Be prepared to see mobile devices and laptops running Android and Chrome OS using AMD chips under the hood. It’s reported that the chip maker is open to designing and developing chips that are catered to support Android and Chrome OS. AMD will still be committed to Windows machines, but they hope to expand more
AMD has taken the wraps off of its 2013 A-Series “Elite” APUs for desktop, hoping to show Intel that 4th-gen Haswell won’t get all the chip attention this year. Building on AMD’s integrated CPU/GPU architecture, the new Elite platform consists of a cluster of new quadcore chips, ranging from the relatively power-frugal A8-6500 through to
AMD has already shown what its mobile Richland APUs can do, and it’s now ready to reveal their desktop equivalents’ potential. The company’s new, full-power A6, A8 and A10 Elite processors are more evolutionary bumps than overhauls, but they still have a few clear advantages over last year’s Trinity chips. Along with a bump in Turbo Boosted frequencies to between 4.1GHz and 4.4GHz (3.5GHz to 4.1GHz normally), the updates ship with Radeon HD 8000 video and can handle speedier DDR3-2133 memory (on the A10). Wireless is just as important as it is with the firm’s newest mobile processors: the desktop Elites improve streaming games to other devices using Splashtop, with relatively little lag when modern AMD processors are on both ends.
As for performance? AMD didn’t have the luxury of comparing against Intel’s Haswell chips at the time it gave us benchmarks, but it did claim big gains over Ivy Bridge in both general-purpose computing and gaming. A 4.1GHz A10-6800K is up to 3.3 times faster in OpenCL than a 3.2GHz Core i5-3470, and games like Bioshock Infinite are playable at 1080p (if barely) where they’re unusable with the HD 3000 graphics of Intel’s CPU. Performance boosts over Trinity are a more modest eight to 21 percent, however. If you want to know how well the Elite line fares in the real world, it won’t take much effort to find out. AMD is shipping its processors this month, at very frugal prices that range from $69 to $142.
Gallery: AMD Elite desktop APU presentation
Filed under: Desktops, Gaming, Laptops, AMD
Source: AMD
Gigabyte said that we’d have at least a few BRIX mini PCs to choose from. At Computex, however, it’s showing four new prototypes that could lead to a much larger catalog. Two of them are run-of-the-mill designs with AMD Kabini and Intel Haswell processors — nice enough, but more evolution than revolution. The other two are decidedly more exotic, though. One includes a wireless charging pad to charge a smartphone in a pinch, while the other carries a pico projector for on-the-spot presentations. Although Gigabyte hasn’t mentioned whether or not these BRIX models will reach production, we’d wager that the conservative systems are more likely to reach our desks.
Filed under: Desktops, AMD, Intel
Source: Engadget Chinese (translated)
Gigabyte loves to pull out all the stops at Computex, and this year is no exception: the company just unveiled 11 (mostly) new laptops and tablets. According to a brochure on hand at the computer maker’s demo table, the emphasis is chiefly on slimmer portables with both Haswell-era Core processors and some dedicated graphics firepower. The P34G and P35K Ultrablade models are equally 0.83 inches thick, but pack gaming-friendly GeForce GTX 760M (P34G) and 765M (P35K) video. More pedestrian Ultrabooks get a boost as well: both the touchscreen U24T (pictured above) and the non-touch U24F wield a mid-tier GeForce GT 750M. If you don’t mind bulkier laptops, the Q2546N, Q2556N, U35F, P27K and P27W scale from the GeForce GT 740M through to the GTX 770M while allowing for more storage and Creative Sound Blaster audio tuning.
The tablet updates aren’t nearly as extensive. Most of Gigabyte’s energy centers on the 10-inch Slate S10A, a spin on the S1082 with an AMD Temash-based A4-1200 processor that delivers up to 14 hours of battery life. Other refreshes are even subtler: the 11.6-inch U21M convertible is similar to the U2142, while the dockable S1185 returns virtually unchanged outside from a new Padbook nickname. Release dates and prices aren’t immediately available for any of the new systems, unfortunately, but you can peek at a few of the fresh models in our hands-on photos just below.
Zach Honig and Mat Smith contributed to this report.
