Hasta La Gadget!

Just two days after the earnings report of its storied rival, AMD has followed suit with a Q1 2013 balance sheet of its own. The company reported a net loss for the quarter of $146 million, which stings, but isn’t quite so painful as the $473 million loss that it took just one quarter earlier. Meanwhile, AMD’s revenue of $1.09 billion is more or less flat from the previous quarter, but has fallen by $500 million since Q1 of the previous year. The announcement was enough to make investors wince, as AMD’s stock price is now declining in after-hours trading. As for a silver lining, AMD emphasized that its gear will power the upcoming PS4. If Microsoft were to make a similar decision, then perhaps AMD could turn its financial frown upside-down.

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Source: AMD

Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox may sacrifice backward-compatibility for 360 games in favor of easier cross-platform development for Xbox and Windows PC games, sources claim, following Sony in jumping to AMD chips. The unofficially titled “Xbox 720” will ditch IBM Power PC processors for AMD’s x86-based chips, Bloomberg reports, bringing greater hardware parity to Xbox and PC, and allowing game developers to more easily release titles for both platforms. However, those upgrading from an existing Xbox 360 to the new console may be less impressed.

That’s because, without some clever emulation, an x86-based console would not be able to run games designed for the older, Power PC-based versions. Any catalog of existing Xbox 360 titles would not, therefore, run on the new hardware.

Microsoft could work around that limitation by cooking up an emulator that, in effect, creates a virtual Xbox 360 within which to play older titles. However, it could also choose to chase new game sales completely, or alternatively offer some sort of cloud-based game access for older titles. Previous leaks have already suggested that the new Xbox will be designed to be permanently connected to the internet.

Sony has already paved the way for a jump to AMD silicon, confirming earlier this year that the PlayStation 4 will use a custom SoC from the processor firm. That chip will pair eight 64-bit Jaguar cores with AMD Radeon graphics, among other things, while older titles – the game discs for which will be no longer compatible with the console – will be delivered from the Gaikai cloud-gaming service.

The Xbox 720 almost certainly won’t use the same SoC, but a similar arrangement of Jaguar cores is likely. AMD is particularly eager to pick up design wins from gaming heavyweights, such as Sony and Microsoft, because it offers a way out of the ever-shrinking profit margins in desktop and notebook PCs; the company’s willingness to compete on price apparently left NVIDIA out of the loop, with the chip rival saying that it was unwilling to work for the sort of budget Sony had in mind for the PS4.

For Microsoft, a common system architecture between Xbox and PC would make cross-platform gaming far more straightforward, and allow it to better leverage its footprint in both categories. For game developers, there would be less investment – in terms of both time and money – required to release titles for each platform, something Microsoft supposedly hopes will court coders back to Xbox and away from more “casual” platforms or upstarts like OUYA.

Exactly when we might see the new “Durango” Xbox is unclear at this stage. Microsoft was tipped to be readying a reveal sometime this month, but is said to have squashed that timeline in favor of an event later in Q2. That could be at E3 2013 in June, or at a standalone event on May 21, other sources claim.

Xbox 720 AMD heart tipped as backward-compatibility cut is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
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Microsoft’s next Xbox, which could get an initial unveiling as early as next month, will use an AMD system-on-a-chip according to a new Bloomberg report. The new AMD SoC will mean that Microsoft is moving to an x86-based system architecture, which Sony’s upcoming PlayStation 4 is also adopting. The change is great news for AMD, and for gamers, and bad news for AMD’s chief rival Intel.

The new Microsoft console will be running a “Jaguar” CPU, which is also what’s going into Sony’s PS4, alongside a Radeon graphics processor from ATI, an AMD subsidiary. The similarity between the two SoCs employed in each next-gen console should go a long way toward silencing complaints from developers that it’s too difficult and resource-intensive to develop for each type of console. A shared x86 architecture means that it’ll be much easier to port titles, both between consoles and from the PC.

For AMD, it means gaining access to a much bigger chunk of the console gaming industry, at a crucial juncture: the desktop and notebook PC market is shrinking, facing increasing encroachment from devices like the iPad, meaning there’s less room to vie with Intel for market share in a space where Intel already clearly dominates. The console industry hasn’t exactly been a shining beacon of growth itself, but with a hardware refresh imminent, AMD is in the best position to capitalize should consumer interest once again be caught by fancy new console devices.

The problem with Microsoft’s decision to reportedly change over to AMD is that it will likely render games made for the 360 incompatible with the next-generation platform. But long-term, the decision means it’s much easier for developers to work with, which should translate to an alleviation of financial pressures on game studios that are already facing revenue crunches which are forcing cost-cutting measures. The console exclusive might be more of a rarity, but gamers benefit, and we could also see shorter development cycles leading to more frequent game releases.

Another party left out of the fun might be the Wii U, which uses a PowerPC based processor under the hood. But overall this is very good news for gamers, since it could both free up resources for developers to spend on innovation and R&D, and suggests both consoles will behave much more like home entertainment PCs based around the TV.

Premiere Pro has already been tearing through video with OpenCL on Macs for a year, and now AMD and Adobe have teamed up to bring support for the open standard to Windows with the software’s next version. Not only does the duo claim it’s the first time Microsoft’s OS has been graced with hardware-accelerated video editing using OpenCL, but they boast that exporting video replete with effects from a source to a final format can now be done up to 4.3 times faster. There’s no word on when the fresh release of Premiere Pro will arrive, but if it’s any consolation, Adobe says it’s set to unveil some “incredible enhancements” to its video editing tools at NAB next week.

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Source: AMD

For all the money and effort poured into supercomputers, their lifespans can be brutally short. See IBM’s Roadrunner as a textbook example: the 116,640-core cluster was smashing records just five years ago, and yet it’s already considered so behind the times that Los Alamos National Laboratory is taking it out of action today. Don’t mourn too much for the one-time legend, however. The blend of Opteron and Cell processors proved instrumental to understanding energy flow in weapons while also advancing the studies of HIV, nanowires and the known universe. Roadrunner should even be useful in its last gasps, as researchers will have a month to experiment with the system’s data routing and OS memory compression before it’s dismantled in earnest. It’s true that the supercomputer has been eclipsed by cheaper, faster or greener competitors, including its reborn Cray arch-nemesis — but there’s no question that we’ll have learned from Roadrunner’s brief moment in the spotlight.

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Via: NBC

Source: Los Alamos National Laboratory