AMD's 6-core chip designed to keep pace with Intel

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. will throw out lots of numbers when it unveils its latest server chip, code-named Istanbul, today.
But the most important number of all is four months. That's how far ahead of schedule this product launch is.
AMD, with the help of several hundred engineers in Austin, created the chip at a rapid pace and did the design based on the direct request of its biggest customers.
That's crucially important to the company's continuing effort to rebuild the trust of customers including Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc., after the problem- and delay-plagued introduction of an earlier chip called Barcelona.
Barcelona was introduced months late in 2007, and it took several more months to fix a few nagging bugs. The delays left a sour taste in the mouth of major computer makers, just as AMD rival Intel Corp. was hitting its stride with some top-performing server chips.
The resulting damage is illustrated in AMD's declining market share in the highly profitable server chip segment, despite the fact that AMD followed up with a well-regarded chip, called Shanghai, which was launched last November, ahead of schedule.
Sales of server chips make up only about one-sixth of the more than $30 billion in Windows-compatible processor sales, but it is the most profitable part of the market. Prices on high-end server chips can reach well over $1,000 each.
AMD had a market share of just under 12 percent of the unit volume of the server chip business at the end of 2008, according to the IDC market research firm.
Istanbul is an extension of Shanghai. It's the first mass-production server chip to have six internal processing cores, compared with Shanghai's four, and AMD estimates that Istanbul will deliver about 30 percent more performance.
For server chips, more cores can mean the ability to do more jobs at once. Because servers are frequently barraged with rapid-fire requests for information from different users, more cores help handle the workload more quickly.
"This chip does a lot of good for AMD," said analyst Nathan Brookwood with Insight 64 in Saratoga, Calif. "It keeps them competitive with Intel," which launched its own high-end server chip in late March.

AMD Triples the Performance of ATI Embedded Graphics Chips

AMD (NYSE: AMD) announced the ATI Radeon™ E4690 graphics processor unit (GPU) designed to enable a whole level of new reality for embedded graphics applications with more than triple1 the 3D graphics performance of prior AMD embedded products. Arcade system manufacturers will appreciate the long term support and lower cost of placing the GPU chip directly on the motherboard instead of a separate add-in graphics card. This product will enable digital signage manufacturers to decode and play multiple high-definition videos in hardware, offloading all the decoding from the CPU2. Casino system manufacturers will be amazed by triple the graphics performance to help attract players while increasing overall entertainment value with incredibly realistic 3D graphics, plus two-monitor support3.

The ATI Radeon E4690 GPU is packed with the latest graphics features, including support for Microsoft® DirectX® 10.1 and OpenGL 3.0. The second-generation AMD Unified Video Decoder (UVD 2.0) includes hardware acceleration of H.264 and VC-1 high-definition (HD) video as well as MPEG-2, enabling multiple HD video streams and freeing the CPU for other tasks. The ATI Radeon E4690 is designed to simplify board design and speed time-to-market by incorporating 512 MB of 700 MHz GDDR3 graphics memory on chip. The ATI Radeon E4690 comes with AMD’s commitment of 5 years of planned supply availability4. Technical support is provided a dedicated team of application engineering experts. "The ATI Radeon E4690 sets a new bar for embedded graphics performance,” said Richard Jaenicke, director of embedded graphics at AMD. "Blazingly fast graphics and HD video capabilities enhance the appeal of applications - such as arcade, casino, digital signage and more. With the industry’s only embedded graphics chip that offers DirectX 10.1 and UVD 2.0 support, the ATI Radeon E4690 enables competitive advantages for AMD’s embedded customers.”
"The ATI Radeon E4690 is the perfect solution for the digital signage market,” said Dwight Looi, product manager at iBASE Technology, Inc. "The ATI Radeon E4690 combines phenomenal graphics performance, full hardware HD video decode acceleration and 512MB of very fast GDDR3 memory into a compact 35 mm package, which enables us to offer a high-end digital signage solution in a previously impossible, booked-sized system.”
"With the on-chip memory and responsive technical support from AMD, we were able to bring our Condor 200 product, featuring ATI Radeon E4690, to market in just six weeks from the time we received the design documents,” said Selwyn Henriques, president of Tech Source, Inc. "Based on the product specifications, TechSource expects the resulting product to significantly outperform existing products in the industry.”

