. By and large AMD's APUs tend to offer inferior CPU performance to Intel Corp.'s (INTC) Sandy Bridge CPU+GPU combo, but equal or better GPU performance.

Customers get 100 MHz more, unlocked clocks, for same price as June counterparts

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) has had a mixture of bad news and good news of late. On the plus side it finally managed to get its Sandy Bridge competitor, Bulldozer, out the door (though it wasn't the performance monster most were hoping for). On the other hand, it scrapped its ultra-low voltage tablet/netbook Deccan platform. It also downgraded its plans for 2012 on the desktop side.

But despite its struggles, AMD has one product that is selling particularly well -- Fusion. Fusion "advanced processing unit" (APU) chips consist of a CPU and GPU, integrated onto a single die. By and large AMD's APUs tend to offer inferior CPU performance to Intel Corp.'s (INTC) Sandy Bridge CPU+GPU combo, but equal or better GPU performance. Given Sandy Bridge's higher price point, the Fusion chips have been hot ticket items, making their way into scores of low priced laptops and budget desktops.

AMD just announced the latest addition to its Fusion family, two new A-Series chips (in the Llano family).

The chips' specs are:

A6-3670K
Price: $115 USD/unit @ orders of 1,000 units
CPU Clock: 2.7 GHz (unlocked)
CPU Cache: 4x 1 MB L2
GPU Clock: 600 MHz
GPU Cores: 320
Power: 100 W TDP

A8-3870K
Price: $135 USD/unit @ orders of 1,000 units
CPU Clock: 3.0 GHz (unlocked)
CPU Cache: 4x 1 MB L2
GPU Clock: 600 MHz
GPU Cores: 400
Power: 100 W TDP

An A-Series CPU by AMD [Image Source: SlashGear]

The new A[6,8]-3[6,8]70K chips are identical in price to their A[6,8]-3[6,8]50 counterparts, which were introduced at the end of June. However, AMD bumps the CPU clock 100 MHz (and the GPU clock in the A6 part's case) and unlocks the chip for easier overclocking.

AMD boasts that it's sold over 12 million Fusion CPUs to date.

Source: dailytech.com

AMD Raises the Bar on Desktop and Notebook A-Series APUs

2011-12-24T10:07:00.000-08:00

AMD today updated its A-Series line-up of desktop and notebook Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), further improving its top-performing family of dual- and quad-core APUs. Along with speed and performance improvements, AMD Steady Video update make this unique feature more compelling than ever. For desktop users, AMD extends its overclocking pedigree to the APU; for the first time users can tune both x86 and graphics settings in a single processor for boosted performance.

The updated AMD A-Series APUs combine up to four x86 CPU cores with up to 400 Radeon cores, delivering powerful DirectX 11-capable, discrete-level graphics and dedicated HD video processing on a single chip. These new APUs increase performance and deliver a richer feature set than existing AMD A-series APUs. Plus, only AMD APUs offer AMD Dual Graphics for an up to 144 percent visual performance boost when a select APU is paired with a select AMD Radeon™ HD 6500 Series graphics card.

The AMD A-Series family of APUs also features AMD Steady Video, designed to stabilize videos during playback – making unsteady, jumpy content look steady and smooth as you watch. On select systems using AMD A-Series APUs, Internet Explorer 9 will include an AMD Steady Video plugin, unlocking one-click control to simplify access to the premium AMD Steady Video feature for video stabilization.

All AMD A-Series processors are powered by AMD VISION Engine Software, a suite of software that provides end-users with regular updates designed to improve system performance and stability, and can add new software enhancements.

AMD A-Series Desktop APUs A8-3870K: Four CPU cores, 3.0 GHz CPU base (unlocked), 100W TDP, 400 Radeon cores, 600 MHz GPU base (unlocked), 4 MB L2 cache
A8-3820: Four CPU cores, 2.5 GHz CPU base (2.8 GHz Turbo Core), 65W TDP, 400 Radeon cores, 4 MB L2 cache
A6-3670K: Four CPU cores, 2.7 GHz CPU base (unlocked), 100W TDP, 320 Radeon cores, 600 MHz GPU base (unlocked), 4 MB L2 cache
A6-3620: Four CPU cores, 2.2 GHz CPU base (2.5 GHz Turbo Core), 65W TDP, 320 Radeon cores, 4 MB L2 cache
A4-3420: Two CPU cores, 2.8 GHz CPU base, 65W TDP, 160 Radeon cores, 1 MB L2 cache

AMD A-Series Notebook APUs A8-3550MX: Four CPU cores, 2.0 GHz CPU base (2.7 GHz Turbo Core), 45W TDP, 400 Radeon Cores, 4 MB L2 cache
A8-3520M: Four CPU cores, 1.6 GHz CPU base (2.5 GHz Turbo Core), 35W TDP, 400 Radeon Cores, 4 MB L2 cache
A6-3430MX: Four CPU cores, 1.7 GHz CPU base (2.4 GHz Turbo Core), 45W TDP, 320 Radeon Cores, 4 MB L2 cache
A6-3420M: Four CPU cores, 1.5 GHz CPU base (2.4 GHz Turbo Core), 35W TDP, 320 Radeon Cores, 4 MB L2 cache
A4-3330MX: Two CPU cores, 2.2 GHz CPU base (2.6 GHz Turbo Core), 45W TDP, 240 Radeon Cores, 2 MB L2 cache
A4-3320M:Two CPU cores, 2.0 GHz CPU base (2.6 GHz Turbo Core), 35W TDP, 240 Radeon Cores, 2 MB L2 cache
A4-3305M:Two CPU cores, 1.9 GHz CPU base (2.5 GHz Turbo Core), 35W TDP, 160 Radeon Cores, 1 MB L2 cache
E2-3000M: Two CPU cores, 1.8 GHz CPU base (2.4 GHz Turbo Core), 35W TDP, 160 Radeon Cores, 1 MB L2 Cache

Why: The new AMD A-Series family of APUs improves the first generation of highly successful and revolutionary desktop and notebook processors, providing an outstanding experience for consumers seeking more responsive multitasking, long battery-life, vivid graphics, lifelike games, lag-free videos and the ultimate multimedia performance.

When: Desktop APUs in the component channel as well as systems based on the new AMD A-Series APUs will hit the retail market over the next several weeks.

Who: The new AMD A-Series family of APUs is for mainstream users and performance enthusiasts seeking an outstanding experience on their desktop or notebook PC.

Source: Press Release

Source: kitguru.net

AMD hires firm to get laid off workers jobs

2011-12-24T09:54:00.000-08:00

AMD (NYSE:AMD) has done something nice for thousands of laid off workers, they hired a firm to provide them with tips, opportunities, and other things to speed them along to productive employment. The first of the conference calls is scheduled for later today.

At 4PM CST today, with a follow up call next week, ex-AMD Sales and Marketing folk will be presented with job prospects from reputable companies. This is only the first, there are going to be many more soon too. With luck, this will lead them to productive careers in fields related to their current work.

First call scheduled for today, repeats in a week

AMD (NYSE:AMD) has done something nice for thousands of laid off workers, they hired a firm to provide them with tips, opportunities, and other things to speed them along to productive employment. The first of the conference calls is scheduled for later today.

At 4PM CST today, with a follow up call next week, ex-AMD Sales and Marketing folk will be presented with job prospects from reputable companies. This is only the first, there are going to be many more soon too. With luck, this will lead them to productive careers in fields related to their current work. If you are a potential candidate for this call, you should have already gotten the email below, the blanked out details will be in there.

Check your inbox if you are a candidate

We at SemiAccurate would like to thank AMD for such a generous offer. AMD did not have to pay an external firm to do this, nor did the firm have to set up calls with such high profile companies like they did. For the now extremely motivated ex-AMD employees, it is an opportunity to continue work in the semiconductor Sales and Marketing field, likely with many of the same clients and co-workers as before. This is in no uncertain terms a win/win/win.

Source: semiaccurate.com

Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Synthetic Benchmarks

2011-12-07T07:20:00.000-08:00

A collections of synthetic tests using Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme listed alphabetically.

"Overall, what you have here is the platform with the best multi-threading performance, top-notch single-threaded performance, the most numbers of PCI-E lanes, future-proof PCI-Express 3.0 support, overclocking capabilities that should please even the most ardent enthusiast, and more than reasonable power consumption numbers." -hardwarecanucks.com

Intel still considers AMD a serious competitor

2011-12-07T06:33:00.000-08:00

Although Intel has reigned supreme in the high-end CPU market for the better part of a decade, it still considers AMD a serious competitor, according to Intel exec Pat Bliemer.

In an interview with Nordic Hardware, Bleimer said AMD was and always will be a serious competitor in Intel’s eyes. He argued that AMD was having facing manufacturing and architectural challenges and could not compete with Intel directly. However, Llano and Brazos chips are singled out as successful products with competitive pricing.

“It's a pricing game but I think that from a performance and experience point of view it is not much for them right now to really pleased about I think. But they will always stay competitive," he said.

APUs offer good price-to-performance ratio

Although Intel has reigned supreme in the high-end CPU market for the better part of a decade, it still considers AMD a serious competitor, according to Intel exec Pat Bliemer.

In an interview with Nordic Hardware, Bleimer said AMD was and always will be a serious competitor in Intel’s eyes. He argued that AMD was having facing manufacturing and architectural challenges and could not compete with Intel directly. However, Llano and Brazos chips are singled out as successful products with competitive pricing.

“It's a pricing game but I think that from a performance and experience point of view it is not much for them right now to really pleased about I think. But they will always stay competitive," he said.

Bleimer went on to say that integrated graphics don’t have much value for enthusiasts, but they are very important in other markets. He believes Intel’s next generation HD 4000 graphics will offer a significant performance boost over crrent Intel graphics and they could take care of some casual gaming as well.

“This is the battle Intel and AMD alike have to battle on how to convince consumers that integrated solutions are sufficient. With AMD's Llano and the changes coming to the integrated graphics on Ivy Bridge (HD 4000), we are seeing how the integrated graphics solution is capable of playing HD content, games or accelerating applications better than ever before,” he said.

So, when it comes to integrated graphics AMD still has the upper hand, but it does not have a very competitive CPU architecture to go along with the graphics.

Source: fudzilla.com

Deccan 28nm removed from AMD roadmap

2011-12-07T06:25:00.000-08:00

In September AMD was informing its partners about new platforms in 2012 and back than Deccan platform was supposed to replace Brazos based on E series processors.

Deccan was supposed to introduce the 28nm Globalfoundries-manufactured Wichita processor that features four Bobcat cores, redesigned in 28nm. However, due to 28nm delays at Globalfoundries, it just got canceled.

Since Wichita and Krishna are both designed for Globalfoundries 28nm manufacturing process, making them compatible with TSMC’s manufacturing process would cost AMD a lot of time and money. The chips would be even later to market than the original 2H 2012 schedule and that would simply make them too late to make the difference.

Replaced by Brazos 2.0

In September AMD was informing its partners about new platforms in 2012 and back than Deccan platform was supposed to replace Brazos based on E series processors.

Deccan was supposed to introduce the 28nm Globalfoundries-manufactured Wichita processor that features four Bobcat cores, redesigned in 28nm. However, due to 28nm delays at Globalfoundries, it just got canceled.

Since Wichita and Krishna are both designed for Globalfoundries 28nm manufacturing process, making them compatible with TSMC’s manufacturing process would cost AMD a lot of time and money. The chips would be even later to market than the original 2H 2012 schedule and that would simply make them too late to make the difference.

Deccan is now replaced with the Brazos 2.0 platform, and it is hoped that E series parts can get faster than current E450 clocked at 1.65GHz. The chipset and motherboards are new and are based on A68 FCH chipset that brings USB 3.0 support as well as SATA 6Gb/s.

Atoms in 32nm are currently shipping and will definitely put a lot of pressure on AMD’s quite successful E-series of entry level APUs. What comes after these 40nm parts remains to be disclosed.

Source: fudzilla.com

AMD to Release Two New Llano APUs: A8-3870K, A6-3670K

2011-12-07T06:22:00.000-08:00

Say hello to the unlocked A8-3870K and A6-3670K.

CPU World reports that the new APUs are now available for pre-order and are positioned above the existing 3850 and 3650 models, respectively. Both APUs are 100 watt parts and clock in at 3.0 GHz and 2.7 GHz, compared to 2.9 GHz and 2.6 GHz for the 3850 and 3650. CPU World shows a pricelist in which the new 3870K is priced at $143.77, which is the same as the cost for the 3850. The 3670K is priced at $121.50, the same as the 3650.

It is reasonable to expect the prices for the 3650 and 3850 to drop slightly once the new APUs are released.

AMD is preparing two new Llano processors for a release in the near future.

Say hello to the unlocked A8-3870K and A6-3670K.

CPU World reports that the new APUs are now available for pre-order and are positioned above the existing 3850 and 3650 models, respectively. Both APUs are 100 watt parts and clock in at 3.0 GHz and 2.7 GHz, compared to 2.9 GHz and 2.6 GHz for the 3850 and 3650. CPU World shows a pricelist in which the new 3870K is priced at $143.77, which is the same as the cost for the 3850. The 3670K is priced at $121.50, the same as the 3650.

It is reasonable to expect the prices for the 3650 and 3850 to drop slightly once the new APUs are released.

Source: tomshardware.com

AMD cuts 800m transistors from Bulldozer spec

2011-12-07T06:21:00.000-08:00

AMD’s Bulldozer has been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately, so in an apparent effort to clarify some performance issues, the company revised Bulldozer’s transistor count, only to see the move backfire quite badly.

