AMD's sequel; we hope Trinity does better at the box office than Neo did

Subject: General Tech | August 31, 2011 - 11:34 AM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: amd, comal, virgo, trinity, piledriver, bulldozer, orochi, southern islands, dragon

AMD is showing off their stuff down in Texas right now and there are reports of what is being shown off slowly appearing.  First to the plate is SemiAccurate with a slide detailing the next generation of Bulldozer as well as a new variant called Piledriver.  The new Orochi Bulldozers are said to offer a 35% increase in the performance of server tasks and many techs will be glad to hear it is a drop in upgrade, no hours of reconfiguration needed.

The enthusiast will be more interested in Piledriver which is a renovated Bulldozer core, finessing the existing architecture to squeeze half again as many gigaflops out of Comal and Virgo when compared to Llano.  They've also included the HD7000 family, aka the Southern Islands family of GPUs into the announcement as well.  We know that the new generation of APUs are well ahead of schedule and we can hope that the GPU side has also at least kept up with expectations if the scarcity of the HD6950 and HD6970 mean what we hope it means.  Drop by for the specs on the GPUs and more at SemiAccurate.

"It looks like Trinity, aka the next generation big APU, is going to be everything the rumors suggest. At Global Foundries GTC conference today, they foundry confirmed many of the rumors that are floating."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

• Global Foundries and Samsung split 28nm processes @ SemiAccurate
• Sony’s HMZ-T1 Is an Amazing OLED 3DTV. That You Wear On Your Head @ Gizmodo
• Top 10 Things To Do With Your HP Touchpad @ TechwareLabs
• Cooler Master Silencio, GX 550 and Sentinal Giveaway @ XSReviews
• OC3D @ i43 Part 2

Intel and AMD Provide Positive Earnings

Subject: Editorial | July 22, 2011 - 01:59 PM | Josh Walrath
Tagged: Sandy Bridge E, Q2 2011, llano, Intel, bulldozer, APU, amd

The first half of this year has been surprisingly strong for the chip industry, and Intel and AMD are helping to lead the way and satiate demand for new processors at all market levels.

Intel was first off the bat to release earnings for their 2nd quarter, and they again broke revenue and profit records for Q2.  Gross revenue was a very healthy $13 billion and the company’s net profit was an impressive $3 billion.  Margins are down from last year’s high of 67%, but the actual 61% far outshines that of their competition.  Q2 2010 results were $10.8 billion in gross revenue and $2.9 billion net profit.  While profit was “only” $100 million more than Q1 2010, the extra $2.2 billion in revenue is something to sit up and notice.

Sandy Bridge based parts have continued to propel Intel's domination of the CPU market.

Probably the two greatest strengths for Intel are extracting the most amount of performance per mm squared of die and of overall process technology leadership.  Intel has been shipping 32 nm parts for some 18 months now, and their redesigned Sandy Bridge architecture has left their primary competition in the dust when it comes to overall multi-core CPU performance.  Intel has improved their integrated graphics capabilities, but this is one area where they simply cannot compete with the more GPU focused AMD.  Intel is also facing much increased competition in the mobile market from the Llano based chips and their accompanying chipset, which has been a virtual fortress for Intel until recently.  While Intel still rules in CPU performance, the combination of rich graphics, chipset features, and competitive power consumption has made Llano a true threat to the mobile sector.

Click here to read more.

Bulldozer will be on time, missing CEO or not

Subject: General Tech | July 22, 2011 - 11:42 AM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: amd, bulldozer, finance, release

AMD has a lot to happy about today, even if both they and GLOBALFOUNDRIES are one CEO short of a full board.  This time last year AMD was talking up Bulldozer as a product 12 months or more out of market and facing a $43 million loss under “Generally Accepted Accounting Principles”, as Josh explained fully.  Long story short it was money being paid for GF; the unadjusted profit for the quarter was actually $83 million, . This quarter it was a $61 million profit, $70 million non-GAAP, thanks to AMD focusing on keeping the costs down, with a bit of help from the recent release of Llano. 

On the processor side, AMD is pegging the 16-core "Interlagos" Opteron 6200 Bulldozer CPU for servers and the Zambezi FX series will both come out at the same time, at least as far as revenue is concerned.  We may not have them in hand for a while longer than that, but not too long.  Drop by the Register for the full picture.

"The hybrid CPU-GPU chips for mobile PCs gave Advanced Micro Devices some breathing room in the second quarter, but it's going to take continued ramping of these APU processors and an upswing in Opteron server sales to get the company back to the profit levels it should be enjoying during a retooling phase in the IT market – and it looks like AMD and its server partners won't have to wait too much longer."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

• AMD is in no rush to find its next CEO @ The Inquirer
• AMD sees profit in 2Q11 @ DigiTimes
• Holographic DVD stores 500GB @ SemiAccurate
• Power tool battery charger repair @ Hack a Day
• Visiting FSP + Aurum CM 750W Preview @ AnandTech

The Bulldozer has sprung another leak, get a peek at the upcoming FX series

Subject: General Tech | July 14, 2011 - 12:40 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: zambezi, leak, fx series, bulldozer, amd

Turkish site Donanim Haber got the scoop on Bulldozer and the news is good.  Compared to the first silicon we saw, which had 32 cores running at 1.8GHz, with this new leak we see seven models all running at much more respectable speeds.  There are three 8 core FX CPUs of which the high end FX-8150 runs at 3.6GHz, 4.2GHz under boost.  One of the two six core FX Bulldozers runs at 3.3/3.9GHz, the second called FX-6120 remains mysterious and similarly we know the quad core FX-4100 runs at 3.6/3.8GHz with the FX-4120 still having undetermined clock speeds.  All are based on the 32nm Zambezi core and all will be unlocked Black Edition and support DDR3 up to 1866MHz.  The actual performance when compared to SandyB is up for debate, a good starting point is this article at Real World Tech, which gives you educated guesses based on the leaked benchmarks.  Part of the uncertainly lies in the new architecture and trying to interpret how 4 modules, each module with a single shared FPU/MMX/SIMD unit and two ALUs from an engineering sample.

