PC News Zone » CPU

the ‘desktop-like’ Opteron 3200 – AMD Cheap Server CPU

pcnz_admin — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:45:02 +0000

AMD’s 2012 rampage continues. Having outed a overall stack of Radeon HD 7000-series graphics cards on the consumer side of things, it’s now alert release the next in its line of Opteron undertaking server chips. Like the 4200 and 6200 series before it, the Opteron 3200 is based on the Bulldozer architecture. It comes in four or eight-core configurations, with 45W to 65W power consumption, plus a 2.7GHz base frequency that gets a 1GHz adrenalin kick in Turbo Core mode (which prioritizes half the cores and shuts down the other half). However, the 3200 series is designed to offer cloud and web hosting server functionality in a cheaper, “desktop-like infrastructure”, which means these processors squeeze into a regular AM3+ socket and undercut comparable Xeons by up to $90. Can we expect server builders like SeaMicro to wobble to these processors instead of Intel? Oh, you can count on it.

AMD Launches New Platform for Dedicated Web Hosting Providers

New AMD Opteronâ„¢ 3200 Series Processor Family Changes Industry Economics for Single-Socket, Dedicated Hosting and Cloud customers

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -3/20/2012

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the latest solution as part of its ongoing Web/Cloud initiative with the launch of the new AMD Opteronâ„¢ 3200 Series processor. Dedicated Web hosting customers seeking enterprise-class reliability have a new choice that delivers:
â€¢ Great value with up to 38% better price performance1 and up to 19% less power per core2 than the competition;
â€¢ ECC memory and server reliability features at a low price-point;
â€¢ Fast hardware payback – In as few as 7 months hosting fees can cover hardware costs – up to 14% quicker than with the competition3;
â€¢ Efficient economics for the Cloud with twice the core density per rack4.

“In today’s economic environment, dedicated hosting providers need their data centers to become profit centers faster than ever,” said Patrick Patla, corporate vice president and general manager, Commercial Business, AMD. “With the new AMD Opteronâ„¢ 3000 Series platform, Web and Cloud customers no longer have to compromise with desktop-class platforms in order to hit certain price points. Now they have all the benefits of a true server-class product at desktop-class price points. This helps rapidly-growing hosting customers achieve fast payback in their incredibly dense, power-efficient environments.”

Since the launch of its new core server architecture, and AMD Opteron 4200 and 6200 Series processors last November, AMD unveiled a disruptive server strategy and intentions to leverage its leading graphics IP while driving down the power in future SoC offerings. As part of accelerating this, AMD recently announced it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Cloud pioneer SeaMicro.

Today AMD has delivered on its promise of a low-power, single-socket solution that brings server functionality with desktop economics. The AMD Opteron 3000 Series platform is targeted to the dense, power efficient 1P Web hosting/Web server market. Available in either 4- or 8-core CPUs, the AMD Opteron 3200 Series processor is shipping today in platforms from MSI, Tyan, Fujitsu and Dell. Based on the “Bulldozer” core, the AMD Opteron 3000 Series platform leverages Socket AM3+ and provides customers with the cost savings associated with a “desktop-like” infrastructure, yet still offers server-class reliability, enterprise-class silicon validation/testing, security features and server OS certification.

“AMD is a great partner, and we’re excited about the new AMD Opteron 3200 Series CPU. It allows us to create a custom design for our DCS customers, and deliver a compelling combination of performance and energy efficiency, ” says Dell Data Center Solutions’ Steve Cumings. “As the leader in the Density-Optimized market segment, we require focused partner technology within industry standards â€“ and this is a good fit for our customers.”

