Hasta La Gadget!

AMD has been suffering a conspicuous brain drain, with executives like ATI veteran Rick Bergman and CTO Eric Demers crossing over to tangentially or directly competitive companies like NVIDIA and Qualcomm. Chalk up another one for the list — strategic development VP Bob Feldstein has bounded towards NVIDIA’s (literally) greener pastures. The blow cuts deeper than usual through Feldstein’s responsibility for graphics in most of the consoles from the past few years: he headed up work behind the Xenos chip in earlier Xbox 360s and the Hollywood core in the Wii, and he likely had some say in the Wii U’s video hardware as well. While the staff shuffle won’t directly affect AMD’s Fusion processors or Radeon cards, it’s hard to see much of a positive for AMD’s future in video gaming, even in the light of rumors that the next PlayStation and Xbox might use some of Feldstein’s work.

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

AMD exec behind Wii and Xbox 360 graphics jumps the fence to NVIDIA originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 15:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has quietly hired ex-AMD engineer John Bruno, the man responsible in no small part for the Trinity APU. Bruno is now “System Architect at Apple” according to a recent update to his LinkedIn profile, though the exact nature of his role at the Cupertino company has not been detailed. Still, there’s no shortage of potential speculation as to what the chip expert could be doing.

Bruno was at graphics card manufacturer ATI before it was acquired by AMD, but left the company after the sweeping job cuts at the chip firm back in November 2011. AMD cut 10-percent of jobs in an attempt to save money, with some significant losses in expertise; as well as Bruno, several other processor experts left to take up SoC roles with Samsung and other firms.

At Apple, Bruno is likely to be taking up similar reins as he managed at AMD. That could be part of Apple’s rumored progress working on its own processors for mobile and desktop; the company has already pushed ahead with its Apple Ax range of ARM-based chips for phones and tablets, and long-standing rumors suggest the company is also planning to shift its desktop line of MacBooks and Macs onto ARM silicon at some point too.

Even if that’s not Bruno’s initial focus, his expertise in multi-core processors such as AMD’s innovative APU should serve Apple well for future products wanting to deliver superlative graphics performance alongside solid battery life. There’s more on what APUs like Trinity can do here.

[via SemiAccurate – thanks Stefan!]

Apple grabs AMD Trinity genius John Bruno is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

HP has been fleshing out its Ultrabook lineup as of late, most recently adding the metal-clad Envy Spectre XT to the mix, but the company is also addressing the lower end of the market with its Sleekbook line, announced back in May. Confusingly, these thin-and-light systems look exactly the same as the new Envy-branded Ultrabooks, except that the Sleekbooks are less expensive — namely because for one reason or another they don’t meet Intel’s Ultrabook guidelines. One such notebook, the Envy Sleekbook 6z, stands apart from the Ultrabook fold with an AMD Trinity APU — a spec that helps keep the starting price nice and low at $600.

That’s not to say that all of HP’s Sleekbooks ditch Intel processors, but given the choice between and AMD- and Intel-based model we quickly chose the former. After all, the 6z is the first Trinity-powered system we’ve had the chance to test, so we were naturally curious to see how it stacks up against recent Ivy Bridge machines — and we imagine you are, too. So without any further ado, let’s get to it.

Continue reading HP Envy Sleekbook 6z review: an inexpensive thin-and-light with AMD innards

HP Envy Sleekbook 6z review: an inexpensive thin-and-light with AMD innards originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Jul 2012 16:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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RationalCraft brought its surreal Winscape virtual window to market when the Wii was virtually the only game in town for affordable motion tracking. Microsoft’s Kinect has certainly changed the rules of the game since then, so it’s almost natural that a fourth-generation Winscape has just launched to make use of the much more sophisticated sensor. For a start, there’s no need to dress like Flavor Flav anymore: the camera can recognize anyone, even passers-by, without an oversized necklace. The larger-than-life footage used to generate the window effect has been given its own bump, too, and the app can now handle 4K video as long as the Mac underneath (sorry, Windows folks) is powerful enough to drive it. For those who truly want to be disconnected from reality, there’s even six-display support provided it’s all hooked up to a Mac Pro and a pair of three-output Radeon HD 5770 video cards. RationalCraft’s software is free to try out now, although the requirement for at least two big TVs, a Kinect controller and a fast Mac should say all there is to know about the practical cost of pretending the Golden Gate Bridge is visible from inside a living room in Cleveland.

Continue reading Winscape virtual window makes the leap to Kinect in 4K-capable, 6-screen glory (video)

Filed under: Displays

Winscape virtual window makes the leap to Kinect in 4K-capable, 6-screen glory (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Jul 2012 21:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AMD is ready to release the new AMD Radeon HD 7950 GHz Edition graphics card. As a competitor to the nVidia GeForce GTX 670, the new AMD Radeon HD 7950 GHz Edition features more than 1GHz core clock speed, 1,792 Graphics CoreNext stream processors, 112 TMUs, 32 ROPs and a 3GB GDDR5 memory with 384-bit interface. The company will release the Radeon HD 7950 GHz Edition very soon for approx. $350 – $400. [techPowerUp]