AMD might not be able to keep up (down?) with Intel in the CPU power consumption race, so it’s taking another tack with the new Opteron X-series: horsepower. It just announced the Opteron X1150 and X2150 64-bit processors for microservers, part of the Jaguar-codenamed family of CPUs arriving in the next-gen Xbox One and Sony PS4 consoles. Thanks to its ultra-low power 6-watt Atom S1200 chips, Intel excels in the low-power server market, and at 9W and 11W respectively (minimum), AMD’s CPUs consume considerably more juice. But AMD is pitching them as a better solution overall, thanks to those four cores (compared to two in the Atom), integrated AMD Radeon HD 8000 graphics on the X2150 model, support for 32GB of RAM and integrated SATA ports. AMD’s chips are pricier, though, at $64 (X1150) or $99 (X2150) compared to $54 for Intel’s Atom S1200 (all in quantities of 1,000). To top it off, Intel has new 64-bit Atom SoCs coming soon promising even lower power consumption — possibly leaving AMD to play catch-up again.
Filed under: Peripherals, Networking, AMD
Microsoft didn’t give a lot of attention to AMD during the Xbox One reveal last week, but the new console is indeed running an AMD 8-core APU, and Microsoft paid a pretty penny to make that happen. It’s said that the deal between AMD and Microsoft to have the new chips in the Xbox One costs the Redmond-based company $3 billion.
Bob Feldstein, who is currently the Vice President of Technology Licensing at NVIDIA who used to work at AMD, mentioned that Microsoft paid $3 billion to AMD for the chips, which is mad money if we say so ourselves. Feldstein stated that he worked as the corporate vice president of business development at AMD, and was in charge of “business management and supply agreement negotiations” regarding the Xbox One, so it seems he had the inside scoop on a lot of information about the new console.
He says that the entire project with Microsoft “is valued at $3+B,” and this includes “the coordination of multiple functional teams within AMD, as well as regular customer meetings with leadership teams responsible for handling the challenges of complex, muti-year deals.” That seems like a crazy amount of money, but if Microsoft expects to sell a lot of units, perhaps it’ll worth it.
Feldstein also noted that he worked with the PlayStation 4 while he was at AMD, but he didn’t reveal any numbers on that project. The PS4 uses AMD’s new Jaguar processor, and while Microsoft hasn’t disclosed what exact chip they’re using, it’s most likely the Jaguar as well. Nintendo is also using AMD components in their new Wii U console.
He posted the figures on his LinkedIn account, although it’s limited to who can see it. Frankly, we’re probably guessing that AMD won’t be too happy when they find out that Feldstein talked about this information, but it’s not like he has anything to lose — he and other former AMD employees were sued by the company for allegedly stealing company secrets and giving them to NVIDIA.
VIA: Gamechup
SOURCE: LinkedIn
Xbox One AMD deal worth over $3 billion is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Thanks to Microsoft’s Windows 8, we’re starting to see a fair number of hybrid devices being released into the market. For those wondering what we’re talking about, we’re talking about hybrid devices like laptops which have the ability to be […]
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AMD wants to knock Intel and ARM off their mobility perch in 2013, and the new Temash APU is how it expects to do it. Targeting media and performance tablets, as well as keyboard-dockable hybrids and 10- to 13-inch touchscreen ultraportable notebooks, the new A-series of Temash APUs feature Jaguar cores – boasting a 20-percent performance jump over Bobcat – for consumer Windows machines with the perky performance usually associated with an iPad.
As AMD sees it, Temash and Windows is a combination that means the flexibility of a desktop with the performance of a multimedia-centric chipset. The first true AMD SoC, with a choice of dual and quadcore options, Temash offers up to a 212-percent graphics boost-per-watt compared to 2012′ AMD C-70 and up to a 172-percent jump in x86 performance per watt.
However, that doesn’t come with a battery hit, AMD claims, despite offering between 2x and 5x the performance of Intel’s Atom Z2760 in AMD’s testing. A Temash-based system can manage up to 12hrs of idle battery life, or up to 45-percent longer than a Core i3-based Windows tablet.
AMD sprinkles some of its extra feature magic on the new A-series. The A400 gets GPU acceleration for apps, along with native video stabilization; the A600 adds AMD Screen Mirror, which wirelessly squirts the contents of the display to a supported TV, together with gesture controls using the webcam, and AMD Face Login, for biometric security. Both have Radeon HD 8000 series graphics.