Dell offers lesson in Intel-AMD rivalry

The chip choices that Dell has made for its business PC line provide some insight into the challenges facing Advanced Micro Devices in the wake of the European Union ruling Wednesday against Intel.

Dell has no AMD-based laptops in its corporate line
(Credit: Dell)"At this point in time we have one AMD desktop but no AMD notebooks," Darrel Ward, director of product management for Dell's business client product group, said in a phone interview Wednesday on a topic unrelated to the EU case. "If you talk to us a year from now, it's probably going to be different. What we try to do is optimize our portfolio based off where we see demand and where we can get the best ROI (Return On Investment) for our engineering dollars."
So, is Dell involved in some venal backroom dealings with Intel in order to box out AMD? We don't know the answer to that question, but most likely not. Dell is simply trying to provide what it considers to be the best systems for its customers.
AMD's 2001 complaint to the EU and subsequent 2005 antitrust lawsuit against Intel have propelled many of the allegations against Intel. And AMD's argument has been made abundantly clear via the EU decision: that is, Intel is leveraging its dominant market position in an illegal manner to exclude competitors from the PC processor market.
But what about AMD competitiveness? And, as a corollary, why do vendors like Dell choose Intel over AMD?
"In part it's because Intel's manufacturing is so superb," said Dan Hutcheson, CEO and Chairman of VLSI Research, a marketing research firm. "And the fact that Intel has such huge economies of scale. That's been one of their big advantages."

Gigabyte and AMD OC Results

We visited with Gigabyte last month at their North American Overclocking Championship 2009 event where the winner will proceed to the world championship event during Computex 2009. This event featured hardware from Intel, NVIDIA, Kingston, and Enermax along with some spectacular results.
Gigabyte has been busy on another front as they have been working closely with AMD and OCZ in providing motherboards, processors, memory, and power supplies to some of the top overclockers on the AMD side of the fence. While not a formal event like the Intel sponsored event, the results with AMD hardware have been just as exciting if not more so at times. Gigabyte teamed up with Brian McLachlan (Chew*) to see how far the AMD Phenom II 955 BE processor along with Gigabyte's GA-MA790FXT-UD5P and GA-MA790FX-UD5P Ultra Durable 3 equipped motherboards could be overclocked with a variety of cooling means ranging from air to LN2.

AMD has not ruled out moving its battle against Intel's antitrust behavior onto Australian soil

The European Commission Wednesday fined Intel more than €1 billion ($1.45 billion) for violating antitrust legislation after receiving complaints from rival AMD.

The EU found that Intel had been illegally keeping AMD out of the market by giving rebates to computer manufacturers on condition that they bought all their CPUs from Intel and making payments to manufacturers to delay the launch of specific products containing competitors' CPUs.
AMD said it had never filed an antitrust complaint against Intel in Australia, but would not confirm or deny whether the company would consider filing a complaint in the country given the European win.
In place of a direct answer, ZDNet.com.au received a statement from Ben Williams, AMD corporate VP Asia Pacific. "Today, I would like to focus our attention on this important ruling by the EU. I wish to highlight the EU ruling is about consumers, who were hurt by Intel's illegal conduct, but now will benefit from greater choice, innovation and value. Fair and open competition spurs competitors to innovate faster and to price more competitively. That means that consumers will be the direct beneficiaries of the EC ruling," he said.

The Intel case has not been the only antitrust case in Europe, with Microsoft stepping often into the firing line. Qualcomm also gained the Commission's attention.
Across the Atlantic, the US has also seen antitrust legislation exercized liberally to keep technology giants fair. Microsoft, Intel and Oracle have all come under scrutiny.
Australia, however, has not seen antitrust action against any of these players, despite the fact that it has strong trading relationships with both jurisdictions and has formed an agreement to share antitrust information with the US.

Microsoft and Intel News Update: Taking it on the chin in Europe

Europe is not a nice place for either Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) or Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) at the moment, both companies are having a hard time there and seem to be taking whatever is thrown at them on the chin. Wednesday is going to be yet another tough time for these companies, as the EU is expected to hit them with a heavy fine.