AMD told extremetech.com that its Bulldozer core does not feature 2 billion transistors as previously reported, but rather 1.2 billion. The die size remained unchanged, at 315 square millimeters, so it turns out AMD is only counting transistors actually used by the chip. It seems the other 800 million are looking for work on craigslist and dreaming of moving out of their mom's basement. AMD attributed the whole issue to a simple error, but the move raised more questions than it answered.

Lost in translation

AMD’s Bulldozer has been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately, so in an apparent effort to clarify some performance issues, the company revised Bulldozer’s transistor count, only to see the move backfire quite badly.

AMD told extremetech.com that its Bulldozer core does not feature 2 billion transistors as previously reported, but rather 1.2 billion. The die size remained unchanged, at 315 square millimeters, so it turns out AMD is only counting transistors actually used by the chip. It seems the other 800 million are looking for work on craigslist and dreaming of moving out of their mom's basement. AMD attributed the whole issue to a simple error, but the move raised more questions than it answered.

On one hand, it means AMD’s new architecture doesn’t really need 2 billion transistors to attain decent performance, on par with mid range Intel chips. However, the chip’s die size and transistor density indicate that it does have shedloads of unused transistors. Exactly how and why a few hundred million unused transistors ended up on the chip is another question. Extremetech believes they are the result of a fully automated design process gone amok, resulting in an “unusually high degree of overhead.”

The difference is quite significant and the site worked out that each of Bulldozer’s eight cores consists of 60 million transistors rather than 91 million. AMD did not comment the issue which is already proving somewhat awkward.

However, we believe it is essentially a positive development for AMD, as it shows Bulldozer still has a lot of room for improvement, 800 million transistors more to be exact. Future iterations could feature a lot more efficient design on the same die size, provided AMD irons out its design process. Yes, we are looking at you Piledriver.

Source: fudzilla.com

AMD Stops Shipping Phenom II and Athlon II CPUs

2011-12-07T06:18:00.000-08:00

According to a post over at Nordic Hardware, only one CPU of the lineup is still shipping. We were not able to confirm the report, which is based on an unknown information source, but we do know that there are still plenty of Athlon II and Phenom II processors in the channel and we hear that vendors have sufficient supply for the Christmas season.

Nordic Hardware states that no more Athlons and Phenoms are sent into the market, with the exception of the 3.0 GHz Phenom II X4 960T.

If the report is accurate, the transition of GlobalFoundries' Fab 1 in Dresden may the reason that shipments of the Phenom II and Athlon II have been stopped. It is obvious that AMD is moving toward higher margin products such as Llano, which are selling like hotcakes right now.

There is a new rumor that AMD has virtually halted shipments of its 45 nm Phenom II and Athlon II processors.

According to a post over at Nordic Hardware, only one CPU of the lineup is still shipping. We were not able to confirm the report, which is based on an unknown information source, but we do know that there are still plenty of Athlon II and Phenom II processors in the channel and we hear that vendors have sufficient supply for the Christmas season.

Nordic Hardware states that no more Athlons and Phenoms are sent into the market, with the exception of the 3.0 GHz Phenom II X4 960T.

If the report is accurate, the transition of GlobalFoundries' Fab 1 in Dresden may the reason that shipments of the Phenom II and Athlon II have been stopped. It is obvious that AMD is moving toward higher margin products such as Llano, which are selling like hotcakes right now.

However, if you are looking for a cheap CPU upgrade, this may be the time to look for one of AMD's processors. Phenom II X6 processors are currently selling from about $138, while X4 CPUs are retailing for as little as $80.

Source: tomshardware.com

Intel Runs 14nm Test Chips in the Lab

2011-12-07T06:15:00.000-08:00

Intel Corp. reaffirmed in the interview that it remains to be committed to its well-known Tick-Tock strategy and is on-track to introduce 14nm fabrication process sometimes in 2014. Moreover, the world's largest chipmaker already has test chips produced using 14nm fabrication process running in the lab.

In an interview with Nordic Hardware, Intel confirmed that it already has a set of technologies to build circuits at 14nm, and are running tests on these in the lab. While Intel did not reveal any particular details about the process technology which will only be used two years from now, it did imply that the 14nm fabrication process will feature a number of innovations in the transistor design, just like the 22nm that introduced tri-gate transistors.

Intel On Track with 14nm Process Technology

Intel Corp. reaffirmed in the interview that it remains to be committed to its well-known Tick-Tock strategy and is on-track to introduce 14nm fabrication process sometimes in 2014. Moreover, the world's largest chipmaker already has test chips produced using 14nm fabrication process running in the lab.

In an interview with Nordic Hardware, Intel confirmed that it already has a set of technologies to build circuits at 14nm, and are running tests on these in the lab. While Intel did not reveal any particular details about the process technology which will only be used two years from now, it did imply that the 14nm fabrication process will feature a number of innovations in the transistor design, just like the 22nm that introduced tri-gate transistors.

"We need to keep going and you can trust me that in our labs we actually have the next generation after 22nm running, so we need to keep going.[...]I cannot really disclose more about that other than that in a laboratory-environment, absolutely we do have the path, our engineers do have the path to actually go and produce 14nm products," said Pat Bliemer, managing director of Intel Northern Europe.

Intel demonstrates confidence in its ability to continue rapidly innovating in the semiconductor space, which adds assurance to the company's ability to continue introduce new central processing units (CPUs) in a timely manner.

The main rival of Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, relies on success of process technologies designed by IBM and Globalfoundries and recent issues will put AMD into a massively uncompetitive position both in terms of short-term and mid-term future. At first, AMD will remain with relatively outdated 32nm SOI fabrication process in early 2012 when Intel introduces 22nm manufacturing technology. By the year 2014 the gap between Intel and AMD will widen massively: AMD will use 20nm process technology, whereas Intel will start to use 14nm process at the time.

Source: xbitlabs.com

Details leaked on Intel ‘Ivy Bridge’ processors

2011-12-07T06:13:00.000-08:00

XBIT labs have published information related to the upcoming Core i5 and Core i7 Ivy Bridge processors from Intel. These will be available in Q2 2012, and are quad core, except for one, which is a budget model.

The remainder of the Core i5 processors have a 6MB cache and range in speeds from 2.7ghz to 3.4ghz. The Core i7 lineup have 8MB of cache and range from speeds of 2.5ghz to 3.5ghz.

The new Ivy Bridge CPU’s will support PCIe 3.0 x 16 and have native support for USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt technologies. The most noticeable change however is the move to the 22nm process, which relates to around a 30 percent drop in size. The benefits are well known – less power, lower heat output and lower energy costs are some of the improvements over the current range of chips.

The smaller central processor design also means that Intel will be able to make more room for the integrated graphics side, they reckon the performance will be 60% better, and will support Direct X 11.

If you already have a new motherboard, fear not, because the new chips will work with the Sandy Bridge boards with many manufacturers planning bios updates to fully support the new technology.

Source: kitguru.net

AMD’s Bulldozer is a sales success

2011-12-07T06:02:00.000-08:00

AMD’s Bulldozer was launched to a mixed, predominately negative press reaction as the performance results were lower than expected. High power consumption has also been a kicking point for the company on the forums. It may come as a surprise to many then that they are selling very well. We spoke to several stores in the last couple of days and they are apparently selling out as soon as stock lands.

This may come as a shock to some people, especially as the pricing isn’t as low as some of the enthusiast audience would expect. We don’t have detailed figures on the sales at this point, but they look to be very positive, although stock levels in specific regions appear to be low. Clearly, their ’8 core processor’ advertising campaigns have paid off.

AMD are calling a halt to the shipping of some processors, such as those in the Phenom II and Athlon II range. The reason is said to be because the manufacturing plants share equipment between older 45nm and newer 32nm products, causing logistics issues. According to reports circulating however, the X4 960T will continue to sell until stocks are out.

Source: kitguru.net

AMD: We Are at Inflection Point

2011-12-07T06:01:00.000-08:00

Advanced Micro Devices claims that the traditional view on the market of microprocessors as onto competition between Intel Corp. and AMD is now outdated. There are strategic inflection points both for the market in general and AMD in particular. But while addressing new challenges is important, there are traditional things that need to be done right.

"We are at an inflection point. We will all need to let go of the old 'AMD versus Intel' mind-set, because it won't be about that anymore," said Michael Silverman, a corporate spokesperson for AMD in an interview with San Jose Mercury News.

Think Beyond "AMD Vs. Intel" Mindset, Says AMD

Advanced Micro Devices claims that the traditional view on the market of microprocessors as onto competition between Intel Corp. and AMD is now outdated. There are strategic inflection points both for the market in general and AMD in particular. But while addressing new challenges is important, there are traditional things that need to be done right.

"We are at an inflection point. We will all need to let go of the old 'AMD versus Intel' mind-set, because it won't be about that anymore," said Michael Silverman, a corporate spokesperson for AMD in an interview with San Jose Mercury News.

New Technologies Change Competitive Landscape

It is not a secret that there are several global revolutions happening in the computer world nowadays. For the microprocessor industry the most important industrial phenomenon today are GPGPU (general purpose computing on graphics processing units) technologies as well as ARM-architecture microprocessors that power ultra-portable devices which deliver great user experience at low power consumption. GPGPU allow to accelerate certain consumer programs or even power high-performance computing (HPC) applications thus reducing demand towards traditional x86 processing power. ARM chips power the most popular and the most personal devices nowadays - smartphones, tablets, etc. But ARM or its partners do not place stickers with their names, number of cores and clock-speeds onto those products. Few people know what is inside their personal devices; therefore, the importance of microprocessor brand or horsepower is going down for the end user.

"The competitive landscape has changed over the past few years. [...] There are more players in the microprocessor market than there were, say, five years ago," said Mr. Silverman in an interview with X-bit labs.

Five years ago only two companies - AMD and Intel - offered competitive x86 chips that could deliver enough horsepower for demanding consumer programs or HPC applications. Nowadays the situation is different: many apps take advantage of GPUs by default and many consumers know that they need proper contemporary AMD Radeon or Nvidia GeForce GPUs to have blazing speeds. Today, supercomputer owners are not afraid of GPU-based accelerators and significant amount of top-performing systems in the world use GPUs. As a result, today there are three companies fighting for the HPC market and for end users' dollars: AMD, Intel and Nvidia.

Nowadays, media tablets powered by ARM system-on-chips from different companies are stealing sales from PCs and therefore from AMD and Intel. With the arrival of Windows 8 next year, ARM partners will be able to compete directly against AMD and Intel on the notebook and slate-type PC markets. Therefore, the competition will expand again, there will be AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Samsung, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and many others. But since customers do not care what is exactly inside tablets, the value of Intel and AMD brands will get much lower and horsepower of their chips will no longer be the most important factor.

New All-Out War on Chip Market Incoming

Does this mean that AMD and Intel are no longer direct rivals? No. It means that there are more rivals for Intel and AMD on the market and the two companies will pin less attention on each other in a bid to stay competitive globally. The competition between AMD and Intel was all about performance and volumes. While the importance of performance benchmarks for end-users may get lower, PC makers will continue to thoroughly evaluate chips in order to enable the best possible user experience on their devices. As a result, there will still be fight for the highest speed amid lowest power consumption between AMD, Intel and tens of other players.

"Any time a company is more focused on its competitor than what the market wants and needs it is probably not in a good place for long-term growth. Our CEO Rory Read is driving a shift internally to think beyond the typical and outdated AMD/Intel mindset. At the end of the day, we aren't focused on keeping pace with Intel, we are focused on keeping pace with consumers and the market. That is how we are going to win," said Mr. Silverman.

The new era of always-connected Internet devices has quietly brought a number of strategic inflection points for various industries. For computer chip designers it means a new all-out war where only the strongest will survive.

Source: xbitlabs.com

Intel Schedules Core i 3000 "Ivy Bridge" Desktop Processors Launch to Q2 2012

2011-12-07T05:59:00.000-08:00

Intel Corp. has notified its partners about its decision to introduce of its next-generation code-named Ivy Bridge processors in the second quarter of 2012. Previously the company planned to release the Core i 3000-series central processing units (CPUs) for desktops in March - April timeframe, which left a possibility to unveil the chips in the first quarter.

The reasons why Intel decided to postpone the launch of the world's first desktop microprocessors made using 22nm transistors presumably to April from March are unclear.

Intel Details First Breed of Desktop Core i "Ivy Bridge" Chips: Specifications Unleashed

Intel Corp. has notified its partners about its decision to introduce of its next-generation code-named Ivy Bridge processors in the second quarter of 2012. Previously the company planned to release the Core i 3000-series central processing units (CPUs) for desktops in March - April timeframe, which left a possibility to unveil the chips in the first quarter.

The reasons why Intel decided to postpone the launch of the world's first desktop microprocessors made using 22nm transistors presumably to April from March are unclear. Perhaps, the company wants to ensure that there is no internal competition between existing Core i "Sandy Bridge" 2000 and future Core i "Ivy Bridge" 3000 chips. Maybe, the ramp up of brand new CPUs is taking longer than expected and Intel needs additional time to deliver enough products to the market.

Intel has also disclosed specifications of its next-gen Ivy Bridge chips for desktops to its partners. The initial family to be released in Q2 2012 will not include Core i3-3200-series chips and will consist of Core i7-3700 and Core i5-3500/3400 families. The inexpensive Core i3-3200 will be made available later in Q2 2011.

Ivy Bridge will generally inherit Sandy Bridge micro-architecture and will sport a rather significant number of improvements. Firstly, it will have certain improvements that will boost its performance in general applications by around 20% compared to Core i "Sandy Bridge" chips (e.g., enhanced AVX acceleration). Secondly, the forthcoming chip will have a new graphics core with DirectX 11 and OpenCL 1.1 support, 30% higher performance compared to the predecessor as well as new video processor and display controllers. Thirdly, Ivy Bridge will feature PCI Express 3.0 x16 interconnection as well as PCIe 2.0 x4 controller. In fourth, the processor will support a number of power management innovations. The CPU is made using 22nm process technology.