Key Facts, Performance and Technical Detail

45W to 65W TDP

2.7 GHz base frequency, up to 3.7 GHz frequency using AMD Turbo CORE technology5

4- and 8-core options

2 DDR3 memory channels supporting ECC UDIMM

1333, 1600, 1866 MHz memory speed6

Supports 1.5V, 2Rank

Up to 32GB memory capacity

Supports up to 2 DIMMs per memory channel

Total Cache: 16MB for 8-core, 8MB for 4-core

L2 Cache: up to 8MB total

L3 Cache: up to 8MB total

Intel shows off low-power chips at ISSCC

PC News Zone — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:41:00 +0000

Intel has announced development of an ulta-low voltage processor which is capable of operating at voltages as low as 280mV, claiming the feat will assist it produce future chips with a five-fold increase in energy efficiency. Announced ahead of the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, the chip is unlikely to win any performance awards. Based on a 32nm implementation of the original Pentium architecture, the prototype chip boasts a dynamic stroll reaching from 3MHz to 915MHz. The consequent is the Intel Near Voltage Threshold Processor, which can tick above at a low tempo while drawing fair 280mV. When in 'turbo' mode, at these speeds something of a relative thought considering the summit tempo of the NVT process is beneath a gigahertz, the chip runs on fair 1.2V. Intel also announced a modern method arrangement for floating-point processing, which allows the prototype processor to differ the precision of its calculations dynamically. The result, Intel claims, is a boost in energy efficiency of around sevenfold above traditional implementations. According to Intel's planned presentation, the variable-precision floating point fused-multiply add unit hits 52 to 162 gigaflops per watt at 1.45GHz. The technology will be used in Intel's future graphics products, the company confirmed, along with a vertex and pixel shading lighting accelerator capable of processing 2.05 gigavertices a moment while drawing fair 151mW. The announcements come as Intel looks to lead the way into 'exascale' computing: processing at an exaflop level, rather than the gigaflop or teraflop levels of current systems. To reach that goal, the company is attempting to produce processor designs that boast increases in energy efficiency of between fifty and a hundred times that of current chips. Much of the company's technology in this regard is dinky to the supercomputing market. The Many Integrated Cores (MIC) cards, Knights Ferry and Knights Bridge, as an example are fifty-core highly-parallel processors that are unlikely to find their way into the average gaming rig. While the technology is being developed for supercomputing applications, however, it will trickle down to the consumer level above time. Intel has already declared war on ARM in the tablet and smartphone space with a system-on-chip (SoC) variant of its Atom processor family with in-built Wi-Fi connectivity. Building in a five-fold increase in energy efficiency would surely assist encourage diagram makers to produce the jump from the ARM instruction set architecture to x86. Intel's work also holds the promise of cooler, faster chips on the desktop. As the number of transistors on a processor increases, so too does the risk of current leakage and heat dissipation issues. A vast increase in energy efficiency will surely assist the company in those regards until a practical alternative to silicon can be compose and proved to work on a commercial scale. Sadly, the company has yet to offer a trace as to when the technologies shown of at ISSCC will be making their way to the production lines, instead preferring to talk up its Ivy Bridge processor family featuring tri-gate transistor technology.

GlobalFoundries starts IBM chip production at Fab 8

PC News Zone — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:54:00 +0000

GlobalFoundries, the chip fabrication specialist born out of AMD, has announced that it has begun production at its latest Fab 8 facility in Saratoga County, New York. The first components to mosey off the company's production, GlobalFoundries has confirmed, will be based on the 32nm silicon-on-insulator technology jointly developed by members of IBM's Process Development Alliance, itself based on research conducted at the University at Albany's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. Designed, GlobalFoundries claims, to vastly improve performance in the areas of multi-core blueprint and graphics, the same SOI blueprint was used in the chips at the heart of Watson, the supercomputer-cum-expert system that shot to fame as a winning contestant on the US gameshow Jeopardy! early last year. Based in the Luther Forest Technology Campus, Fab 8 is claimed by GlobalFoundries to be the largest leading-edge semiconductor foundry in the world, with 300,000 square feet of clean-room space and a projected output of 60,000 wafers per month once fully ramped. The company has confirmed that production will concentrate on gate-first High-k Metal Gate (HKMG) manufacturing 32nm and 28nm parts, following the company's Fab 1 facility in Dresden hitting volume production on the same process. Using gate-first, contrasted with gate-last, manufacturing, GlobalFoundries claims, provides a saving of around 10-20 per cent compared to similar HKMG solutions while providing the whole benefit of scaling a blueprint down from a 45nm or 40nm process size. GlobalFoundries won't be the only company making IBM's modern chips, however: Big Blue's facility in East Fishkill, some 100 miles south of GlobalFoundries Fab 8, will also be churning out wafers for the company's latest designs. "Today's announcement is a natural extension of our longstanding partnership with IBM that includes production of 65nm and 45nm chips at our fabs in Singapore and Germany," explained GlobalFoundries chief executive Ajit Manocha. "With the addition of our newest factory in New York, we will now be jointly producing chips with IBM at four fabs on three continents." The chips, destined for server, storage and supercomputing applications, are also set to feature IBM's embedded DRAM (eDRAM) technology, which boosts on-processor memory performance while reducing component size to a third and standby power to a fifth of traditional SRAM components. GlobalFoundries commitment to gate-first manufacturing on 32nm and 28nm parts comes despite an announcement from the company in January last year that it would be bright to a gate-last process for 22nm and 20nm parts, joining the majority of the fabrication world in placing the transistors' gates at the conclusion of manufacturing.