The fine for Intel is because of its myriad anticompetitive activities at the expense of AMD. According to the Wall Street Journal, this will be one of the largest fines in the history of the EU. If the anticompetetition commissioner wishes, he could fine Intel as much as 10 percent of its annual revenue, meaning they could receive a fine of $3.8 billion fine based on its 2008 revenue.

PC World says that the hearing into Microsoft will take place on June 3-5; this involves the antitrust violation where Microsoft bundles Internet Explorer in to Windows. The European Commission could fine Microsoft, or offer a kill switch or even force them to offer other browsers in Windows.

AMD Gains Processor Market Share on Intel

After five quarters of declining market share, Advanced Micro Devices gained ground in chip shipments over chief rival Intel during the first quarter of 2009, IDC said on Tuesday.

AMD saw its market share in processor shipments reach 22.3 percent during the first quarter of 2009, gaining 4.6 percent of the market compared with the fourth quarter of 2008. Intel lost 4.7 percent of the total market to reach a 77.3 percent share, IDC said in a survey.

AMD saw its market share increase because of a pricing advantage over Intel and a strong increase in desktop shipments, said Shane Rau, research director at IDC. Sequentially, AMD chip shipments increased 13 percent while Intel's shipments declined 16 percent.

Intel's sequential decline was partly due to suppliers holding back on purchases as they tried to clear up excess inventory of mobile processors, especially Atom processors for netbooks. Shipments of Atom processors recorded a sequential decline of 33 percent in the first quarter of 2009.
AMD has been restructuring its operations in an effort to reach profitability after more than two fiscal years of losses. The company last week merged its graphics and chip operations. Before that, it spun off its manufacturing assets to GlobalFoundries in order to cut manufacturing costs and focus on chip design.

AMD saw its mobile-processor market share reach 15 percent, grabbing 4.7 percent more of the market, while Intel's share fell to 84.3 percent from 89.1 percent. AMD also gained 3.8 percent of the market for desktop chips to reach 29.8 percent. Intel gave up 3.9 percent of the desktop chip market.

However, AMD lost 1.2 percent of the server and workstation chip markets, while Intel picked up the same amount to reach 89.3 percent.

AMD's gains couldn't stop the overall decline in worldwide processor shipments. Shipments reached around 65 million during the first quarter, a 13 percent year-over-year decline and a 10.9 percent sequential drop.
Even though excess inventory of desktop and mobile chips has been cleared out, unit shipments may continue to decline as customers hold back on PC purchases during the recession, Rau said

AMD's share jumps to 20.9% in declining CPU market

The world’s x86 chip market saw a 9.1 percent year-over-year decline in the first quarter of 2009, according to a recent report from Mercury Research.

Laptop processor shipments in particular took a big hit as consumers and businesses cut back on their purchases. Yet, going against this trend, AMD managed to regain some significant share as it celebrated its 40th birthday, with their slice of the market growing almost four points in the first quarter of the year.

The struggling chip vendor moved from a 17 percent share of shipments in the fourth quarter of 2008 to 20.9 percent the past quarter; which is also up slightly from its 1Q 2008 share of 20.6 percent. It’s not clear which processors were selling better than others, though AMD’s gain is likely tied to the debut of the Phenom II line. Intel for its part continues to hold a dominant 78.2 percent market share, down from 82.1 percent, while Via came a distant third with less than one percent of worldwide x86 shipments.

While this is certainly a bit of good news for AMD, Mercury Research’s Dean McCarron claims the quarter has been defined by inventory adjustments, meaning that manufacturers have cleared the excess inventory caused by the recession and that these statistics may not reflect the actual state of the market or market share.

IBM IMPACT 2009 officially kicks off at the Venetian in Las Vegas

With a packed house of over 5,400 attendees, IBM (NYSE: IBM)'s IMPACT 2009 conference officially kicked off this morning.