Source: xbitlabs.com

Intel Ivy Bridge scheduled for April

2011-11-27T08:34:00.000-08:00

Although it was originally scheduled to launch sometime in Q1 2012, it looks like Intel's 22nm Ivy Bridge has been delayed until April 2012, while the rest of the lineup should follow up sometime in Q3 2012.

According to a report over at CPU-World, Intel is planning an official launch event for April 2012 and it will include Core i5 and Core i7 desktop chips as well as Core i7 mobile ones. The rest of the lineup, that includes desktop Core i3 and mobile Core i5 chips should follow later in the second quarter, while Pentium branded chips are scheduled for Q3 2012.

Rest of lineup in Q2

Although it was originally scheduled to launch sometime in Q1 2012, it looks like Intel's 22nm Ivy Bridge has been delayed until April 2012, while the rest of the lineup should follow up sometime in Q3 2012.

According to a report over at CPU-World, Intel is planning an official launch event for April 2012 and it will include Core i5 and Core i7 desktop chips as well as Core i7 mobile ones. The rest of the lineup, that includes desktop Core i3 and mobile Core i5 chips should follow later in the second quarter, while Pentium branded chips are scheduled for Q3 2012.

As you may remember, Intel made some quite bold promises for Ivy Bridge that include full DirectX 11 support and more EUs in the on-die GPU, as well as up to 60 percent better performance when compared to the current Sandy Bridge architeture.

It is also improtant to note that desktop and mobile Celeron chips will be still based on Sandy Bridge and won't be switched to 22nm process in 2012.

Source: fudzilla.com

Intel Aims Pentium 350 at Servers

2011-11-27T08:32:00.000-08:00

Intel's Pentium line of processors has been around over a decade now. The Pentium processor was the high-end of Intel's line of processors for notebooks and desktops earlier in its life. Today the Pentium line is placed between the high-end Core series and the low-end Celeron parts. Intel, however, is aiming a new processor for its Pentium line at the server market.

The new processor is the Pentium 350 and is aimed at low-end servers. The dual-core Pentium 350 runs at 1.2GHz, features 3MB cache, and has a low power draw of 15W. The processor is a bare bones part with no integrated graphics.

Will Pentium replace Celeron as low-end name?

Intel's Pentium line of processors has been around over a decade now. The Pentium processor was the high-end of Intel's line of processors for notebooks and desktops earlier in its life. Today the Pentium line is placed between the high-end Core series and the low-end Celeron parts. Intel, however, is aiming a new processor for its Pentium line at the server market.

The new processor is the Pentium 350 and is aimed at low-end servers. The dual-core Pentium 350 runs at 1.2GHz, features 3MB cache, and has a low power draw of 15W. The processor is a bare bones part with no integrated graphics. Intel is targeting the chip at microservers rather than high-end servers where performance is key. That market is served by other parts in the Xeon line.

TechWorld reports that a new line of Xeon X3 servers are also supposed to come to market soon that are based on the Atom processors for micro servers. Analyst Dean McCarron for Mercury Research says that the Pentium 350 might also find its way into servers for specific tasks like printing or document sharing.

He said, "What we're seeing is a repurposed part."

TechWorld seems to think that the part might be a sign that the Celeron line will be replaced by the Pentium name.

Source: dailytech.com

Intel Cedar Trail delayed yet again

2011-11-27T08:27:00.000-08:00

Intel’s next generation Atoms processors have been delayed yet again. The 32nm Cedar Trail chips were set to launch sometime in Q3, but they were delayed and now it seems they have been delayed once again.

According to our friend Lars over at VR-Zone, no Cedar Trail products will ship in time for the holidays. Intel will officially launch Cedar Trail in late December, which basically means 2012 for all intents and purposes. Cedar Trail experienced quite a few teething problems with graphics drivers, namely WHQL certification, which translated into a lengthy delay.

No rush, next year is fine

Intel’s next generation Atoms processors have been delayed yet again. The 32nm Cedar Trail chips were set to launch sometime in Q3, but they were delayed and now it seems they have been delayed once again.

According to our friend Lars over at VR-Zone, no Cedar Trail products will ship in time for the holidays. Intel will officially launch Cedar Trail in late December, which basically means 2012 for all intents and purposes. Cedar Trail experienced quite a few teething problems with graphics drivers, namely WHQL certification, which translated into a lengthy delay.

Although the new N2xxx series Atoms should easily outpace their predecessors, it is still unclear they will be able to hold their ground against AMD’s Brazos platform. AMD on the other hand has also run into a world of trouble with its 28nm APU plans, so the Cedar Trail mess won’t end up hurting Intel too much.

Source: fudzilla.com

HP's Project Odyssey to Wed Itanium with Xeon Processors

2011-11-27T08:23:00.000-08:00

HP to Unify Itanium/Unix and x86/Windows/Linux Architectures

HP has announced “Odyssey”, a project that promises to redefine the future of mission-critical computing with a development roadmap that will unify Unix and x86 server architectures to bring industry-leading availability, increased performance and uncompromising client choice to a single platform.

“Clients have been asking us to expand the mission-critical experience that is delivered today with HP-UX on Integrity to an x86-based infrastructure. HP plans to transform the server landscape for mission-critical computing by using the flexibility of HP BladeSystem and bringing key HP technology innovations from Integrity and HP-UX to the x86 ecosystem. Unlike the competition, HP offers an open, integrated, single platform approach,” said Martin Fink, senior vice president and general manager of business critical systems at HP.

HP’s new development roadmap includes ongoing innovations to HP Integrity servers, HP NonStop systems and the HP-UX and OpenVMS operating systems. The roadmap also includes delivering blades with Intel Xeon processors for the HP Superdome 2 enclosure (code-named “DragonHawk”) and the scalable c-Class blade enclosures (code-named “HydraLynx”), while fortifying Windows and Linux environments with innovations from HP-UX within the next two years.

With the availability of “DragonHawk”, clients will be able to run mission-critical workloads on HP-UX on Intel Itanium-based blades while simultaneously running workloads on Microsoft Windows or Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Intel Xeon-based blades in the same Superdome 2 enclosure.

For more than 25 years, HP has powered the most demanding workloads by building a robust and proven franchise of technology and service innovations for mission-critical computing. By expanding mission-critical HP converged infrastructure and bringing select proven innovations to x86 systems, HP will enable clients running Linux or Windows to:

•Increase scalability with 32-socket “DragonHawk” symmetrical multiprocessing x86 systems that will scale to hundreds of cores and support large, complex workloads. The systems will enable clients to deploy the smallest to the largest workloads in a dynamic, highly scalable pool of IT resources.
•Increase reliability and flexibility with two-, four- and eight-socket “HydraLynx” scalable x86 server blades with mission-critical virtualization and availability, all packaged in the robust c-Class enclosures of HP BladeSystem.
•Increase availability of critical Linux applications with the HP Serviceguard solution, which automatically moves application workloads between servers in the event of a failure or an on-demand request.
•Boost flexibility and availability of x86 systems with HP nPartitions technology (nPars), which provides precise partitioning of system resources across multiple or variable workloads. HP nPars is electrically isolated to eliminate failure points, which allows clients to “scale out” within a single, robust system.
•Enhance business continuity with HP Analysis Engine for x86 embedded into the system firmware. HP Analysis Engine goes beyond error logging to ensure efficient diagnoses and automatic repair of complex system errors while restoring system stability in seconds.
•Boost reliability and resiliency of x86 systems with fault-tolerant HP Crossbar Fabric that intelligently routes data within the system for redundancy and high availability.
•Achieve higher levels of availability with HP Mission Critical Services, which identify and resolve possible sources of downtime.

“Customers trust Microsoft and HP with their enterprise computing needs. By furthering our partnership, Microsoft and HP will bring together the world’s leading server and software solutions to let customers harness the flexibility and scalability of Microsoft Windows Server and SQL Server on HP Converged Infrastructure for their broad mission-critical computing needs of tomorrow,” said Eduardo Rosini, corporate vice president, SQL server marketing at Microsoft.

Source: xbitlabs.com

Corsair Breaks Memory Clock-Speed World Record Using AMD FX Chip

2011-11-27T07:47:00.000-08:00

Corsair Sets New Memory Frequency World Record Using AMD FX and Dominator GT

Corsair Memory, a leading supplier of high-end memory modules, has managed to set a new DDR3 memory clock-speed world record. The company used its Dominator GTX6 memory modules as well as AMD FX-8150 "Zambezi" microprocessor. Unfortunately, Corsair managed to set the record in single-channel mode, which makes it rather useless for the real world.

In a bid to reach 3467.8MHz (1733.8MHz), Corsair utilized Asus Crosshair V Formula mainboard as well as AMD FX-8150 microprocessor and Dominator GTX6 1GB DDR3 memory module cooled by liquid nitrogen. The chip operated at 4045.6MHz in single-module/dual-core mode and after numerous attempts its integrated memory controller managed to run Corsair's DDR3 memory in single-channel mode at 3.468GHz clock-speed, which is less than 10MHz higher than the previous record of 3.460GHz.

While it is remarkable that some of AMD FX-8150 "Zambezi" microprocessors may not only set records in internal clock-speeds, but also renew world's DDR3 frequency records with Corsair Dominator GTX 1GB modules, it should be kept in mind that the effect of such overclocking has little or no practical value.

"Breaking overclocking world records requires skill, ingenuity, and the right equipment. I have broken several records using Dominator GT memory. It is reliable, it has amazing headroom, and it's never let me down," said Jake Crimmins, a champion overclocker and an employee of Corsair.

AMD's FX microprocessors have dual-channel memory controller and therefore enthusiasts are trying to overclock memory in dual-channel mode. Memory bandwidth provided by single-channel memory at 3.468GHz is 27.74GB/s, whereas in dual-channel mode even 2.4GHz modules can achieve 38.4GB/s even without liquid nitrogen. In addition, 1GB of memory is not enough to run modern benchmarks, so the actual advantage of extreme memory speed cannot be measured.

Despite of little practical effect of extreme memory overclocking in single-channel mode, Corsair Memory regains DDR3 memory clock-speed crown from G.Skill.

Source: xbitlabs.com

Intel’s analog shrink is for real

2011-11-27T07:44:00.000-08:00

We have previously reported that Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) was planning an aggressive shrink of their analog designs and now the first project seems to be in the pipeline.

According to the advance program from ISSCC Intel will present news about a dual core Atom processor with integrated Wi-Fi. This is, as far as we know, the first time that analog has been shrunk below 65nm as the Atom processor will actually be fabbed in 32nm.

Shrinking the analog parts has high priority at Intel as it will allow, in the future, for complete chipset integration in their processors thereby saving both design time, space and power.

As it stands right now analog designs are several generations behind digital designs, but Intel thinks that they can continue the aggressive analog shrink for several more generations. This aggressive scaling will for sure give both AMD and ARM a run for their money.

Source: semiaccurate.com

Oracle: Intel and HP Signed Pact to Keep Itanium Alive for Years

2011-11-27T07:40:00.000-08:00

Oracle Corp., which ceased to develop Intel Itanium-compatible software earlier this year, accused Hewlett-Packard and Intel Corp. of keeping Itanium processor artificially alive. According to Oracle's filing, HP and Intel forged a contractual commitment to keep Itanium going through the next two generations of microprocessors.

"HP has secretly contracted with Intel to keep churning out Itaniums so that HP can maintain the appearance that a dead microprocessor is alive. The whole thing is a remake of Weekend at Bernie's," a statement by Oracle reads, reports Reuters news-agency.

Oracle Accuses HP, Intel of Artificially Keeping Itanium Alive

Oracle Corp., which ceased to develop Intel Itanium-compatible software earlier this year, accused Hewlett-Packard and Intel Corp. of keeping Itanium processor artificially alive. According to Oracle's filing, HP and Intel forged a contractual commitment to keep Itanium going through the next two generations of microprocessors.

"HP has secretly contracted with Intel to keep churning out Itaniums so that HP can maintain the appearance that a dead microprocessor is alive. The whole thing is a remake of Weekend at Bernie's," a statement by Oracle reads, reports Reuters news-agency.

It is unclear which Itanium generations are mentioned. Officially, Intel and HP plan to introduce two more Itanium chips code-named Poulson and Kittson and there are rumours about post-Kittson chip. Even Intel and HP do not reveal any information about the plans for the IA64 architecture after 2015 and throughout 2020. Perhaps, Oracle knows something about two generations of IA64 chips from the post-Kittson era.

But while the microprocessor hardware Itanium plans may not be completely clear, HP said earlier this year that it has Itanium-based software and server hardware roadmap that spans for more than ten years. For HP, Itanium is important as it allows it to sell its own HP-UX operating system. This allows the company to continue serving it clients who use mission-critical systems that it has been serving with HP-UX and PA-RISC or FOCUS processor-based systems since the mid-eighties. A natural thing for HP to keep those customers is to redesign HP-UX for x86 and offer a clear path for transition. HP clearly has plans to release HP-UX 11i v4 and v5 OSes in the next several years. Perhaps, it will have to add x86 support into the next-gen operating systems.

"These factors led HP to craft a top-secret plan to create a false perception that Itanium still had a future. HP understands that the future prospects of IT products drive customer purchasing decisions. A buyer who knew that Intel saw no future for Itanium, and was only continuing to invest in the line pursuant to a contractual obligation, would devalue the future prospects of Itanium servers and be less inclined to buy," the filing reads, reports AllThingsD web-site.