Leaked AMD roadmap reveals next-gen Fusion tablet chips

PC News Zone — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 20:59:00 +0000

Until recently, AMD has kept pretty mum on its tablet plans, with it only officially entering the fray last month. It's clear that the first batch of Z-Series chips, codenamed Desna, are are not terribly different from the rest Fusion line but, according to a leaked roadmap, that will all change with its successor -- Hondo. Supposedly the next gen of tablet APUs will ditch a number features that aren't essential to burgeoning form factor, including VGA output, PCIe support, and couple of USB pathways. It will also add an "active standby" mode for maintaining connectivity while reducing power draw and cut TDP by about a third. Hondo is expect to enter production in Q2 of next year, and be succeeded by Samara which will feature a new graphics core. Check out the source link for a few more slides.

Sandy Bridge Buyerâ€™s Guide

PC News Zone — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 09:07:09 +0000

Intel released its second-generation Core CPUs back in January. Unfortunately, the excitement generated by the release of the fastest mainstream desktop processors was quickly dampened by the Cougar Point chipset recall. To be clear, this issue affected only the earliest Sandy Bridge-compatible motherboards, and not the Sandy Bridge CPUs themselves. This issue is now fixed—there are no defective motherboards available through reputable North American retailers like Newegg and Amazon. In the almost half-year since the initial Sandy Bridge CPU release, the platform has matured, with CPU variants available for almost every budget and a number of niches, as well as motherboard chipsets with a variety of feature sets and in form factors from mini-ITX to extended-ATX. Succinctly, the second-gen Core CPUs are astonishingly powerful and sip electricity. As Anand aptly described them, “architecturally it’s the biggest change we’ve seen since Conroe.” I agree with Anand—not since I upgraded from an AMD Athlon X2 3800+ to an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 at the end of 2006 have I been so impressed by a new CPU as I have by the Core i7-2600K.

This is the first guide I’ve written for AnandTech that will not be ‘fair and balanced’ for both AMD and Intel. I hoped this month’s guide would detail higher-end builds featuring and comparing AMD’s Bulldozer CPUs and Intel’s Core i5 and i7 chips, but unfortunately, AMD’s release of its high-end desktop Bulldozer SKUs is now delayed until September. The midrange Llano desktop APUs are scheduled for retail availability in early July, and Llano-based laptops are already showing up here and there online (though as of the time of writing, they are not available for actual sale). Thus, AMD’s entire product line will be refreshed within the next few months. With the imminent release of radically new APUs and no currently available AMD CPUs that can compete with Intel’s higher-end CPUs, this month’s guide focuses on the second-generation Intel Core processors. I simply don’t think it makes much sense to build an AMD system at least until Llano’s desktop release—unless you need a budget rig and you need it right now. And lest I be accused of favoritism, next month’s guide will likely focus on Llano-based desktop computers.

It’s also a great time to build an Intel-based computer. The successor to LGA 1155 (the Sandy Bridge socket), LGA 2011, is not due out until late this year, and looks to supersede LGA 1366 at Intel’s highest-end of the desktop CPU spectrum. Other than supporting Sandy Bridge-E CPUs, LGA 2011 will offer PCIe 3 (which current GPUs can’t take advantage of) and native USB 3.0 (even though third-party USB 3.0 controllers are already shipping on many Intel and AMD motherboards). Considering how capable the Core i5-2500K and Core i7-2600K are today, it’s unlikely Sandy Bridge-E will field any model that’s astonishingly faster than what’s already available. Thus, if you buy a Core i7-2600K now, you’ll be at the near pinnacle of desktop computing for at least 5-6 months. I think there are times to buy and times to wait. It’s a bad idea to buy right before a lineup refresh (as is the case with AMD today), but it’s also unwise to delay building a system to hold out for the next big thing when that’s half a year away and unlikely to be that much better!

PR: Japanese â€˜Kâ€™ Computer Is Ranked Most Powerful

pcnz_admin — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 15:14:59 +0000

The computer, known as â€œK Computer,â€ is three times faster than a Chinese rival that previously held the top position, said Jack Dongarra, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville who keeps the official rankings of computer performance.

K, built by Fujitsu and located at the Riken Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan, represents a giant leap forward in speed. It will also undoubtedly be a source of national pride for Japan, at least among computer scientists, who take the race for fastest computer quite seriously.

â€œItâ€™s a very impressive machine,â€ Mr. Dongarra said. â€œItâ€™s a lot more powerful than the other computers.â€

The latest ranking of the top 500 computers, to be released Monday, is determined by running a standard mathematical equation. The winning computer was able to make 8.2 quadrillion calculations per second, or in more technical terms, 8.2 petaflops per second.

The performance of K is equivalent to linking around one million desktop computers, Mr. Dongarra said.

Supercomputers are used for earthquake simulations, climate modeling, nuclear research and weapons development and testing, among other things. Businesses also use the machines for oil exploration and rapid stock trading.