Comedian Billy Crystal was the emcee for the 2 hour keynote session and he quickly managed to get the entire audience's attention by doing what he does best - cracking jokes at anything and everything. Making people laugh at 8:30 in the morning is no easy task, but the audience was loving every minute of him on the stage. I doubt anyone dozed off, no matter how late they arrived the night before (or how much alcohol they consumed while gambling into the early hours of the morning).

As expected, new products and services were announced during the keynote session and you can find complete details about them in IBM's official press release. Two things I need to mention since the questions I asked the IBM executives during our one-on-one interviews are relevant:
The iLog acquisition a year ago has definitely made IBM a significant player in the Complex Event Processing (CEP) space. And keep in mind that IBM also has Cognos in its portfolio of products, allowing them to offer BI and real-time BI to their customers.

The IBM WebSphere Cloudburst appliance couldn't have been released at a better time. Cloud computing and its benefits are getting a lot of coverage lately, and being able to easily create a private cloud is gold for financial and healthcare institutions.

What's Next for Netbooks? Acer and Asus Reveal Plans

It's always refreshing when a lateral-thinking-inspired product revolutionizes a market. And that's partly what makes the netbook computer so interesting. Netbooks are growing up fast, and both market-leader Acer and its original maker Asus have big plans for the tiny PCs this year.
Asus, of course, gave the world its first real netbook, the Eee PC 701. It embodied all the now iconic netbook features in one package: Linux OS, small screen, Intel Atom processor, small form-factor and cheap-as-chips pricing. Now it's a year later, and the technology has moved on, so Asus has announced that it will release another genre-stretching Eee PC that has an 11.6-inch display. Asus CEO Jerry Shen even thinks that Eees with displays of that size will end up being around 30% of the netbooks his company sells this year.

It's a response to the news that Acer, which currently sells more netbooks than anyone else, will also be releasing an 11.6-incher soon. That machine, the Acer One 751, is due to have a full-size laptop keyboard, a 1366 x 768-pixel screen and cost around $500.

AMD Phenom II X4 955

When AMD released the Socket AM3 processors earlier this year, the 900-series was left out of the mix. We found the Phenom II X4 820 and Phenom II X3 710 to be pretty potent little chips, but the range topping 900-series chips, the Phenom II X4 920 and X4 940 Black Edition were stuck in the land of DDR2.
That time is over.
Today, AMD is releasing its new flagship processor, the Socket AM3 Phenom II X4 955. This new Phenom II is fully backwards compatible with AM2+ motherboards, but brings a DDR3 memory controller and a boost in clock speed over the previous top Phenom II, the X4 940 Black Edition. Also joining the Phenom II X4 955 BE is the Phenom II X4 945, a lower clocked and multiplier-locked version.

The new chip should hit shelves today priced at $245. This puts it at an awkward, but strategic position in the marketplace. Intel’s similarly priced Core 2 Q9450 was recently discontinued, so the chip has no direct competition at its price-point. Instead, it looks up Intel’s line to the Q9550, a $280 chip whose price nears that of the Core i7 920. AMD has set its sights high while keeping the price low enough that the chip doesn’t compete directly price-wise with the Nehalem.

AMD graciously sent the Phenom II X4 955 to us, along with a DDR3 motherboard and memory so we can test this update to the Dragon platform for ourselves. Unfortunately for today, MSI has not released a BIOS to support the new processor for our test bench, so we are unable to test its DDR2 performance. We did, however, secure a Q9550 for DDR2 and DDR3 comparison, giving us a look at how the processor performs compared to past models we’ve tested.

Detail and Specifications
The new AM3 Phenom II processors share many similarities with the early Phenom II models released back in January. As such, this preview primarily covers the architectural differences between the two models. Readers interested in learning more about their common architecture should read ouR PHEMEM