Despite of rather optimistic promises by Intel and HP, it should be noted that industrial support for Itanium is getting low. Both Microsoft and Red Hat have already stopped developing software for Itanium. Large makers of servers, Dell and IBM, dropped Itanium back in 2005. In early 2011 Intel discontinued support for Itanium in its C/C++ and Fortran compilers.

"Nothing more than a desperate delay tactic designed to extend the paralyzing uncertainty in the marketplace created when Oracle announced in March 2011 - in clear break of contract - that it would no longer support HP's Itanium platform," said Michael Thacker, a spokesman for HP.

Source: xbitlabs.com

AMD and Intel just launched a pair of quad channel memory monsters

2011-11-27T07:35:00.000-08:00

Intel’s Sandy Bridge-E launch and the SC11 conference dominated the headlines this last week. But AMD also managed to get a few words in with the launch of its Opteron 6200 series. In spite of this Intel managed to soak up most of the spotlight as evidenced by the one sidedness of the reviews this week.

Dustin Sklavos of Anandtech took a look at one of the cheaper Ultrabooks on the market, the Toshiba Portege Z835. Priced at $879 and on sale for $799 the Z835 is a good choice if portability is your greatest concern. But when compared to its lower priced competition like Lenovo’s X120e, which we review earlier this year, the Z835 looks less appealing. The cost difference is between them is about $400, and even if you add in the $100 to $200 for an SSD upgrade, there’s still a $200 dollar price advantage in favor of the X120e. Admittedly the Z835 will no doubt win when it comes to raw performance, but the X120e can make up the difference with its superior keyboard and matte screen. When it comes down to it, Ultrabooks are just not cheap enough yet to be a truly compelling offering in the market place.

Over at the Tech Report Geoff Gasior reviewed Intel’s new Sandy Bridge-E desktop CPU. He noted that although Sandy Bridge-E is the fastest desktop CPU in the world, the launch as a whole feels a little rushed due to the X79’s lack of real improvement over the P67, and beta AHCI and RAID drivers from Intel. He also found that Sandy Bridge-E puts out a considerable amount of heat as evidenced by the chip throttling itself when he raised clocks into the 4.5Ghz range. Of the four motherboards he tested Sandy Bridge-E on, Intel’s DX79SI and ASUS’s P9X79 PRO were his top picks. Sandy Bridge-E is here, but for many it just doesn’t warrant upgrading from their 2500 or 2600K’s, maybe Ivy Bridge will change that.

Patrick Schmid and Achim Roos of Tom’s Hardware found that Intel’s Sandy Bridge-E is actually a less efficient CPU than the original. With similar clock speeds and no GPU many expected that Sandy Bridge-E would improve upon the original’s performance per watt numbers. The fact that Sandy Bridge chips are superior to their upsized, and GPU-less, Sandy Bridge-E brethren came as a bit of a surprise. It seems that the two extra cores and chunk of cache consume more power than their impact on performance merits. Although some have pointed out that the lack of efficiency might be attributable to the quad channel memory controller. Whatever the case, Sandy Bridge-E is another example that efficiency does not scale linearly with performance.

Anandtech’s Johan De Gelas took a brief look at AMD’s new Opteron 6200 series finding that Interlagos is an odd beast. In quite a few of the applications he tested the new Opterons were only marginally ahead of their predecessors. Idle power consumption is lower in applications that are core-gating aware, and slightly higher under full load when compared to the 6100 series. Still, in certain applications the 6200’s can be up to 32 percent faster than the 6100’s and the 6200’s are faster in single threaded workloads to boot. So Interlagos is better than Magny-cours, but it’s not really the game changer that AMD needs in the server market. Johan’s working on a part II, so check back for that next week.

Rounding out our lineup this week we have Guru3D Hilbert Hagedoorn’s review of the nicest X79 motherboard on the market. ASUS’s Rampage IV Extreme sports the same red and black aesthetic found on all of the Republic of Gamers branded motherboards. In addition this board offers a lot of features, many of them being hardcore overclocking specific. For example the Rampage IV has a dual bio switch, a CPU power switch, and error code reader, and even a special device called the OC key which can overlay clock speed and voltage information from the motherboard onto your monitor independent of your OS. With a bit of tweaking the Sandy Bridge-E chip was running at 5GHz and putting up Cinebench numbers that were very similar to AMD Interlagos chip from the Anandtech review. ASUS has once again produced a motherboard that is suited to hardcore overclocking like no other. Records were meant to be broken, and with this board in the hands of enthusiasts it’s only a matter of time.

Source: semiaccurate.com

AMD Changes Netbook Plans for 2012: Set to Introduce Brazos 2.0

2011-11-27T07:33:00.000-08:00

Advanced Micro Devices has decided to delay or even cancel its code-named Deccan ultra low-voltage (ULV) platform for netbooks, notebooks and nettops and introduce much less advanced Brazos 2.0 platform for inexpensive PCs in 2012. Although the new platform will boost performance slightly compared to existing Brazos 1.0, it will not be as revolutionary as the Deccan.

According to a source with knowledge of AMD's plans, the company ran into serious problems with its code-named Wichita accelerated processing unit for low-power low-cost personal computers.

AMD Postpones Major Refresh of ULV Platform Due to Issues

Advanced Micro Devices has decided to delay or even cancel its code-named Deccan ultra low-voltage (ULV) platform for netbooks, notebooks and nettops and introduce much less advanced Brazos 2.0 platform for inexpensive PCs in 2012. Although the new platform will boost performance slightly compared to existing Brazos 1.0, it will not be as revolutionary as the Deccan.

According to a source with knowledge of AMD's plans, the company ran into serious problems with its code-named Wichita accelerated processing unit for low-power low-cost personal computers. While it is not completely clear whether the production problems were conditioned by design issues (Wichita system-on-chip was supposed to have up to four x86 cores and integrated input/output controller) or by Globalfoundries' 28nm fabrication technology issues. Nonetheless, at present the Deccan is absent from AMD's 2012 roadmap and the Brazos 2.0 is supposed to substitute it.

The Brazos 2.0 platform is based on accelerated processing unit with up to two Bobcat-class x86 cores, next-generation Radeon HD 7000 graphics adapters and single-channel DDR3 memory controller. The new A68 Fusion controller hub (FCH) input/output controller (Hudson D3L) will bring support for USB 3.0 as well as Serial ATA-600 to AMD's ULV platform.

The Brazos 2.0 APU is supposed to be pin-to-pin compatible with FT1 infrastructure, but since A68 FCH utilizes 656-pin BGA package (instead of 605-pin that A45 uses), manufacturers will have to slightly redesign their existing products for Brazos 2.0. On the one hand, AMD will relatively easily upgrade available entry-level Fusion-based machines, but on the other hand Deccan platform would enable thinner and sleeker designs and would improve competitive positions of AMD.

At present AMD readies several flavours of Brazos 2.0 offerings for netbooks, notebooks and nettops. For example, models E1-1200 (two cores at 1.40GHz, 1MB cache, Radeon HD 7310 graphics engine with 80 cores at 500MHz, 18W, etc.) and E2-1800 (two cores at 1.70GHz, 1MB cache, Radeon HD 7340 graphics engine with 80 cores at 680/523MHz, 18W, etc.) will target nettops and low-power notebooks.

The source expects AMD Brazos 2.0 to hit production stage by mid-February, 2012. Since the APU will be made using "good-old" TSMC's 40nm process technology, the ramp up should be fairly quick and the new chips will be launched in late Q1 or early Q2, 2012.

The Deccan/Wichita and Deccan/Krishna platforms are not the first major new introductions that AMD decided to scrap for 2012. Previously, the company cancelled its Corona platform with next-gen Comodo processors and decided to introduce much less progressive Volan platform with Vishera CPUs.

Source: xbitlabs.com

Intel Celebrates Forty Years of Microprocessor

2011-11-19T21:30:00.000-08:00

This week, forty years ago, Intel Corp. introduced the world’s first commercially available microprocessor – the Intel 4004 – triggering the start of the digital revolution. Nowadays, the absolute majority of consumer, enterprise, professional and other electronics contain one or more microprocessors. The central processing unit is indisputably one of the key inventions of the whole 20th century. The main question now: what will CPUs bring in the next forty years?

“The sheer number of advances in the next 40 years will equal or surpass all of the innovative activity that has taken place over the last 10 000 years of human history,” said Justin Rattner, Intel chief technology officer.

Intel 4004 Turns 40

This week, forty years ago, Intel Corp. introduced the world’s first commercially available microprocessor – the Intel 4004 – triggering the start of the digital revolution. Nowadays, the absolute majority of consumer, enterprise, professional and other electronics contain one or more microprocessors. The central processing unit is indisputably one of the key inventions of the whole 20th century. The main question now: what will CPUs bring in the next forty years?

“The sheer number of advances in the next 40 years will equal or surpass all of the innovative activity that has taken place over the last 10 000 years of human history,” said Justin Rattner, Intel chief technology officer.

The proliferation of microprocessors is due in large part to Intel’s and other companies' relentless pursuit of Moore’s Law, a forecast for the pace of silicon technology development that states that roughly every 2 years transistor density of semiconductors will double, while increasing functionality and performance and decreasing costs. It has become the basic business model for the semiconductor industry for more than 40 years.

For example, compared to the Intel 4004, today’s Core i-series "Sandy Bridge" processors are more than 350 000 times the performance and each transistor uses about 5000 times less energy. In this same time period, the price of a transistor has dropped by a factor of about 50 000.

The Intel 4004 microprocessor ran at 740KHz (0.74MHz), while the current Intel Core i-series processors achieve almost 4 GHz (4000MHz). If the speed of cars had increased at the same pace since 1971, it would take about one second to drive from San Francisco to New York (or from Lisboa in Portugal to Moscow in Russia) assuming the car speed in 1971 was 60 miles/hour and the distance between San Francisco and New York is 3 000 miles.

Such dramatic increases in performance and decreases in costs and power consumption have unlocked unprecedented amount of businesses, industries and opportunities.

Future microprocessors developed on Intel’s next-generation 22nm manufacturing process are due in systems starting next year and will deliver even more energy-efficient performance as a result of the company’s breakthrough 3D tri-gate transistors that make use of a new transistor structure. These novel transistors usher in the next era of Moore’s Law and make possible a new generation of innovations across a broad spectrum of devices.

While looking back to see how much things have changed since the microprocessor’s introduction, it’s astounding to think about the future and how this digital revolution will continue at a rapid pace as microprocessor technology continues to evolve.

Such advances in chip technology are paving the way for an age when computing systems will be aware of what is happening around them, and anticipate people’s needs. This capability is poised to fundamentally change the nature of how people interact with and relate to information devices and the services they provide. Future context-aware devices ranging from PCs and smartphones to automobiles and televisions, will be able to advise people and guide them through their day in a manner more like a personal assistant than a traditional computer, at least, in Intel's view.

Source: xbitlabs.com

Intel Shows 22nm 50-Core "Knights Corner" CPU

2011-11-19T21:27:00.000-08:00

GPGPU and cloud computing have been hot topics for the last several years. Intel has shown off several designs like Larrabee and the Single-chip Cloud Computer in the past. However, it is Knights Corner that will be the firm's first commercial product to use the Many Integrated Core (MIC) architecture. The co-processor will be offered as a PCIe add-in board.

The MIC concept is simple: Use architecture specifically designed to process highly parallel workloads, but ensure compatibility with existing x86 programming models and tools.

Over 1 TeraFLOPS on a single chip

GPGPU and cloud computing have been hot topics for the last several years. Intel has shown off several designs like Larrabee and the Single-chip Cloud Computer in the past. However, it is Knights Corner that will be the firm's first commercial product to use the Many Integrated Core (MIC) architecture. The co-processor will be offered as a PCIe add-in board.

The MIC concept is simple: Use architecture specifically designed to process highly parallel workloads, but ensure compatibility with existing x86 programming models and tools.

This would give MIC co-processors the ability to run existing applications without the need to port the code to a new programming environment, theoretically allowing maximum CPU and co-processor performance simultaneously with existing x86 based applications. This would dramatically save time, cost and resources that would otherwise be needed to rewrite them to alternative proprietary languages.

AMD and NVIDIA have been trying to do with their latest architectures by enabling support for languages like C++, but Intel wants to challenge them in this potentially lucrative market.

Knights Corner will be manufactured using Intel’s latest 3-D Tri-Gate P1270 22nm transistor process and will feature more than 50 cores. Intel demonstrated first silicon of Knights Corner at the SC11 conference yesterday. The co-processor wowed the crowd by delivering more than 1 TeraFLOPS of double precision floating point performance.

The firm also touted its "commitment to delivering the most efficient and programming-friendly platform for highly parallel applications", and showed off the benefits of the MIC architecture in weather modeling, tomography, protein folding, and advanced materials simulation at its booth.

There is no timeframe on when Knights Corner will enter production or be available to customers.

Source: dailytech.com

Exclusive: AMD kills Wichita and Krishna

2011-11-19T21:11:00.000-08:00

SemiAccurate has been hearing that the rumors that AMD’s (NYSE:AMD) Witchita and Krishna are on the chopping block for a few weeks. Over the last few days, that has been confirmed by several different sources.

Yes, you read that right, the follow on to Brazos/Ontario/Zacate has been knifed, there will be no 28nm Wichita and Krishna. Why? No one is saying definitively, but we would guess that it is due to timing of GloFo’s 28nm SHP process. As you can see from the picture below, taken from a GTC 2011 slide, the process is set for production in mid-2012.

Not enough life left to launch

SemiAccurate has been hearing that the rumors that AMD’s (NYSE:AMD) Witchita and Krishna are on the chopping block for a few weeks. Over the last few days, that has been confirmed by several different sources.