Connectivity support includes up to two USB 3.0 ports, up to ten USB 2.0 ports, eSATA, HDMI, PCI Express, VGA, and more. There’s also support for up to 8GB of system memory and AMD’s Turbo Dock system, which boosts performance when a tablet is slotted into a keyboard base station, while prolonging battery life when it’s removed.
Perhaps most impressive, AMD says the sub-5W versions of Temash can be used in fanless systems. We had a chance to play with a Temash-based Windows 8 tablet, and the experience was impressively good: it was a Quanta reference design, the BZ1T, but the Radeon HD 8180 GPU and A4-1200 1GHz CPU were certainly strong enough to keep Full HD video playing smoothly on the 11.6-inch 1920 x 1080 touchscreen.
Inside, there was 2GB of DDR3U-1066 RAM and a 128GB mSATA SSD drive, loaded up with HD content that we could then push over wirelessly to a nearby HDTV with a Screen Mirror-compatible adapter. The whole thing was lag-free.
AMD’s second Temash demo machine was a compact Acer ultraportable, the Angel. That ran Windows 8 on a lightweight touchscreen notebook with a Temash A6-1450 processor and Radeon HD 8280 graphics. Unlike the tablet, the Angel had a traditional 500GB hard-drive inside, but doubled up RAM to 4GB. It was certainly a fast-moving machine, multitasking between office apps and multimedia quickly, though we’d need to spend more time with it to see whether it really does offer a significant step up from the Intel equivalent.
AMD expects the Temash series of APUs to begin showing up in tablets, notebooks, and other form-factors over the coming months.
AMD Temash official: iPad smoothness and x86 grunt for tablets and hybrids is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
It’s all-change for AMD‘s APU line-up for mainstream and performance notebooks in 2013, as the company attempts to hit Intel where it hurts with chips that, bang for buck, offer more performance from less power. That’s the claim, anyway, and Kabini – for the mainstream – and Richland – for the performance end – are the processors that are expected to deliver it. Among the boasts are the first ever quadcore for small-display touchscreen notebooks, and up to 72-percent of the gaming performance than Intel’s comparable chips.
Kabini is AMD’s mainstream platform for portables in 2013, targeting small touchscreen notebooks as well as entry-level laptops. The company is making a big push for battery life, with machines running the new APUs apparently capable of up to 10hrs of resting runtime, or over 9hrs of web browsing. Even playing Full HD 1080p video, they should be good for more than 6hrs of use.
The single-chip SoCs use Jaguar cores with 2MB of shared L2 cache, and come in 9W to 25W TDP variants. Each supports two simultaneous displays of up to 4096 x 2160 resolution, with DisplayPort 1.2, DVI, and HDMI 1.4a output capabilities. Other connectivity includes provision for up to eight USB 2.0, up to two USB 3.0, two SATA Gen2/Gen3, and an SD card reader.
There’s also AMD’s Steady Video technology, for smoothing out jerky camera footage, and AMD Perfect Picture HD, which does real-time processing of on-screen graphics to bring out the best contrast and colors. Compared to last year’s chips, the new Kabini E1, E2, A4, and A6 APUs offer up to an 88-percent boost in performance.
AMD Kabini Mainstream APUs
As for the performance end, AMD is taking on Intel’s Core i3 and Core it with the new Richland series of APUs, replacing Trinity in the process. They offer up to 71-percent better graphics abilities than the Core i5, AMD claims, while still being capable of over 10hrs resting battery life or 7.5hrs of web browsing.
Compared to Trinity, overall performance is up by up to 19-percent, the company claims, while graphics performance is improved by as much as 40-percent. The A8 gets gesture control and face login, for chip-level biometric security, as well as AMD Screen Mirror for wirelessly pushing graphics to a nearby TV. The A10 throws in game bundles, a strategy AMD has tried with success before, including a number of games with each qualifying PC purchase to show off the abilities of the APUs.
There’s also provision for AMD Dual Graphics, with the onboard GPU in the Richland chips capable of working simultaneously with a discrete GPU from the company’s Radeon HD 7000 or 8000 series. That should make for ultraportables that can still put in some solid gaming, AMD claims.
The first notebooks running AMD Kabini and Richland APUs will show up in the coming months.
AMD Richland Elite APUs
AMD Kabini and Richland fight Intel for mainstream and performance notebooks is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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