Building supercomputers is costly and involves connecting thousands of small computers in a data center. K is made up of 672 cabinets filled with system boards. Although considered energy-efficient, it still uses enough electricity to power nearly 10,000 homes at a cost of around $10 million annually, Mr. Dongarra said.

The research lab that houses K plans to increase the computerâ€™s size to 800 cabinets. That will raise its speed, which already exceeds that of its five closest competitors combined, Mr. Dongarra said.

â€œKâ€ is short to the Japanese word â€œKei,â€ which means 10 quadrillion, the ultimate goal for the number of calculations the computer can perform per second.

K succeeded in pushing the previous leader, Chinaâ€™s Tianhe-1A supercomputer, at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, China, to second place. Tianhe-1A had been the first Chinese computer to be ranked on top, signaling the countryâ€™s growing technological might.

The fastest computer in the United States, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Oak Ridge, Tenn., placed third.

Asian countries have made huge investments in supercomputing and now dominate the upper echelon of the field. Japan and China hold four of the top five spots in the latest ranking.

However, in terms of the top 10, the United States remains the leader with five computers. They are at government research facilities.

Japanâ€™s top supercomputer ranking is its first since 2004. The United States and China are the only other countries to have held the title.

The rankings, which are issued every six months, change frequently and reflect how fast computer power is advancing. For example, the top ranked computer in June 2008, at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, is now in 10th place.

Mr. Dongarra said a computer called Blue Waters, being developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, may rival K in speed.

Supercomputer “K computer” Takes First Place in World
Achieves world’s best performance of 8.162 petaflops to lead TOP500 list

Tokyo, June 20, 2011 – RIKEN and Fujitsu have taken first place on the 37th TOP500 list announced today at the 26th International Supercomputing Conference (ISC’11) held in Hamburg, Germany. This ranking is based on a performance measurement of the “K computer(1),” currently under their joint development.

The TOP500-ranked K computer system, currently in the configuration stage, has 672 computer racks equipped with a current total of 68,544 CPUs. This half-build system achieved the world’s best LINPACK(2) benchmark performance of 8.162 petaflops (quadrillion floating-point operations per second), to place it at the head of the TOP500 list. In addition, the system has recorded high standards with a computing efficiency ratio of 93.0%. This is the first time since June 2004 that the Japanese supercomputer “Earth Simulator” has been ranked first on the TOP500 list.

1. Background

RIKEN and Fujitsu have been working together to develop the K computer, with the aim of beginning shared use by November 2012, as a part of the High-Performance Computing Infrastructure (HPCI) initiative led by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). The K computer will be comprised of over 800 computer racks-each equipped with ultrafast and energy-efficient CPUs-that access into a network capable of an immense amount of interconnectivity. The supercomputer system brings together leading-edge technologies for high performance and high reliability.

To test the system’s performance at the configuration stage, the K computer’s processing speed was measured by the LINPACK benchmark program, placing it on the 37th TOP500 ranking of the world’s fastest supercomputers. The TOP500 ranking list began in 1993 and is updated twice a year in June and November.

2. Performance and Future Status of the K computer

The LINPACK benchmark program, running on the part of the system that employs 68,544 CPUs installed on the K computer being configured, recorded the world’s top performance of 8.162 petaflops. This gave it the number-one position on the TOP500 list. Moreover, for one of the world’s largest supercomputers, it achieved an extraordinarily high computing efficiency ratio of 93.0%. This achievement is made possible by the K computer’s integration of technologies, including its massive number of CPUs, the interconnectivity that links them together, and the software that is able to bring out the highest performance from the hardware.

When configuration of the K computer is complete in 2012, it is designed to achieve LINPACK performance of 10 petaflops. It will be widely used in a variety of computational science fields where it is expected to contribute to the generation of world-class research results. The K computer is a wholly made-in-Japan supercomputer, from the research and development of the processors, to system design and manufacturing. Use of the K computer is expected to have a groundbreaking impact in fields ranging from global climate research, meteorology, disaster prevention, and medicine, thereby contributing to the creation of a prosperous and secure society. RIKEN and Fujitsu will continue to work tirelessly toward completing the system’s deployment in 2012.

3. RIKEN and Fujitsu Comments

Ryoji Noyori, President, RIKEN

I would like to express my deep gratitude to everyone, beginning with our colleagues at our development partner Fujitsu Limited, who worked so valiantly on the construction of the K computer even under the severe conditions following the Great East Japan Earthquake. It is wonderful to be able to share the joy of this moment with them. I very much believe that the strength and perseverance that was demonstrated during this project will also make possible the recovery of the devastated Tohoku region. As we move forward to complete this project by next June, we will maintain our firm commitment to the maintenance and operation of the system, and I hope to see wonderful results when we begin to make the world’s top performing supercomputer available to users around the world.