Yes, you read that right, the follow on to Brazos/Ontario/Zacate has been knifed, there will be no 28nm Wichita and Krishna. Why? No one is saying definitively, but we would guess that it is due to timing of GloFo’s 28nm SHP process. As you can see from the picture below, taken from a GTC 2011 slide, the process is set for production in mid-2012. That means there won’t be significant volumes until Q3/2012 for a chip that is due to be replaced at the end of 2012.

This means that Wichita and Krishna would have a shelf life of ~6 months, likely less. No OEM is going to pick that part up and design machines around it for such a short time, it isn’t financially viable. Brazos is already set for a mild tweaking to get a little more speed and little less power use, so that will have to hold the fort for an additional six months.

If things go well, the additional resources needed to bring Wichita/Krishna to market will be diverted to the successor, and that will in turn be pulled in. This may lead to the post Wichita/Krishna part in Q4, maybe a bit before, and all will be happy. If not, things go pear shaped, people leave, and OEMs send impolite emails to their sales contacts. We won’t know which way it goes for a bit longer, but either way, the successor to Brazos is now quite dead.S|A

Source: semiaccurate.com

Intel Core i7-2700K Synthetic Benchmarks

2011-11-05T13:11:00.000-07:00

A collections of synthetic tests using Intel Core i7-2700K Synthetic Benchmarks listed alphabetically.

"The Intel Core i7-2700K processor is a nice little speed bump for the Sandy Bridge processor line and keeps the Intel desktop offerings fresh!" -legitreviews.com

AMD gains processor share, sort of

2011-11-05T12:48:00.000-07:00

According to Mercury Research, AMD managed to claw back some market share from Intel in Q3.

The news comes just days after AMD posted surprisingly good earnings, but it appears Llano yield issues did have an effect on overall results after all.

AMD’s share in Q3 was 18.8 percent, up from 18.3 year-on-year. Meanwhile Intel’s share dipped from 80.6 to 80.3 percent. However, AMD lost share to Intel sequentially, since it held 19.4 percent in Q2.

Yield issues impact growth, undermine Q3 sales

According to Mercury Research, AMD managed to claw back some market share from Intel in Q3.

The news comes just days after AMD posted surprisingly good earnings, but it appears Llano yield issues did have an effect on overall results after all.

AMD’s share in Q3 was 18.8 percent, up from 18.3 year-on-year. Meanwhile Intel’s share dipped from 80.6 to 80.3 percent. However, AMD lost share to Intel sequentially, since it held 19.4 percent in Q2.

Although the figures are hardly groundbreaking, they seem to prove that AMD’s sales figures were undermined by supply issues. Poor 32nm yields had a negative effect on desktop Llano shipments and Globalfoundries is apparently having trouble resolving the issue.

On a more positive note, AMD introduced its first Bulldozer-based FX-series processors a few weeks ago and they might boost sales in Q4, but they are barely able to compete with similarly priced Sandy Bridge chips.

Source: fudzilla.com

Intel Outs DX79SI Extreme Series Motherboard Details

2011-11-05T12:42:00.000-07:00

According to the product brief, the board will be supporting both AMD Crossfire and Nvidia SLI configurations via three PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, include eight DIMM slots, two Firewire and 14 USB 2.0 ports, as well as two SATA 6.0 Gb/s and four SATA 3.0 Gb/s connectors. There is no native USB 3.0 support, however, as Intel takes that route via a separate NEC controller to support this feature in two available ports. Also, there are two PCI Express 2.0 x1 slots and still one remaining PCI interface.

Intel will be marketing this board toward "champion gamers" and enthusiasts "who live to push their systems way beyond the limits." The DX79SI will come Intel's Extreme Tuning Utility, an Express Installer as well as ESET Smart Security 5 Antivirus.

Intel has published details about its DX79SI Extreme Series Sandy Bridge-E motherboard on its website a bit earlier than anyone expected.

According to the product brief, the board will be supporting both AMD Crossfire and Nvidia SLI configurations via three PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, include eight DIMM slots, two Firewire and 14 USB 2.0 ports, as well as two SATA 6.0 Gb/s and four SATA 3.0 Gb/s connectors. There is no native USB 3.0 support, however, as Intel takes that route via a separate NEC controller to support this feature in two available ports. Also, there are two PCI Express 2.0 x1 slots and still one remaining PCI interface.

Intel will be marketing this board toward "champion gamers" and enthusiasts "who live to push their systems way beyond the limits." The DX79SI will come Intel's Extreme Tuning Utility, an Express Installer as well as ESET Smart Security 5 Antivirus.

Source: tomshardware.com

AMD and Penguin Build World's First HPC Cluster Based on Fusion APUs

2011-11-05T12:34:00.000-07:00

Penguin Computing, experts in high performance computing (HPC) solutions, on Wednesday announced that the company has successfully installed the world’s first HPC cluster powered by AMD accelerated processing units (APUs) at Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The Altus A2A00 system comprises 104 servers powered by A-series Fusion Llano APUs (one chip per server) with four x86 cores and 320/400 stream processors that are interconnected through a QDR Infiniband fabric. It delivers a theoretical peak performance of 59.6TFLOPs. The Altus 2A00 was specifically designed by Penguin Computing, in partnership with AMD, to support the AMD Fusion APU architecture.

Penguin Computing Installs First HPC Cluster Running Hybrid CPU-GPU Chips

Penguin Computing, experts in high performance computing (HPC) solutions, on Wednesday announced that the company has successfully installed the world’s first HPC cluster powered by AMD accelerated processing units (APUs) at Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The Altus A2A00 system comprises 104 servers powered by A-series Fusion Llano APUs (one chip per server) with four x86 cores and 320/400 stream processors that are interconnected through a QDR Infiniband fabric. It delivers a theoretical peak performance of 59.6TFLOPs. The Altus 2A00 was specifically designed by Penguin Computing, in partnership with AMD, to support the AMD Fusion APU architecture. It is the world's first Fusion APU system in a rack mountable chassis in a 2U form factor.

"With the Altus 2A00, Penguin is the first to bring AMD’s unique APU capabilities to the HPC community. We are extremely proud of our successful deployment of this platform on such a large scale. We believe that the high level of integration and the resulting benefits for HPC users will further accelerate the adoption of the GPU processing model in HPC. The APU architecture has the potential to become a key component of future exascale systems," said Phil Pokorny, chief technology officer of Penguin Computing.

Numerous high-performance computing (HPC) customers have deployed systems with compute accelerator cards, such as Nvidia Tesla or AMD FireStream solutions that are based on graphics processing units (GPUs). Those systems are powered by both x86 microprocessors as well as compute card and are used to achieve record HPC performance in highly-parallelized tasks. The complexity of GPU-accelerated clusters is very high, just like its power consumption and usage of chips with both x86 cores and multitude of stream processors greatly reduces both. The purpose of the particular machine is not to set records in terms of performance, but to allow AMD Penguin to understand challenges for hybrid processors in HPC in order to create efficient hardware and software in the future.

The APU includes 400 parallel processing cores that can be leveraged for HPC applications through the OpenCL programming framework. Unlike conventional GPU server architectures, APU parallel multiprocessors share the same physical memory space with CPU cores. As a result, the programming model for APUs is simpler, bottlenecks for data movement between GPU and main memory are avoided and data duplication is eliminated. These capabilities offer particularly compelling benefits when deployed in conjunction with low-latency RDMA interconnects such as Infiniband, as they allow for building efficient distributed GPU applications.

"We are interested in research on next generation computer architectures and look forward to collaborating with Penguin and AMD to advance power-efficient computing strategies. This first of a kind cluster of Altus 2A00 servers will support our exploration of advanced programming models like OpenCL, which seamlessly map MPI applications to the CPU and GPU cores, and research into system software support for advanced data movement capabilities,” said James Ang, manager of the scalable computer architectures department at Sandia National Labs.

Source: xbitlabs.com

AMD no longer holds overclocking record

2011-11-05T12:14:00.000-07:00

AMD was jolly pleased last month when its engineers staged an event to squeeze 8429.38MHz out of its FX-8150 processor. This made it the highest-clocked CPU in the world and required a cast of thousands to manage.

However this week they have been beaten by a bloke working by himself. Andre Yang managed to break the record by 32MHz. What is perhaps more important is that he did it without the AMD team or a parent or guardian backing him. According to TechPowerUp he used 2GB of RAM, an ASUS Crosshair V Formula motherboard, some double sided sticking tape an no adult assistance.

Beaten by one bloke and his dog

AMD was jolly pleased last month when its engineers staged an event to squeeze 8429.38MHz out of its FX-8150 processor. This made it the highest-clocked CPU in the world and required a cast of thousands to manage.

However this week they have been beaten by a bloke working by himself. Andre Yang managed to break the record by 32MHz. What is perhaps more important is that he did it without the AMD team or a parent or guardian backing him. According to TechPowerUp he used 2GB of RAM, an ASUS Crosshair V Formula motherboard, some double sided sticking tape an no adult assistance.

He managed to stick 2V of electricity into the chip and disabled most of its cores to prevent it from giving him an all over tan. Still it is not bad news for AMD. He still used its FX-8150 chip and it is still the highest-clocked CPU of all time.

Source: fudzilla.com

Intel chips will tell people all about your computer

2011-11-05T11:32:00.000-07:00

Chipzilla has a good idea which it says will stop online theft by putting authentication technology into its chips that will allow websites to verify that it's your PC logging into your online account, and not an imposter or thief. Intel Identity Protection Technology is being added to the chipsets of some Core and Core vPro processor-based PCs from HP, Lenovo, Sony and others.

Jennifer Gilburg, marketing director for the authentication technology unit told Cnet that it means that users have a two-factor authentication, which adds an extra layer of security so that even if your password gets stolen, whoever knows your secret code can't get into your account without offering more identification or proof of account ownership.

What could possibly go wrong?

Chipzilla has a good idea which it says will stop online theft by putting authentication technology into its chips that will allow websites to verify that it's your PC logging into your online account, and not an imposter or thief. Intel Identity Protection Technology is being added to the chipsets of some Core and Core vPro processor-based PCs from HP, Lenovo, Sony and others.

Jennifer Gilburg, marketing director for the authentication technology unit told Cnet that it means that users have a two-factor authentication, which adds an extra layer of security so that even if your password gets stolen, whoever knows your secret code can't get into your account without offering more identification or proof of account ownership. When a user visits a website they are be asked if you want to use the Identity Protection Technology. If you opt in, you log in, with username and password, a unique number that is assigned to that PC, so the site will know that it is associated with your account.

When you visit that site and type in your username and password, an algorithm running on the chipset generates a six-digit code that changes every 30 seconds from the embedded processor that is then validated by the site. Already eBay and PayPal have signed up to the scheme and Intel is supposed to be chatting to Amazon, Google.

While it all sounds good, the fact that the technology is there will make it a target for those hackers hired by the music and film industry to identify filesharers. Courts are starting to get a bit antsy about IP addresses being used as the only method of identification. If a Big Content hacker would work out a way of identifying an actual machine, or even using court orders to provide machine identification this could be a really nasty way to get yourself facing one of the music and film industry's over priced piracy law suits. Then there is the advertising companies who would love that identification information to track users preferences.

Source: fudzilla.com

Intel readies dozen Cedar Trail motherboards

2011-11-05T11:30:00.000-07:00

Intel is gearing up to introduce its first Cedar Trail motherboards and European retailers are already listing 11 motherboards based on the new chips.

The boards are based on new Cedarview chips, Intel’s first 32nm Atoms. The new manufacturing process results in a pretty modest 10W TDP and a compact 22mm x 22mm package. Intel also chose to go for a third-party graphics solution, courtesy of PowerVR. The SGX 545 core is said to deliver a two-fold performance boost over earlier Atoms, but some driver issues with DirectX support still persist. In addition, new Atom parts feature a new video engine and new display controller with HDMI 1.3a support.

PowerVR SGX545 graphics, 2.13GHz

Intel is gearing up to introduce its first Cedar Trail motherboards and European retailers are already listing 11 motherboards based on the new chips.

The boards are based on new Cedarview chips, Intel’s first 32nm Atoms. The new manufacturing process results in a pretty modest 10W TDP and a compact 22mm x 22mm package. Intel also chose to go for a third-party graphics solution, courtesy of PowerVR. The SGX 545 core is said to deliver a two-fold performance boost over earlier Atoms, but some driver issues with DirectX support still persist. In addition, new Atom parts feature a new video engine and new display controller with HDMI 1.3a support.

As far as the motherboards are concerned, Intel is offering a wide variety of choices, with 11 distinct SKUs, but we still don’t have the exact spec for each of them. Prices start at €56 for the cheapest D2500HN variant with a 1.86GHz processor, while the priciest D2700DC Canoe Creek board will set you back €75, but it’s based on a 2.13GHz Atom 2700.

Five of the new boards are based on faster 2.13GHz parts, while six feature 1.86GHz processors. Retailers hope they will start shipping them within a couple of weeks.

Source: fudzilla.com

AMD posts strong results, beats expectations

2011-10-29T19:19:00.001-07:00

Chipmaker AMD has announced its Q3 earnings and the outfit was happy to report that it managed to stay in the black despite some rather bleak forecasts.

AMD managed to beat analysts’ expectations and raked up $1.69 billion in revenue with 4.5 percent of growth, topping the $1.65 billion estimate. AMD’s new CEO Rory Read attributed the good showing to the success of AMD mobile APUs, which gained market share in developing markets.

“We are already seeing steady improvements. But we are not out of the woods yet,” he said.

Mobile Llanos save the day

Chipmaker AMD has announced its Q3 earnings and the outfit was happy to report that it managed to stay in the black despite some rather bleak forecasts.