Hopefully, we should only have to wait 2 or 3 more months to find out for sure.

"According to recent information from AMD, two quad-core, two and three of the six-core, including the 8-core processor for 2011 Bulldozer-based model to the market poised to offer 7 different FX. AMD's most powerful processor will be the standard 8-core 3.6GHz FX-8150 processor at 2.0 technology will serve and Turbo Core 4.2GHz operating frequency of up to increase. AMD's 8-core processor, the second how quickly the standard 3.1GHz FX-8120 has been working in the technology and the Turbo Core 2.0 4GHz can go up automatically."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

• Globalfoundries ready to move in equipment at new fabs @ DigiTimes
• Spotify's US launch: three tiers, free is currently invite-only @ Ars Technica
• PSA: Got a Nook Color? Then you can get dual-booting Nook2Android @ Engadget
• Vodafone root password is revealed @ The Inquirer
• Adobe releases a 64-bit Flash Player 11 beta @ The Inquirer
• After Final Cut Pro debacle, does Apple still care about creative pros? @ Ars Technica
• Sitecom Wireless Gigabit Router 300N X4 (WLR-4000) Review @ Madshrimps
• Just another day in the office - Part #1 @ eTeknix

You would think a Bulldozer would be easier to spot

Subject: General Tech | June 21, 2011 - 11:38 AM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: opteron, interlagos, bulldozer, amd

It might just be that the ISC is the perfect place to show off their new chip or it may have been Intel's displaying of the 50 core Knights Corner silicon yesterday; whatever triggered it we finally get a look at AMD's Bulldozer.  A 1U server by Supermicro contained two 16-core Bulldozer chips though other vendors are claiming to be able to fit a 4 socket system in the same size case.  Those sweet talking wonks over at The Inquirer not only talked their way into getting a few photos of the system they were even allowed to fondle it, which revealed heatsinks that were cool enough to touch even when running POVRay which lends credence to the idea of 4 CPUs, or 64 cores, in a 1U box.  We are still looking at Q3 for a release of the new Opteron architecture, with no news at all as to AMD's plans to turn that architecture into an APU in a later generation of chips.

What a little chutzpah gets you

"CHIP DESIGNER AMD chose the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) to finally demonstrate a working Bulldozer system.

At AMD's ISC stand one could find several 2U and 4U servers built with older Opteron chips, but it was a 1U pizza box server made by Supermicro that housed two 16-core Bulldozer chips running live demonstrations of POVRay. This is the first time that AMD has publicly displayed its next generation Opteron processor, codenamed Bulldozer."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

• 13-Year-Old Password Security Bug Fixed @ Slashdot
• McAfee announces Wavesecure security software @ The Inquirer
• Microsoft could buy RIM @ The Inquirer
• Intel to launch Ivy Bridge in March 2012 @ DigiTimes
• Google revives TV buzz with SageTV buy @ The Register
• Google bypasses admin controls with latest Chrome IE @ The Register
• Resistive memory: how small can you go? @ NanotechWeb

AMD Brings Back FX Branding For High-End CPUs and Motherboards at E3

Subject: Processors | June 7, 2011 - 01:21 AM | Tim Verry
Tagged: zambezi, E3, bulldozer, amd

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced today that they plan to bring their “FX” branding back to the latest high-end motherboards and CPUs. The first round of products to carry the brand include the “Scorpius” platform (AMD 990FX motherboards and AMD Radeon 6000 series graphics cards), and the upcoming “Zambezi” native octo-core unlocked processor. “FX customers will enjoy an unrivalled (sic) feature set and amazing control over their PC’s performance,” stated AMD.

TechPowerUp shows off the FX branded Zambezi's packaging, for example.

The “FX” moniker is AMD’s equivalent to Intel’s “Extreme Edition” products, which are overclocker and enthusiast-friendly products aimed at those wanting the fastest stock performance and the ability to push hardware to the limit through overclocking via unlocked multipliers.

In bringing back the “FX” brand in full force with Bulldozer, AMD seems confident in their processors’ performance versus the competition. It will certainly be interesting to see if their upcoming hardware can back up the enthusiast marketing and stack up against Intel’s offerings.

You can read more about AMD’s E3 announcement over at HardOCP.

AMD Shows Off Trinity APU based on Bulldozer, APU for Tablets

Subject: Processors, Shows and Expos | June 1, 2011 - 09:28 AM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: trinity, llano, fusion, computex, bulldozer, APU, amd

While talking up the new 900-series of chipset and the branding for the upcoming AMD Llano APU launch, AMD did surprise us by showing off a bit more of the future than typical.  Rick Bergman, general manager of the AMD Product Group, pulled a Trinity-based APU out of his pocket to demonstrate the conviction of staying on a "one-APU-per-year" cycle in the years to come.

While it looks just like any other AMD processors from a distance, this Trinity APU is based on the Bulldozer x86 architecture (which will see the first release as a CPU only later this year) and combines some amount of SIMD-units (aka Radeon cores) for a CPU/GPU combo.  This will be the part that succeeds Llano, due out in a few short days.

This roadmap shows the cadence of once a year will be the norm for AMD going forward and that AMD plans to introduce an APU for the tablet market sometime in 2012.  It will be interesting to see how late to the game AMD is in this arena and if they can compete with what ARM is doing or even what Intel will be doing with Medfield. 

Computex 2011 Coverage brought to you by MSI Computer and Antec