Michiyoshi Mazuka, Chairman and Representative Director, Fujitsu Limited

I am delighted that we were able to achieve this result, made possible through the tremendous efforts of all involved, despite the impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake. In particular, I am sincerely grateful to our partners in the Tohoku region for their commitment to delivering a steady supply of components, even though they themselves were affected by the disaster. Bringing together hundreds of thousands of components to quickly launch such a massive-scale computing system-which would have been nearly impossible using conventional technologies-requires an incredible level of reliability. I believe that this reliability is truly the pinnacle of Japanese manufacturing. Without being too pleased with ourselves and losing sight of our goal, going forward we will proceed with the system’s deployment and, once complete, we look forward to contributing to the achievements that the K computer will make possible.

Fujitsu K supercomputer now ranked fastest in the world, dethrones China’s Tianhe-1A

Mark — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:33:33 +0000

Remember the K — the Fujitsu supercomputer that promised to do a whopping ten petaflops by the year 2012? Well, it hasn’t reached that threshold just yet, but according to the latest Top 500 supercomputer list, it’s still faster than any other machine on Earth. In fact, the top-ranked beast is more powerful than the next five supercomputers combined, consumes enough electricity to power about 10,000 homes for a full year, and is capable of churning out about 8.2 quadrillion calculations per second — three times as many as what runner-up (and former number-one) Tianhe-1A can process. Today’s announcement marks the first time since 2004 that a Japanese creation sits atop Top500.org’s rankings, but Fujitsu isn’t exactly resting on its laurels. Before deploying it next year, engineers at the Riken Advanced Institute for Computational Science are aiming to add about 100,000 cores to the K’s collection of 548,352, which would provide it with even more computational muscle, and likely spell doom for all of humanity. Find out more in the PR after the break.

Press Release:

Supercomputer “K computer” Takes First Place in World
Achieves world’s best performance of 8.162 petaflops to lead TOP500 list

Tokyo, June 20, 2011 – RIKEN and Fujitsu have taken first place on the 37th TOP500 list announced today at the 26th International Supercomputing Conference (ISC’11) held in Hamburg, Germany. This ranking is based on a performance measurement of the “K computer(1),” currently under their joint development.

The TOP500-ranked K computer system, currently in the configuration stage, has 672 computer racks equipped with a current total of 68,544 CPUs. This half-build system achieved the world’s best LINPACK(2) benchmark performance of 8.162 petaflops (quadrillion floating-point operations per second), to place it at the head of the TOP500 list. In addition, the system has recorded high standards with a computing efficiency ratio of 93.0%. This is the first time since June 2004 that the Japanese supercomputer “Earth Simulator” has been ranked first on the TOP500 list.

1. Background

RIKEN and Fujitsu have been working together to develop the K computer, with the aim of beginning shared use by November 2012, as a part of the High-Performance Computing Infrastructure (HPCI) initiative led by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). The K computer will be comprised of over 800 computer racks-each equipped with ultrafast and energy-efficient CPUs-that access into a network capable of an immense amount of interconnectivity. The supercomputer system brings together leading-edge technologies for high performance and high reliability.

To test the system’s performance at the configuration stage, the K computer’s processing speed was measured by the LINPACK benchmark program, placing it on the 37th TOP500 ranking of the world’s fastest supercomputers. The TOP500 ranking list began in 1993 and is updated twice a year in June and November.

2. Performance and Future Status of the K computer

The LINPACK benchmark program, running on the part of the system that employs 68,544 CPUs installed on the K computer being configured, recorded the world’s top performance of 8.162 petaflops. This gave it the number-one position on the TOP500 list. Moreover, for one of the world’s largest supercomputers, it achieved an extraordinarily high computing efficiency ratio of 93.0%. This achievement is made possible by the K computer’s integration of technologies, including its massive number of CPUs, the interconnectivity that links them together, and the software that is able to bring out the highest performance from the hardware.

When configuration of the K computer is complete in 2012, it is designed to achieve LINPACK performance of 10 petaflops. It will be widely used in a variety of computational science fields where it is expected to contribute to the generation of world-class research results. The K computer is a wholly made-in-Japan supercomputer, from the research and development of the processors, to system design and manufacturing. Use of the K computer is expected to have a groundbreaking impact in fields ranging from global climate research, meteorology, disaster prevention, and medicine, thereby contributing to the creation of a prosperous and secure society. RIKEN and Fujitsu will continue to work tirelessly toward completing the system’s deployment in 2012.