AMD managed to beat analysts’ expectations and raked up $1.69 billion in revenue with 4.5 percent of growth, topping the $1.65 billion estimate. AMD’s new CEO Rory Read attributed the good showing to the success of AMD mobile APUs, which gained market share in developing markets.

“We are already seeing steady improvements. But we are not out of the woods yet,” he said.

AMD’s Q3 net income was $97 million, a major improvement year-on-year, since the outfit lost $118 in Q3 2010. Per share, AMD’s profit was 13 cents, well over the 9 cent estimates compiled by Bloomberg. AMD hopes to deliver sales between $1.71 and $1.77 billion in Q4, with sequential growth of between 1 and 5 percent.

The positive results seem to have surprised the market and AMD shares gained by about 5 percent following the report. One has to wonder whether the results would have been even better had Llano not been plagued by yield issues since its introduction.

Source: fudzilla.com

AMD's Q3 Profit Constrained by Manufacturing Problems

2011-10-29T19:18:00.000-07:00

Advance Micro Devices saw gains in revenue and profits in the third quarter of 2011, but those were tempered by "significant manufacturing challenges" at GlobalFoundries. The company's results were generally positive: revenue rose to $1.69 billion, a 7 percent sequential increase and a 4 percent increase year-over-year. Net income was $97 million, with earnings per share of $0.13.

The company was particularly strong in the mobile and server spaces. Its mobile Fusion APUs saw a 60% increase in shipments, while the first deliveries of its Interlagos CPUs led to a 27% gain in server revenue sequentially. The mobile segment was strong thanks to increased sales in emerging markets like India and China, which saw a 23% growth in quarterly CPU revenues.

Strong mobile and server results power profits

Advance Micro Devices saw gains in revenue and profits in the third quarter of 2011, but those were tempered by "significant manufacturing challenges" at GlobalFoundries. The company's results were generally positive: revenue rose to $1.69 billion, a 7 percent sequential increase and a 4 percent increase year-over-year. Net income was $97 million, with earnings per share of $0.13.

The company was particularly strong in the mobile and server spaces. Its mobile Fusion APUs saw a 60% increase in shipments, while the first deliveries of its Interlagos CPUs led to a 27% gain in server revenue sequentially. The mobile segment was strong thanks to increased sales in emerging markets like India and China, which saw a 23% growth in quarterly CPU revenues.

"Strong adoption of AMD APUs drove a 35 percent sequential revenue increase in our mobile business," elaborated Rory Read, AMD's new President and CEO.

That success is part of the problem. Yield, ramp, and other 32 nm manufacturing issues at GlobalFoundries' Fab 1 in Dresden limited supply of "Llano" Fusion APUs, Bulldozer-based FX CPUs, and Interlagos server CPUs.

The company has been divesting its ownership of GloFo, its former manufacturing arm. It now holds 9.6% of its primary manufacturing partner, with the majority controlled by the Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC), wholly owned by the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.

Supply of 45nm product was also less than expected, due to unforeseen complexities related to the use of common tools across both technology nodes. Read admitted that he was "disappointed with yields" so far, but said that both companies were working closely together to overcome those problems.

"Despite supply constraints, we saw double-digit revenue and unit shipment growth in emerging markets like China and India as well as overall notebook share gains in retail at mainstream price points. Through disciplined execution and continued innovation we will look to accelerate our growth and refine our focus on lower power, emerging markets, and the cloud," he stated.

AMD spent $361 million on research and development during Q3, and also saw strong graphics revenue of $403 million thanks to robust back-to-school upgrades. It should see a boost this quarter, thanks to the launch of its next-generation of GPUs using 28nm technology.

Source: dailytech.com

Maingear, Origin overclock i7 2700K to over 5GHz

2011-10-29T19:10:00.000-07:00

Maingear and Origin PC announced the availability of their high-end gaming desktops this week. As you can expect, these rigs are anything but ordinary as their CPUs boast clock speeds of over 5GHz.

Both rigs run on Intel’s Core i7 2700K CPU, which clocks in at 3.5GHz or 3.9GHz with Turbo Boost. However, the companies did some overclocking and their CPUs now run at beyond 5GHz.

Maingear strapped its SHIFT and F131 rigs with the Core i7 2700K, where the two start at $1,985 and $1,228 respectively. The company says the CPUs can be overclocked to over 5GHz.

High end desktop extravaganza

Maingear and Origin PC announced the availability of their high-end gaming desktops this week. As you can expect, these rigs are anything but ordinary as their CPUs boast clock speeds of over 5GHz.

Both rigs run on Intel’s Core i7 2700K CPU, which clocks in at 3.5GHz or 3.9GHz with Turbo Boost. However, the companies did some overclocking and their CPUs now run at beyond 5GHz.

Maingear strapped its SHIFT and F131 rigs with the Core i7 2700K, where the two start at $1,985 and $1,228 respectively. The company says the CPUs can be overclocked to over 5GHz.

Origin made the i7 2700K available across their entire offer, where the CPU itself comes overclocked to 5.2GHz. Both products are backed by warranties.

Source: fudzilla.com

AMD Brazos 2.0 platform detailed

2011-10-29T19:06:00.000-07:00

According to a report over at Computerbase.de, AMD plans to refresh it Brazos lineup with Brazos 2.0 parts in Q1 2012. The second Brazos generation will also bring new names to both CPU and GPU parts.

Brazos 2.0 will feature updated Zacate APUs as well as higher clocked GPUs. The E-450 will get a replacement in the name of E2-1800. The CPU part practically remains the same deal except for slight boost in clock set at 1.7GHz. The GPU will be rebranded to HD 7430 and will end up clocked at 523MHz (680MHz with Turbo). The E2-1800 CPU part could also get a Turbo mode that should differentiate it from the E-450 part.

To arrive in Q1 2012

According to a report over at Computerbase.de, AMD plans to refresh it Brazos lineup with Brazos 2.0 parts in Q1 2012. The second Brazos generation will also bring new names to both CPU and GPU parts.

Brazos 2.0 will feature updated Zacate APUs as well as higher clocked GPUs. The E-450 will get a replacement in the name of E2-1800. The CPU part practically remains the same deal except for slight boost in clock set at 1.7GHz. The GPU will be rebranded to HD 7430 and will end up clocked at 523MHz (680MHz with Turbo). The E2-1800 CPU part could also get a Turbo mode that should differentiate it from the E-450 part.

The E-300 part will be replaced by the E1-1200 clocked at 1.4GHz while the GPU part will be rebranded to HD 7310. Brazos 2.0 also brings a new mobile chipset, the A68M. The A68M looks like a cut back version of the A50M as it features only two SATA 6Gbps and eight USB 2.0 ports and two USB 3.0 ports. It also comes with native DisplayPort support as well as RAID 0 and RAID 1 support. Of course, all of these cutbacks are meant to cut power consumption making the Brazos 2.0 platform ideal for those ultra-thin and netbook platforms.

The new addition is also the Brazos-T platform designed for tablets. This one is also scheduled for Q1 2012 and will use the A55T chipset combined with the Hondo APU. This combination should bring significantly lower power consumption when compared to the current Z-01 tablet APU platform.

The new Q1 2012 scheduled Brazos 2.0 platform will live until we see the 28nm Wichita and Krishna APUs scheduled for "later in 2012".

Source: fudzilla.com

AMD Expects Trinity to Offer 20% - 30% Performance Increase

2011-10-29T19:05:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year Advanced Micro Devices said that its forthcoming code-named Trinity accelerated processing unit would boost performance-per-watt by 50% compared to Llano. In the real-world applications, the company's new documents show that its next-gen APU will only be 20% faster in general-purpose tasks and 30% faster in graphics processing applications compared to existing chip.

According to a slide that resembles those from AMD's presentations published by DonanimHaber web-site, AMD projects Trinity's Piledriver x86 cores to offer up to 20% higher performance compared to Husky x86 cores inside Llano. In addition, the newly-architected DirectX 11 graphics core will provide up to 30% higher speed in graphics applications, such as video games.

AMD's Projections Show Tangible Performance Increases of Trinity

Earlier this year Advanced Micro Devices said that its forthcoming code-named Trinity accelerated processing unit would boost performance-per-watt by 50% compared to Llano. In the real-world applications, the company's new documents show that its next-gen APU will only be 20% faster in general-purpose tasks and 30% faster in graphics processing applications compared to existing chip.

According to a slide that resembles those from AMD's presentations published by DonanimHaber web-site, AMD projects Trinity's Piledriver x86 cores to offer up to 20% higher performance compared to Husky x86 cores inside Llano. In addition, the newly-architected DirectX 11 graphics core will provide up to 30% higher speed in graphics applications, such as video games. The 10% improvement represents AMD's projections "using digital media workload" and actual performance advantage over currently available Fusion A-series "Llano" vary depending on the applications and usage models. It is unclear whether AMD used an early silicon (which it has at hands) for its projections or makes its predictions based on theoretical data.

It is also unknown whether the projected performance increase will be conditioned by AMD Turbo Core 3.0 dynamic acceleration technology, new instructions support, higher clock-speeds or actual improvements of execution efficiency.

Since Trinity will be based on Bulldozer/Piledriver micro-architecture, AMD will have to clock the x86 cores at very high clock-speeds compared to existing offering to boost performance substantially since its latest micro-architecture in some cases is less efficient than the predecessor in terms of performance per core and per clock.

AMD’s second-generation code-named Trinity APU for mainstream personal computers (Comal for notebooks and Virgo for desktops) will be made using 32nm SOI HKMG process technology at Globalfoundries. The APU will feature up to four x86 cores powered by enhanced Bulldozer/Piledriver architecture, AMD Radeon HD 7000-series "Southern Islands" graphics core with DirectX 11-class graphics support, DDR3 memory controller and other improvements. The chips will be compatible with new FM2 infrastructure.

AMD claims that Trinity will offer up to 50% improvement in GFLOPS performance with the same power consumption as currently available A-series "Llano" APUs or similar GFLOPS horsepower with 50% reduction of power consumption.

Source: xbitlabs.com

Intel Says CPU Prices Irrelevant in Ultrabooks

2011-10-29T18:58:00.000-07:00

An Intel executive recently called for an industry-wide effort to bring the prices of the devices down and indicated that it will not be up to the chipmaker to hit price points that resonate with consumers.

"More work needs to happen in the ecosystem. Even if we're giving the chips away for free, we couldn't hit the price point we want to hit if we don't work with the rest of the industry," vice president of sales and marketing and general manager for the Asia-Pacific region Navin Shenoy told Reuters in an interview.

Intel sees pricing of ultrabooks as a major barrier for the adoption of this evolutionary notebook form factor.

An Intel executive recently called for an industry-wide effort to bring the prices of the devices down and indicated that it will not be up to the chipmaker to hit price points that resonate with consumers.

"More work needs to happen in the ecosystem. Even if we're giving the chips away for free, we couldn't hit the price point we want to hit if we don't work with the rest of the industry," vice president of sales and marketing and general manager for the Asia-Pacific region Navin Shenoy told Reuters in an interview.

That is a bold statement that may not sit too well with some of Intel's best customers, who are scrambling to get ultrabooks out for retail prices of less than $1000, which means that the actual cost to build those devices is somewhere in the $600 to $700 range.

According to Shenoy, about 40 percent of the consumer PC market may be occupied by ultrabooks by the end of next year, but this price-aggressive approach indicates that all Intel may be shooting for is a replacement of an existing market and not the opening of a new market - or a future market that builds on currently evolving trends, such as touch input models. As thin as ultrabooks are, they still follow the same general idea the original notebook, the 1984 Compaq LTE had: a keyboard and an attached screen. Touch never made sense on mainstream notebooks before and I would express some doubt that touch will suddenly make sense if notebooks are simply as thin as a Macbook Air, which the ultrabook trend aims to replicate.

Source: tomshardware.com

Atom D2500 has significantly faster graphics

2011-10-29T18:55:00.000-07:00

Samples of Atom D2500 and D2700 are out and the whole platform should be available pretty soon. After all it has been included at Intel's latest price list, but you still cannot see any official announcements or any systems based on it.

Our sources have played with both D2500 and D2700 and the main conclusion is that the CPU is not significantly faster than its predecessor, but the graphics part is. You should expect a huge performance leap, but we were warned that driver that Intel ships today is still quite dodgy.

But driver underwhelms

Samples of Atom D2500 and D2700 are out and the whole platform should be available pretty soon. After all it has been included at Intel's latest price list, but you still cannot see any official announcements or any systems based on it.

Our sources have played with both D2500 and D2700 and the main conclusion is that the CPU is not significantly faster than its predecessor, but the graphics part is. You should expect a huge performance leap, but we were warned that driver that Intel ships today is still quite dodgy.

Let me remind you that Intel has decreased DirectX support to DirectX 9 due driver issues with a hope that DirectX 10 driver comes a bit later.

Netbooks based on new Cedar Trail-M platform are expected later in Q4 2011 but they are also confirmed for this year. Both desktop and netbook Atoms have significantly better graphics and are based on 32nm manufacturing process.

They will probably do just fine, but we are not sure netbooks and nettops can stop the ARM offensive anymore, except in some niches.

Source: fudzilla.com

Trinity to run on A75 chipset

2011-10-29T18:52:00.000-07:00

AMD has shed some light on its upcoming Virgo platform and Trinity APU, which is based on the new Piledriver core.

Trinity is said to be compatible with the A75 chipset, but it will use the new FM2 socket. However, it is still unclear whether the new socket is pin compatible with FM1 and whether Trinity APUs will be able to run on current A75 boards. There is also a good chance the new APU will be compatible with the A55 chipset, which is basically a crippled A75.

Some 20 percent faster than Llano

AMD has shed some light on its upcoming Virgo platform and Trinity APU, which is based on the new Piledriver core.

