AMD to detail upcoming Jaguar low-power chip design for tablets
AMD's Jaguar CPU will be in tablets that will become available next year, and will be integrated in a chip alongside a powerful graphics processor. AMD is expected to use the Jaguar architecture in a dual-core tablet chip code-named Tamesh next year, and also in low-power laptops such as netbooks.
Jaguar was introduced earlier this year after a new management team discarded the old road map and reconfigured the company's product line. AMD did not share details about the processor core at the time, but Jaguar will succeed the Bobcat processor, which will be used in an upcoming tablet chip code-named Hondo, expected to be launched later this year alongside Microsoft's Windows 8 OS. Read more...
Industry consortium to tackle open spec for software use across multicore devices
Companies including AMD and ARM have formed a consortium to provide an open specification for software to be written and deployed in a cost-effective manner across multiple hardware configurations, it was announced Tuesday.
The HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) Foundation will provide an open hardware interface specification under which program execution can be easily offloaded to other processing resources available in servers, PCs and mobile devices. The new specification will lead to applications that are portable across architectures, while also enabling workloads to be broken up between CPUs and graphics processors for faster and more power efficient computing. Read more...
AMD buys SeaMicro, enters server hardware business
Advanced Micro Devices announced Wednesday it is buying low-power server vendor SeaMicro, a surprise move that puts AMD in the systems business and disrupts Intel by acquiring one of its close partners.
AMD will pay $334 million in cash and stock for SeaMicro, a 40-employee Silicon Valley startup that has gained attention for building highly dense and power-efficient servers for use in large-scale cloud computing environments. SeaMicro CEO Andrew Feldman will become general manager of a new division at AMD, the Data Center Server Solutions group.
AMD plans to sell SeaMicro-branded servers directly to customers, but it bought the company primarily for its technology, which it hopes to license to other server vendors to build their own low-power systems, AMD officials said. Read more...
AMD puts the brakes on adding more cores to server chips
AMD has put the brakes on adding more cores to its server chips, stopping at 16, the company said Thursday during a financial analyst day.
AMD's new server chips code-named Abu Dhabi and due out in 2013 will have 16 cores, the same number as the existing Opteron 6200 chips code-named Interlagos that shipped last year. Servers are being redesigned to match specialty workloads and adding more cores to the Abu Dhabi chip wasn't the way to boost performance, said Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager of Global Business Units at AMD, during a speech.
"At the end of the day, that wasn't the right answer for the customers," Su said. Read more...
Dell PowerEdge servers get AMD’s new 16-core chips
Dell on Tuesday said it has upgraded its PowerEdge servers with the just-released 16-core Opteron processors from AMD.
The company has upgraded the four-socket PowerEdge M915 blade server, which will be able to include up to 64 Opteron 6200 chip cores. The new servers will be faster than the M915 with the older 12-core Opteron 6100 chips.
AMD last week announced the availability of its first Opteron 6200 server processors, which carry the most cores available on x86 chips today. The chips, code-named Interlagos, are 25 percent to 30 percent faster than their 12-core predecessors. The new chips are based on the new Bulldozer processor architecture, which is also more power efficient. Read more...
AMD sitting out smartphone market
Advanced Micro Devices is not immediately chasing the market for smartphones as it does not align with the company's strength in technologies like graphics, an executive said on Monday.
Smartphones are constrained on battery, pixels, and screen space, and AMD has other areas it can focus on in order to grow, said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager for AMD's product group during the Pacific Crest Securities Technology Leadership Forum in Vail, Colorado. The company sees an opportunity to apply its graphics and chip technologies to tablets, where customers are demanding better video and battery life. Read more...
AMD pledges sharper graphics with new Fusion chips
Advanced Micro Devices has promised a boost in video and graphics performance from its first Fusion processor aimed at the mainstream PC segment, which will go on sale in laptops later this month and desktops soon after, AMD announced Tuesday.
The new A-Series Fusion chip combines a quad-core CPU on the same silicon die as a DirectX 11-capable GPU and a dedicated chip for video encoding and decoding. That makes it well suited to tasks like video playback, gaming, and video and photo editing, AMD said. Read more...
AMD enters tablet market with new chip
Advanced Micro Devices on Wednesday broke its silence around its tablet strategy, announcing its first low-power chip designed for these devices.
The Z-series chips, which is based on the Fusion architecture, will deliver a full PC client experience in tablets, said Chris Cloran, vice president and general manager of the computing solutions group, client division at AMD, at a press conference at the Computex trade show in Taipei.
AMD has been criticized for not moving quickly enough to deliver chips for the booming tablet market, at one point fueling speculation that it might license chip technology from ARM for this market. With the Z-series chips, AMD will compete with ARM, whose processors go into most tablets, and Intel, whose Atom processor code-named Oak Trail is being shown in many tablets at Computex. Read more...
AMD introduces branded memory modules for desktops
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Advanced Micro Devices' first branded desktop system memory modules, called AMD Memory, will be available in North America through major retailers, the company said Monday.
By offering its own branded memory modules for desktops, AMD aims to "take the guesswork out of DRAM selection, providing an easy and straightforward experience when looking for the ideal match for gaming or multimedia PC needs", it said in a statement.
AMD has been supplying and validating memory for AMD Radeon graphics cards for several years, and saw an opportunity to add system memory to its product line, AMD said. Read more...