3. RIKEN and Fujitsu Comments

Ryoji Noyori, President, RIKEN

I would like to express my deep gratitude to everyone, beginning with our colleagues at our development partner Fujitsu Limited, who worked so valiantly on the construction of the K computer even under the severe conditions following the Great East Japan Earthquake. It is wonderful to be able to share the joy of this moment with them. I very much believe that the strength and perseverance that was demonstrated during this project will also make possible the recovery of the devastated Tohoku region. As we move forward to complete this project by next June, we will maintain our firm commitment to the maintenance and operation of the system, and I hope to see wonderful results when we begin to make the world’s top performing supercomputer available to users around the world.

Michiyoshi Mazuka, Chairman and Representative Director, Fujitsu Limited

I am delighted that we were able to achieve this result, made possible through the tremendous efforts of all involved, despite the impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake. In particular, I am sincerely grateful to our partners in the Tohoku region for their commitment to delivering a steady supply of components, even though they themselves were affected by the disaster. Bringing together hundreds of thousands of components to quickly launch such a massive-scale computing system-which would have been nearly impossible using conventional technologies-requires an incredible level of reliability. I believe that this reliability is truly the pinnacle of Japanese manufacturing. Without being too pleased with ourselves and losing sight of our goal, going forward we will proceed with the system’s deployment and, once complete, we look forward to contributing to the achievements that the K computer will make possible.

PR: AMD resurrects its ‘FX’ brand for speed freaks, lexicon lovers

pcnz_admin — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 05:47:49 +0000

AMD Continues to Power the Ultimate PC Gaming and Hi-Def Experience With FX Brand and New “Gaming Evolved” Collaborations
June 7, 2011 12:01 AM EDT

LOS ANGELES, CA — (MARKET WIRE) — 06/07/11 — AMD (NYSE: AMD) today reintroduced the FX brand for PC processors and platforms at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). FX-branded products will be geared toward enthusiast PCs and HD entertainment aficionados. AMD also announced new members for its “Gaming Evolved” program, driving the PC gaming experience forward with native HD3D support in Eidos Montreal’s “Deus Ex: Human Revolution,” and new collaborations with Bioware, Creative Assembly and Codemasters.

FX Brand Enables Top-Flight Experience for Gamers and HD Media Enthusiasts The FX brand is associated with AMD’s fastest processors and most powerful platforms — those designed for unrestrained PC performance for the ultimate gaming and HD entertainment experiences. In addition, these processors and platforms drive rich visuals for graphics-intensive applications and high-resolution AMD Eyefinity multi-monitor configurations. The first platform to earn the FX title, the “Scorpius” platform, will feature the now-available AMD 9-series chipset motherboards and AMD Radeon” HD 6000 Series graphics cards, plus the upcoming “Zambezi” unlocked, native eight-core processor.(1)

“AMD’s FX brand will enable an over-the-top experience for PC enthusiasts,” said Leslie Sobon, vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, AMD. “By combining an unlocked, native eight-core processor, the latest in chipset technology, and AMD’s latest graphics cards, FX customers will enjoy an unrivalled feature set and amazing control over their PC’s performance.”

AMD Adds New Members, Titles to Gaming Evolved Furthering its commitment to PC gaming innovation and promoting an open and advanced experience for gamers, AMD continues to add members and grow relationships in the second year of the Gaming Evolved program. True to its previously announced commitment to PC gamers, AMD remains focused on working with the best software developers to maximize the user experience. Gaming Evolved combines AMD’s expanded support for Microsoft DirectXï¿½ 11 games (which use the latest graphics technology from Microsoft), along with AMD Eyefinity multiple-monitor configurations, AMD Dual Graphics (which enable multiple graphics processors in one computer), and native AMD HD3D support to enable standards-based stereo 3D display capabilities for a truly immersive 3D visual experience.(2)

“Since the launch of AMD’s open stereo 3D initiative last year, developers have been embracing native 3D support that will work with a range of 3D glasses and monitors from different vendors,” said Neal Robison, director of ISV Relations, AMD. “This excitement by developers is starting to pay off with the announcement by Eidos-Montreal that ‘Deus Ex: Human Revolution,’ will enable native stereo 3D support.”

With AMD HD3D, gamers can experience amazing stereoscopic 3D gaming image quality for a more realistic experience. AMD HD3D technology supports more than 400 titles through AMD’s technology partners, and AMD’s open 3D ecosystem approach encourages the broadest selection of 3D solutions, available at the most affordable cost.

“We are thrilled to be working with AMD, an innovative leader in PC hardware and software, incorporating their technology into Deus Ex: Human Revolution for PC,” said Stephane D’Astous, general manager of Eidos-Montreal, a Square Enix studio. “It’s also exciting that Deus Ex: Human Revolution is the first video game title optimized to natively utilize AMD HD3D-capable hardware. Coupled with AMD Eyefinity functionality, PC gamers will be even more immersed in the action-rich gameplay and compelling storyline.”