Trinity is said to be compatible with the A75 chipset, but it will use the new FM2 socket. However, it is still unclear whether the new socket is pin compatible with FM1 and whether Trinity APUs will be able to run on current A75 boards. There is also a good chance the new APU will be compatible with the A55 chipset, which is basically a crippled A75.

In terms of performance, the figures seem a bit underwhelming. Although Trinity is based on the all-new Bulldozer derived Piledriver core, AMD claims it will be about 20 percent faster than Llano, which is basically based on the venerable K10.5 Stars core. This comes as a bit of a disappointment, since AMD made some rather more optimistic performance projections in the past. (You wanted to buy one, right? sub.ed.)

On the bright side, graphics performance should be about 30 percent better than on the Llano. The new DirectX 11 GPU is said to feature Eyefinity, up to three displays, DisplayPort 1.2 and UVD 3 video decoding.

Source: fudzilla.com

Intel reports record revenue and profit

2011-10-19T16:36:00.000-07:00

Intel has some good news for its shareholders, as usual. It just announced another record, with skyrocketing revenue and profit.

Talking about numbers, Intel's revenue for Q3 2011 is 14.3 billion, up 3.2 billion or 29 percent year-over-year, while the profit was $5.1 billion, up 895 million or 22 percent year-over-year.

Gross margin is 64.4 percent, down 1.7 percentage point year-over-year while the net income hit a record $3.7 billion, up $705 million or 24 percent year-over-year. Earnings per share were 69 cents per share, up 17 cent or 33 percent year-over-year. These are all non-GAAP figures.

Revenue $14.3 billion, profit $5.1 billion

Intel has some good news for its shareholders, as usual. It just announced another record, with skyrocketing revenue and profit.

Talking about numbers, Intel's revenue for Q3 2011 is 14.3 billion, up 3.2 billion or 29 percent year-over-year, while the profit was $5.1 billion, up 895 million or 22 percent year-over-year.

Gross margin is 64.4 percent, down 1.7 percentage point year-over-year while the net income hit a record $3.7 billion, up $705 million or 24 percent year-over-year. Earnings per share were 69 cents per share, up 17 cent or 33 percent year-over-year. These are all non-GAAP figures.

GAAP results are slightly lower, revenue $14.2 billion, up $3.1 billion or 28 percent year-over-year. Gross margin is 63.4 percent, down 2.6 percent year-over-year, operating income is $4.8 billion, up $649 million, 16 percent year-over-year. Net income is a record $3.5 billion, up $513 or 17 percent since last year, while EPS a record 65 cent, up 14 cent or 25 percent year-over-year.

Business unit trends created a lot of this money as PC client group generated $9.4 billion and was up 22 percent year-over-year. Data center group revenue was $2.5 billion, up 15 percent, other Intel architecture group revenue is up 68 percent.

Intel Atom microprocessors and chipset revenue was $289 million, down 32 percent year-over-year. People definitely are buying fewer Atoms then they used to. McAfee Inc. and Intel Mobile Communications contributed revenue of $1.1 billion. The platform average selling price (ASP) was up year-over-year and flat sequentially.

Gross margin was 63.4 percent, 0.6 percent below the midpoint of the company's expectation. R&D plus MG&A spending was $4.2 billion, slightly below the company's expectations. Net gain of $107 million from equity investments and interest and other, consistent with Intel’s expectations of approximately $100 million. The effective tax rate was 29 percent, above the company's expectation of approximately 28 percent. The company used $4.0 billion to repurchase $186 million shares of common stock.

Now Intel hopes for a good fourth quarter and these are some of its forecasts. It expects GAAP revenue of $14.7 billion plus or minus $500 million. Gross margin should get to around 65 percent, R&D plus MG&A spending are expected at approximately $4.3 billion

Apart from a flop in the Atom business unit, the other parts of the company did really well. Despite the lack of real tablet chips, Intel is not feeling much of a pressure and next year thing is going to get better for them as they have many chips that can run Windows 8 on tablets or any other device. Intel still did great compared to most other chip companies who seem to be struggling to pay their bills and hope for better times and more demand. Sadly, the current economic climate promises neither.

Source: fudzilla.com

Intel's Ivy Bridge Processors to Reduce Power Consumption to 77W

2011-10-19T16:27:00.000-07:00

Intel Corp.'s attempts to lower power consumption of its chips aimed at ultrabooks and eventually at media tablets and smartphones inevitably bring fruits to desktop personal computers as well. Based on unofficial information, the company's next-generation Ivy Bridge microprocessor will have substantially lower thermal design power compared to the existing desktop chips.

Initially believed to be an evolutionary step from the Core i-series "Sandy Bridge" microprocessors, the Core i-series "Ivy Bridge" central processing units (CPUs) will be much more than just a "tick" in Intel's roadmap.

Intel Ivy Bridge to Have Revolutionary Power Consumption

Intel Corp.'s attempts to lower power consumption of its chips aimed at ultrabooks and eventually at media tablets and smartphones inevitably bring fruits to desktop personal computers as well. Based on unofficial information, the company's next-generation Ivy Bridge microprocessor will have substantially lower thermal design power compared to the existing desktop chips.

Initially believed to be an evolutionary step from the Core i-series "Sandy Bridge" microprocessors, the Core i-series "Ivy Bridge" central processing units (CPUs) will be much more than just a "tick" in Intel's roadmap. Apparently, the chips, in addition to all major innovations that Intel installed into it, will have numerous power management improvements that will reduce nominal thermal design power of high-performance Ivy Bridge desktop CPUs to 77W, according to a slide that resembles those from Intel's presentations published by ChipHell web-site.

For several years Intel's performance mainstream and performance microprocessors had TDP of around 95W. For example, Intel's current top-of-the-range "non extreme" quad-core Core i7-2600K microprocessor with unlocked multiplier has 95W thermal design power, just like its lower-end brethren. By contrast, the future Intel Core i7-3000K "Ivy Bridge" chips will have 77W default thermal design power, which means lower overall power consumption as well as quieter operation of the whole PC system.

In addition to high-performance Core i7-series "Ivy Bridge" chips with 77W TDP, Intel will introduce Core i5 and Core i3 "Ivy Bridge" quad-core microprocessors with 65W and 45W thermal design power as well as dual-core processors with 55W and 35W thermal envelopes. Previously, Intel recommended to use notebook-oriented 35W processors for low-power performance desktops.

Reduced power consumption does not mean lower overclockability or lower Turbo Boost improvements. Thanks to configurable thermal design power feature, system makers and end-users will be able to increase or reduce TDP in order to allow chips to more significantly increase clock-speeds in Turbo Boost mode or disable automatic overclocking in order to squeeze the chips into smaller form-factors.

Ivy Bridge will generally inherit Sandy Bridge micro-architecture and will sport a rather significant number of improvements. Firstly, it will have certain improvements that will boost its performance in general applications by around 20% compared to Core i "Sandy Bridge" chips (e.g., enhanced AVX acceleration). Secondly, the forthcoming chip will have a new graphics core with DirectX 11 and OpenCL 1.1 support, 30% higher performance compared to the predecessor as well as new video processor and display controllers. Thirdly, Ivy Bridge will feature PCI Express 3.0 x16 interconnection as well as PCIe 2.0 x4 controller. In fourth, the processor will support a number of power management innovations. The CPU is made using 22nm process technology.

Intel will release its code-named Ivy Bridge central processing units for desktops in March or April, 2012.

Source: xbitlabs.com

Ivy Bridge Pentium comes in Q3 2012

2011-10-19T16:24:00.000-07:00

Currently the Pentium G860 and G850 dominate of the legacy roadmap for Intel. The faster G860 works at 3.0 GHz, has two cores and two thread support. It's a Sandy Bridge part that sells for $86 that was introduced recently, in Q3 2011.

This 32nm Pentium, with a 65W TDP and 3MB of cache will be replaced in Q3 2012 by and Ivy Bridge 22nm part. Ivy Bridge in Core i3 part of the market is slated for introduction in Q2 2012, while the faster Core i5 and Core i7 parts are still scheduled for March or April launch.

Not too many details

Currently the Pentium G860 and G850 dominate of the legacy roadmap for Intel. The faster G860 works at 3.0 GHz, has two cores and two thread support. It's a Sandy Bridge part that sells for $86 that was introduced recently, in Q3 2011.

This 32nm Pentium, with a 65W TDP and 3MB of cache will be replaced in Q3 2012 by and Ivy Bridge 22nm part. Ivy Bridge in Core i3 part of the market is slated for introduction in Q2 2012, while the faster Core i5 and Core i7 parts are still scheduled for March or April launch.

You can expect Ivy Bridge to inherit the $86 price tag in Q3 2012 and continue the legacy of LGA 1155 socket. The good news is that Ivy Bridge Pentium fits the existing 6 series chipset but it will also work in 7 series chipsets that are about to get introduced with Ivy Bridge.

Naturally the Ivy Bridge replacement of Pentium G860 is going to end up with faster performance than this 3GHz part, which sounds quite good for the money.

Source: fudzilla.com

AMD Wants Fusion APUs to Be "Compelling Option for Gaming Purposes"

2011-10-19T16:23:00.000-07:00

For many years ATI Technologies and Advanced Micro Devices did not help game designers to specifically optimize their titles for integrated graphics adapters to ensure truly high performance. But the times are changing and AMD confirmed in a recent interview that it wants its Fusion accelerated processing units (APUs) with x86 and graphics processors on the same piece of silicon to be "compelling option" for video games.

"We always try to ensure games are able to run on our AMD Fusion APU offerings at maximum performance while maintaining the bulk of the graphic features. AMD has worked very hard to ensure our integrated graphics are a compelling option for gaming purposes

AMD Working Hard to Ensure High-Performance of Games on APUs

For many years ATI Technologies and Advanced Micro Devices did not help game designers to specifically optimize their titles for integrated graphics adapters to ensure truly high performance. But the times are changing and AMD confirmed in a recent interview that it wants its Fusion accelerated processing units (APUs) with x86 and graphics processors on the same piece of silicon to be "compelling option" for video games.

"We always try to ensure games are able to run on our AMD Fusion APU offerings at maximum performance while maintaining the bulk of the graphic features. AMD has worked very hard to ensure our integrated graphics are a compelling option for gaming purposes, and going forward we’re going to see even more goodness coming from this area where gamers will be able to enjoy the full gaming experience on our AMD Fusion APUs without compromising on quality," said Peter Ross, a senior marketing manager at AMD, in an interview with GamersDailyNews web-site.

Traditionally, integrated graphics was considered as something mediocre for gaming and many end-users acquired entry-level graphics cards instead of them. Low-cost graphics cards also do not provide decent performance in modern games, but at least do not have quality issues with rendering, unlike some of low-end Intel's integrated solutions.

AMD's Fusion accelerated processing units integrate Radeon HD graphics processors that have higher horsepower than some low-end graphics cards and are dramatically faster compared to Intel's integrated solutions. As a result, it does make sense for AMD to ensure that all games run well on its integrated graphics solutions as it ensures proper performance on its entry-level platforms (and naturally shifts minimum acceptable performance and quality away from Intel's HD graphics) and guarantees smooth gameplay on discrete graphics adapters.

Source: xbitlabs.com

Core i7 3960 is up to 36 percent better than i7 990X

2011-10-19T16:16:00.000-07:00

Intel has done some basic testing and has included some scores of its soon-to-launch Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition six-core Sandy Bridge E. It’s a mouthful, but so is the spec sheet.

The processor is clocked at 3.3GHz with six cores and twelve threads, 15MB of cache, and it was tested against the current flagship Core i7 990X Extreme Edition, clocked at 3.46GHz, with 12MB cache and six hyperthreaded cores.

In Cinebench 11.5 the Core i7 3960X scores some 13 percent better than i7 990X. In Pov Ray 3.7 it scores 12 percent better compared to i7 990X while in ProShow Gold 4.5, slide show creation task it scores 15 percent better.

Much better in memory tests

Intel has done some basic testing and has included some scores of its soon-to-launch Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition six-core Sandy Bridge E. It’s a mouthful, but so is the spec sheet.

The processor is clocked at 3.3GHz with six cores and twelve threads, 15MB of cache, and it was tested against the current flagship Core i7 990X Extreme Edition, clocked at 3.46GHz, with 12MB cache and six hyperthreaded cores.

In Cinebench 11.5 the Core i7 3960X scores some 13 percent better than i7 990X. In Pov Ray 3.7 it scores 12 percent better compared to i7 990X while in ProShow Gold 4.5, slide show creation task it scores 15 percent better.

The best case scenario shows up in 3Dmark 11 Physics, where Intel's new high end Core i7 3960X scores 36 percent better. This is at the same time the best score that we've seen.

On average you can expect that the new Extreme edition Core i7 3960X will end up about 15 percent faster. In memory benchmarks it eats 990X alive as it has much better memory controller and in Sandy 2011B it can score 111 percent better score in memory bandwidth performance test and in multimedia performance FP subtest it scores 92 percent better scores due to AVX influence on performance.

You can take AMD FX numbers and compare them with these percentage scores to get the better picture what Intel has to launch.

Source: fudzilla.com

AMD Expects Windows 8 to Boost Performance of AMD FX Chips

2011-10-19T16:14:00.000-07:00

Advanced Micro Devices hopes that Microsoft Corp.'s next-generation Windows 8 operating system will work with multi-core central processing units (CPUs) more efficiently than Windows 7. As a result, the company's FX-series chips with up to eight cores will show higher performance than today. A big question is how AMD FX will show itself in comparison with Intel's chips.

According to a slide that AMD recently spread, the new chips show up to 10% performance advantage in Windows 8 compared to existing performance in Windows 7. The performance boost is observable in non-demanding video games and can be less noticeable in other applications as well as game titles that heavily rely on performance of central processing units.