In addition to Eidos, AMD’s new partners include major developers of critically acclaimed titles, including Bioware’s “Dragon Age II,” Creative Assembly’s “SHOGUN 2: Total War” and Codemasters’ “DiRT 3,” which will include native support for DirectX 11, AMD Eyefinity and AMD Dual Graphics technologies.

AMD at E3 2011 E3 attendees can experience these stunning technologies with their own eyes at the AMD booth (#823 South Hall), which will feature demos of AMD technologies and upcoming game titles including “Orcs Must Die!” from Robot Entertainment and DirectX 11-enabled “Blacklight: Retribution” from Perfect World.

Supporting Resources

Read AMD posts from E3 on the Game Blog.
Learn more about AMD Gaming Evolved here.
Get additional information on AMD HD3D technology here.
Follow news from the AMD team on Twitter at @AMD_Unprocessed.
Become a fan of AMD technology on Facebook.

About AMD AMD (NYSE: AMD) is a semiconductor design innovator leading the next era of vivid digital experiences with its groundbreaking AMD Fusion Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) that power a wide range of computing devices. AMD’s server computing products are focused on driving industry-leading cloud computing and virtualization environments. AMD’s superior graphics technologies are found in a variety of solutions ranging from game consoles, PCs to supercomputers. For more information, visit http://www.amd.com.

AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, Radeon and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

(1) AMD’s product warranty does not cover damages caused by overclocking even when overclocking is enabled via AMD software.

(2) AMD Eyefinity technology works with games that support non-standard aspect ratios, which is required for panning across multiple displays. To enable more than two displays, additional panels with native DisplayPort” connectors, and/or DisplayPort” compliant active adapters to convert your monitor’s native input to your cards DisplayPort” or Mini-DisplayPort” connector(s), are required. Support for six simultaneous displays may require complementary products compatible with DisplayPort 1.2 Multi-Stream Transport. Maximum number of configured displays may vary — check with your component or system manufacturer for specific model capabilities and supported technologies. SLS (“Single Large Surface”) functionality requires an identical display resolution on all configured displays.

Home smartphones TI Announces OMAP4470 and Specs: PowerVR SGX544, 1.8 GHz Dual Core Cortex-A9

pcnz_admin — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 11:25:43 +0000

he last time we visited TI’s OMAP 4 SoC was at Mobile World Congress, there we benchmarked the LG Optimus 3D and came away decently impressed with performance even on a pre-launch device. Back then, Anand wrote that the remainder of this year and the next is going to be a heated battle for dual core and quad core SoCs fighting in the tablet and smartphone space. After today, you can add Windows 8 to that list as well. Today, TI is announcing its latest SoC, the OMAP4470, which offers a 20% increase in CPU clocks and an entirely new SGX 544GPU over OMAP4460.

OMAP4470 is architecturally very similar to OMAP4460 with a number of notable changes. First off is that 20% increase in CPU clocks from 1.5 GHz in OMAP4460 to 1.8 GHz in OMAP4470. TI’s comparison point for most of the OMAP4470 specs is the OMAP4430 which has its two Cortex-A9s clocked at 1.0 GHz. The two Cortex-M3 cores remain clocked at 266 MHz for handling multimedia processing and background realtime events. The end result is an effort to both let the two Cortex-A9s remain idle for more of the time, and unburden them during heavy processing. TI feels this dichotomy of two big and fast Cortex-A9 cores for web browsing and very computationally intensive tasks augmented with two ligher weight, low power Cortex-M3 cores offers it unique power savings potential. The two Cortex-M3 cores can offload Thumb and Thumb-2 instructions, as well as some hardware multiply and divide operations from the A9s.

The real interesting change with OMAP4470, however, is a similar two-pronged approach on the GPU side of things. First, OMAP4470 moves from the PowerVR SGX540 present in OMAP4430 and OMAP4460 to a more powerful single core (MP1, if you will) PowerVR SGX544 GPU which offers 2.5x the performance of OMAP4430′s SGX540.

If you recall from Anand’s excellent iPad 2 GPU exploration, SGX543/544 features four USSE2 pipes each with a 4-wide vector ALU churning thorugh 4 MADs per clock. I’m reproducing his table below, but if you mentally replace SGX543 with SGX544 you get the same picture. As an aside, the difference between SGX543 and SGX544 is purely that full DirectX 9 compliance is offered in the latter, making it a possible shoe-in for future Windows 8 platforms.

Mobile SoC GPU Comparison
	PowerVR SGX 530	PowerVR SGX 535	PowerVR SGX 540	PowerVR SGX 543/544	PowerVR SGX 543/544MP2	GeForce ULP	Kal-El GeForce
SIMD Name	USSE	USSE	USSE	USSE2	USSE2	Core	Core
# of SIMDs	2	2	4	4	8	8	12
MADs per SIMD	2	2	2	4	4	1	?
Total MADs	4	4	8	16	32	8	?
GFLOPS @ 200MHz	1.6 GFLOPS	1.6 GFLOPS	3.2 GFLOPS	6.4 GFLOPS	12.8 GFLOPS	3.2 GFLOPS	?
GFLOPS @ 300MHz	2.4 GFLOPS	2.4 GFLOPS	4.8 GFLOPS	9.6 GFLOPS	19.2 GFLOPS	4.8 GFLOPS	?

If you recall the clocks for the OMAP4430, and OMAP4460, you can start to see where TI’s 2.5x claim over its own OMAP4430 comes into play. Going from 304 MHz to 384 MHz is an ~25% increase in clock speed, which adds into the 200% increase in MADs per clock from the change from USSE to USSE2 going from SGX540 to SGX544. Do the math and it works out to almost exactly 2.5x.

TI OMAP 4xxx SoC GPU Comparison
	OMAP4430	OMAP4460	OMAP4470
GPU Used	PowerVR SGX540	PowerVR SGX540	PowerVR SGX544
Clock	304 MHz	384 MHz	384 MHz

The next part of what’s new in OMAP4470 is inclusion of a new hardware composition system for doing display composition without taxing the SGX544. TI wouldn’t disclose whose IP this is, but did acknowledge that it’s from a third party and includes a dedicated 2D graphics core for compositing the entire display. Ordinarily this is done on the GPU, but TI hopes to accomplish the same composition on this hardware accelerator in a more power and bandwidth efficient manner for driving large displays while maintaining low power profile.

When big 3D applications kick in, then SGX544 powers up and takes over, but for the majority of UI paradigms, TI believes its hardware composition engine can enable power savings – analogous to the way the two Cortex-M3 cores augment the two Cortex-A9s. It’s an interesting approach, and TI claims the hardware composition abstraction layer (HAL) is already completed to enable Android and other mobile OSes to leverage that acceleration immediately.

OMAP 4470 vs. 4430 Feature List – Provided by TI
Feature	Benefit
Two ARM Cortex A9 MPCores @ 1.8GHz per core	80% increase in Web browsing performance
Two ARM Cortex-M3 cores	Smart multicore processing optimized for low-power and real-time responsiveness
SGX544 GFX Core running at 384 MHz	2.5x overall graphics performance increase; support for DirectX, OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenVG 1.1, and OpenCL 1.1
Hardware composition engine with dedicated 2D graphics core	Frees GPU to manage intensive tasks; maximizes power- efficiency
Display subsystem	Supports as many as three HD displays and up to QXGA (2048×1536) resolution; HDMI supporting stereoscopic 3D
Dual-channel, 466 MHz LPDDR2 memory	Higher memory bandwidth enables rendering and compositing of multilayer content at high resolutions
Complete pin-to-pin hardware and software compatibility	Rapid transition and maximum re-use of investment from OMAP4430 and OMAP4460 processors

The real hope with OMAP4470 is the ability to drive very high resolution displays as well, up QXGA (2048×1536) and maintaining HDMI 1.4a stereoscopic 3D support. TI expects OMAP4470 devices to arrive in the first half of 2012 with sampling happening in the second half of 2011.

More on Intel’s Thin Mini-ITX Standard

pcnz_admin — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 07:01:21 +0000

I stopped by Intel’s booth at Computex to grab a few shots of the small but potent Thin Mini-ITX ecosystem. If you read our coverage yesterday you’ll remember that Thin Mini-ITX is just a low profile Mini-ITX standard designed for affordable (or potentially DIY) all-in-one PCs.

Intel had a number of Sandy Bridge motherboards on display that conform to the Thin Mini-ITX standard. Most of the boards use Intel’s H61 chipset.

The cooling system is also standardized. Below is an example of the cooling solution Intel will be selling in Q4 of this year:

Intel also had a number of all-in-one cases available. While most weren’t all that elegant looking, this model from Loop looked very Apple-like:

There were a number of DC power adapters on display, ranging from 150W to 180W. The power connector is also a standard.

Going forward as the majority of desktops move to even lower TDPs, these DIY all-in-one systems may end up becoming more popular. One major issue I see right away is the lack of support for discrete graphics. Go far enough into the future and perhaps that won’t be so important, but today it’s not fun driving a high resolution panel off of SNB integrated graphics. I do hope that as Intel pushes for this standard it doesn’t forget that discrete GPUs are still quite necessary for many users in 2011. Maybe we’ll eventually get that upgradable 27-inch iMac that I was asking for recently.