Windows 8 Scheduler to More Efficiently Work with Multi-Core Chips

Advanced Micro Devices hopes that Microsoft Corp.'s next-generation Windows 8 operating system will work with multi-core central processing units (CPUs) more efficiently than Windows 7. As a result, the company's FX-series chips with up to eight cores will show higher performance than today. A big question is how AMD FX will show itself in comparison with Intel's chips.

According to a slide that AMD recently spread, the new chips show up to 10% performance advantage in Windows 8 compared to existing performance in Windows 7. The performance boost is observable in non-demanding video games and can be less noticeable in other applications as well as game titles that heavily rely on performance of central processing units. The chip giant attributes the advantage to the new scheduler of the next-gen operating system, which more efficiently manages microprocessors with numerous cores.

Based on independent tests by X-bit labs, the FX chips fail to become an enthusiasts' choice as the top-of-the-range eight-core FX-8150 model can barely beat Intel's mainstream quad-core Core i5-2500 processor that even lacks the company's well-known Hyper-Threading technology.

While AMD demonstrates the advantages of its own eight-core microprocessor in the Windows 8 environment, but does not indicate whether other CPUs also benefit from the next-gen OS. It is widely believed that Microsoft's operating system due next year needs less compute resources than existing OS and will therefore work better on all systems.

Source: xbitlabs.com

Intel's Sandy Bridge-E will have liquid cooling

2011-10-19T16:12:00.000-07:00

The new Sandy Bridge-E processors will be Chipzilla's first to ship with a liquid cooling system. The coolers, manufactured by Asetek under Intel's brand will ship with the Core i7 3000-series processors.

The cooler consists of an external 120mm fan as well as a pump and a heatsink to help the chip keep its cool. It is the first time chipzilla has moved away from traditional air cooling, and since it is all-in-one it is easy to set up. It will also enable users to overclock its forthcoming super-chip to higher temperatures and frequencies.

All-in-one

The new Sandy Bridge-E processors will be Chipzilla's first to ship with a liquid cooling system. The coolers, manufactured by Asetek under Intel's brand will ship with the Core i7 3000-series processors.

The cooler consists of an external 120mm fan as well as a pump and a heatsink to help the chip keep its cool. It is the first time chipzilla has moved away from traditional air cooling, and since it is all-in-one it is easy to set up. It will also enable users to overclock its forthcoming super-chip to higher temperatures and frequencies.

The standalone version of the cooler will be compatible with the Sandy Bridge-E's LGA2011 platform, as well as LGA1155, LGA1156 and LGA1366 platforms. Liquid cooling is starting to become more common. Prices of all-in-one systems are dropping.

Source: fudzilla.com

Ex-AMD Engineer Explains Bulldozer Fiasco: Lack of Fine Tuning

2011-10-19T16:05:00.000-07:00

Performance that Advanced Micro Devices' eight-core processor demonstrated in real-world applications is far from impressive as the chip barely outperforms competing quad-core central processing units from Intel. The reason why performance of the long-awaited Bulldozer was below expectations is not only because it was late, but because AMD had adopted design techniques that did not allow it tweak performance, according to an ex-AMD engineer.

Engineer: AMD Should Have Hand-Crafted Bulldozer to Ensure High Speed

Performance that Advanced Micro Devices' eight-core processor demonstrated in real-world applications is far from impressive as the chip barely outperforms competing quad-core central processing units from Intel. The reason why performance of the long-awaited Bulldozer was below expectations is not only because it was late, but because AMD had adopted design techniques that did not allow it tweak performance, according to an ex-AMD engineer.

Cliff A. Maier, an AMD engineer who left the company several years ago, the chip designer decided to abandon practice of hand-crafting various performance-critical parts of its chips and rely completely on automatic tools. While usage of tools that automatically implement certain technologies into silicon speeds up the design process, they cannot ensure maximum performance and efficiency.

Automated Design = 20% Bigger, 20% Slower

"The management decided there should be such cross-engineering [between AMD and ATI teams within the company] ,which meant we had to stop hand-crafting our CPU designs and switch to an SoC design style. This results in giving up a lot of performance, chip area, and efficiency. The reason DEC Alphas were always much faster than anything else is they designed each transistor by hand. Intel and AMD had always done so at least for the critical parts of the chip. That changed before I left - they started to rely on synthesis tools, automatic place and route tools, etc.," said Mr. Maier in a forum post noticed by Insideris.com web-site.

A wafer with AMD Orochi dies used for AMD Opteron "Interlagos"/"Valencia and AMD FX "Zambezi" microprocessors

Apparently, automatically-generated designs are 20% bigger and 20% slower than hand-crafted designs, which results in increased transistor count, die space, cost and power efficiency.

"I had been in charge of our design flow in the years before I left, and I had tested these tools by asking the companies who sold them to design blocks (adders, multipliers, etc.) using their tools. I let them take as long as they wanted. They always came back to me with designs that were 20% bigger, and 20% slower than our hand-crafted designs, and which suffered from electro-migration and other problems," the former AMD engineer said.

Inefficiencies in Design?

While it is unknown whether AMD used automatic design flow tools for everything, there are certain facts that point to some inefficient pieces of design within Bulldozer. Officially, AMD claims that the Zambezi/Orochi processor consists of around 2 billion transistors, which is a very large number.

AMD Orochi floorplan

AMD publicly said that each Bulldozer dual-core CPU module with 2MB unified L2 cache contains 213 million transistors and is 30.9mm2 large. By contrast, die size of one processing engine of Llano processor (11-layer 32nm SOI, K10.5+ micro-architecture) is 9.69mm2 (without L2 cache), which indicates that AMD has succeeded in minimizing elements of its new micro-architecture so to maintain small size and production cost of the novelty.

As a result, all four CPU modules with L2 cache within Zambezi/Orochi processor consist of 852 million of transistors and take 123.6mm2 of die space. Assuming that 8MB of L3 cache (6 bits per cell) consist of 405 million of transistors, it leaves around whopping 800 million of transistors to various input/output interfaces, dual-channel DDR3 memory controller as well as various logic and routing inside the chip.

800 million of transistors - which take up a lot of die space - in an incredibly high number for various I/O, memory, logic, etc. For example, Intel's Core i-series "Sandy Bridge" quad-core chip with integrated graphics consists of 995 million.

While it cannot be confirmed, but it looks like AMD Orochi/Zambezi has several hundreds of millions of transistors that are a result of heavy reliance onto automated design tools.

The Result? Profit Drop!

As a consequence of inefficient design and relatively low performance, AMD has to sell its eight-core FX series processors (315mm2 die size) for up to $245 in 1000-unit quantities. By contrast, Intel sells hand-crafted Core i-series "Sandy Bridge" quad-core chips (216mm2 die size) for up to $317 in 1000-unit quantities. Given the fact that both microprocessors are made using 32nm process technology [and thus have comparable per-transistor/per square mm die cost], the Intel one carries much better profit margin than AMD's microprocessor.

Source: xbitlabs.com

Analyst Condemns AMD for Not Employing ARM amid Inability to Design Leading High-Performance x86 Processor.

2011-10-19T16:01:00.000-07:00

The inability of Advanced Micro Devices to address the rapidly growing market of smartphones and media tablets due to the lack of ARM-based solutions in its portfolio amid inability to design a leading-edge high-end x86 central processing unit may lead to sinking into irrelevancy, according to a semiconductor market analyst. Without competitive chips the company will be unable to meet its financial goals going forward.

"We maintain our view that AMD is being structurally squeezed by poor competitive positioning and longstanding operational struggles. AMD is on the verge of sinking into irrelevancy as ARM-based competitors gain share in low-end computing and Intel extends its advantages in performance and manufacturing,” wrote Daniel Berenbaum, an analyst with MKM Partners, reports Forbes.

AMD Has Serious Product Problems - Market Observer

The inability of Advanced Micro Devices to address the rapidly growing market of smartphones and media tablets due to the lack of ARM-based solutions in its portfolio amid inability to design a leading-edge high-end x86 central processing unit may lead to sinking into irrelevancy, according to a semiconductor market analyst. Without competitive chips the company will be unable to meet its financial goals going forward.

"We maintain our view that AMD is being structurally squeezed by poor competitive positioning and longstanding operational struggles. AMD is on the verge of sinking into irrelevancy as ARM-based competitors gain share in low-end computing and Intel extends its advantages in performance and manufacturing,” wrote Daniel Berenbaum, an analyst with MKM Partners, reports Forbes.

AMD is concentrating around the so-called x86 everywhere strategy that dictates the company to tailor x86 architecture for all types of devices, from handsets to high-end servers. Even though the absolute majority of ultra-portable devices are powered by chips with ARM architecture due to its dramatically lower power requirements, AMD asserts that ARM is incapable of reaching performance levels of x86. At the same time, the company is risking to miss the smartphone/media tablet bandwagon as it is only beginning to design x86 chips for the latter and even has no plans for the former.

The company's latest high-performance x86 processor micro-architecture code-named Bulldozer failed to outperform Intel Corp.'s latest Core i-series "Sandy Bridge" chips in client applications, which naturally rises concerns about AMD's ability to score lucrative design wins with its latest FX-series central processing units. Moreover, if AMD's chips fail to outperform Intel's products in server applications as well, the company may not be able to regain the high-margin server market share.

One of the company's pearls is its ATI graphics processor design unit that manages to introduce competitive solutions. In fact, AMD is one of the two remaining developers of discrete graphics chips for personal computers with about 50% market share. The company can integrate its latest graphics technologies into Fusion accelerated processing units with its latest x86 Bulldozer cores to provide a decent mainstream offering. Unfortunately, AMD has been plagued by product delays for many years now and while analyst are confident in AMD's technologies, they do not believe in consistent execution.

"It’s difficult to remember the last product AMD launched on time, and it is now evident that, even aside from manufacturing challenges with partner GlobalFoundries, AMD’s technology roadmap is severely lagging. Third-party reviews indicate that the performance of new products based on the Bulldozer architecture is disappointing – this means that AMD will likely remain a bystander in the ongoing data center build cycle (which has accrued significant benefit to Intel), and will now also miss a window to compete in consumer PCs," added Mr. Berenbaum.

Source: xbitlabs.com

AMD FX-8150 Bulldozer Synthetic Benchmarks

2011-10-12T10:28:00.000-07:00

A collections of synthetic tests using AMD FX-8150 Bulldozer listed alphabetically.

"I have faith that AMD can pull it off, but there's still a lot of progress that needs to be made. AMD can't simply rely on its GPU architecture superiority to sell APUs; it needs to ramp on the x86 side as well—more specifically, AMD needs better single threaded performance. Bulldozer didn't deliver that, and I'm worried that Piledriver alone won't be enough." -anandtech.com

Intel rumoured to have its X58 chipset replacement ready

2011-10-08T17:53:00.000-07:00

The dark satanic rumour mill has been manufacturing a hellish yarn claiming that Intel's is going to kill off its venerable X58 chipset.

But according to the latest rumour, Intel has its successor all ready to go. The X79 successor will launch next month, as Intel pushes the X58 into a retirement home. It is looking like orders for the X58 chipset will stop on April 27th, 2012, and the chip giant will ship the chipsets through to October 5, 2012. For those who came in late, the world is expected to end in December 2012. If you want to try the X79 you are going to have to be quick. Still at least Intel is preparing for the end of one of its most famous chipsets.

The X58 is dead long live the X79

The dark satanic rumour mill has been manufacturing a hellish yarn claiming that Intel's is going to kill off its venerable X58 chipset.

But according to the latest rumour, Intel has its successor all ready to go. The X79 successor will launch next month, as Intel pushes the X58 into a retirement home. It is looking like orders for the X58 chipset will stop on April 27th, 2012, and the chip giant will ship the chipsets through to October 5, 2012. For those who came in late, the world is expected to end in December 2012. If you want to try the X79 you are going to have to be quick. Still at least Intel is preparing for the end of one of its most famous chipsets.

There have been X79 powered mainboards from ECS and Foxconn announced as being in the pipeline. Based on that it would look like the X58 has got roughly a year left before it becomes a Norwegian Blue.

Source: fudzilla.com

AMD's FX-6100 gets listed in the USA

2011-10-08T17:47:00.000-07:00

One of the USA e-tailers managed to sneak in the upcoming AMD FX-Series hexa-core, FX-6100 and it is currently listing it in a couple of bundles.

The bundle includes Asus' Sabertooth 990FX motherboard together with the FX-6100, and while the entire bundle costs US $379.99, as you can see from the picture below, the FX-6100 is priced at US $189.99. In case you missed it, the FX-6100 is a hexa-core CPU clocked at 3.3GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) with 6MB of L2 and 8MB of L3 cache and a 95W TDP.

This price is pretty much the same one that we have seen before. Back then, the FX-8150 was priced at around US $265 while the FX-8120 was at US $221.73.

US $189.99 in a bundle

One of the USA e-tailers managed to sneak in the upcoming AMD FX-Series hexa-core, FX-6100 and it is currently listing it in a couple of bundles.

The bundle includes Asus' Sabertooth 990FX motherboard together with the FX-6100, and while the entire bundle costs US $379.99, as you can see from the picture below, the FX-6100 is priced at US $189.99. In case you missed it, the FX-6100 is a hexa-core CPU clocked at 3.3GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) with 6MB of L2 and 8MB of L3 cache and a 95W TDP.

This price is pretty much the same one that we have seen before. Back then, the FX-8150 was priced at around US $265 while the FX-8120 was at US $221.73.

Of course, we will keep the name of the e-tailer hidden just so AMD has a hard time finding the leak and hopefully it will take them some time to pin-point it.

Source: fudzilla.com