Let’s take a closer look at the AM3 Phenom II and see what makes it unique.
Common AM3 Processor Specifications:
L1 Cache Sizes: 64K of L1 instruction and 64K of L1 data cache per core (512KB total L1 per processor)
L2 Cache Sizes: 512KB of L2 data cache per core (2MB total L2 per processor for X4s / 1.5MB total L2 per processor for X3s)
L3 Cache Size: 4MB or 6MB (shared)
Memory Controller Type: Integrated 128-bit wide memory controller *
Memory Controller Speed: Up to 2.0GHz with Dual Dynamic Power Management (all current AM3 processors)
Types of Memory Supported: Support for unregistered DIMMs up to PC2 8500 (DDR2-1066MHz) -AND- PC3 (DDR3-1333MHz)**
HyperTransport 3.0 Link: One 16-bit/16-bit link @ up to 4.0GHz full duplex (2.0GHz x2)
Total Processor Bandwidth: Up to 33.1 GB/s total bandwidth
Packaging: Socket AM3 938-pin organic micro pin grid array (micro-PGA)
Fab location: GLOBALFOUNDARIES Fab 1 module 1 in Dresden, Germany (formerly AMD Fab 36)
Process Technology: 45-nanometer DSL SOI (silicon-on-insulator) technology
Approximate Transistor count: ~758 million (45nm)
Approximate Die Size: 258 mm2 (45nm)
Max Ambient Case Temp / X4 CPUs: 71o Celsius
Max Ambient Case Temp / X3 CPUs: 73o Celsius
Max Temp Phenom II X4 955:62o Celsius
Nominal Voltage: 0.875-1.5V
Max TDP: 125 Watts

*Note: MC configurable for dual 64-bit channels for simultaneous read/writes**Note: for DDR3-1333, AM3 boards will support 1-DIMM-per-channel @ 1333MHz
The biggest difference between the early Phenom II AM3 processors and the new Phenom II X4 900-series models is the L3 cache. Quad core 800-series chips are outfitted with only 4MB of L3 cache. The new Phenom II X4 955 and 945 feature 6MB of L3 cache.

Since the transistor count is constant between both the 4MB and 6MB models, we can deduce that part of a 6MB processor was simply disabled to create the 4MB model. We’d encourage anyone interested in learning more about AMD’s stance on disabling CPU components to read our x3 REVIEW from last year.
The biggest change side from cache is the increase in frequency. The Phenom II X4 955 is the fastest Phenom II offered to date with a clock speed of 3.2GHz. That’s only a 200mhz step up from the X4 940, so we hope to see just how much of a difference a little speed and DDR3 make for the chip.
Here are the requisite CPU-Z screenshots for the Phenom II X4

AMD Celebrates 40 Years Anniversary

On the 1st of May, 1969, seven ex-Fairchild employees, including Jerry Sanders, Ed Turney, John Carey, Sven Simonsen, Jack Gifford, Frank Botte, Jim Giles and Larry Stenger founded Advanced Micro Devices. Initially a manufacturer of random access memory, simplistic logic chips and clones of Intel Corp.’s microprocessors, AMD is now the company that ships innovative central processing units, core-logic sets and graphics processors.

AMD started with basic logic chips as well as RAM, but in 1982 International Business Machines demanded ensure second source for x86 processors developed by Intel and the chip designer signed an agreement that allowed AMD to produce clones of Intel’s processors. As time went by, more manufacturers entered the market of x86 microprocessors and all of them, including AMD and Intel, competed fiercely against each other.

Since AMD did not only produce clones of Intel’s chips, but improved them, at some point it became a strong competitor for Intel and the latter refused to provide its smaller rival designs of its processors, opening the door to a new era for AMD.

In March, 1996, AMD introduced its first in-house designed x86 microprocessor named K5. But although the chip named after Kryptonite (the only substance that could kill Superman from the series of motion pictures), it was not commercially successful. Its descendants, the K6 family of microprocessors, offered much higher performance and competed much more successfully against Intel.

However, the real success of AMD was the introduction of AMD Athlon central processing units in 1999, which development was led by Derrick Meyer – chief executive officer of AMD today. The Athlon, which turns 10 in August ’09, did not only outperform chips from Intel, but, most importantly, demonstrated AMD’s actual ability to compete against the world’s largest chipmaker.

With the introduction of x86 64-bit extensions as well as AMD Opteron/Athlon 64 processors for servers in 2003, Advanced Micro Devices entered the market of enterprise computers as well as – for the first time – became de facto technology leader: Intel only followed AMD with x86-64 extensions in 2005.

The multi-core era that started in 2005 also allowed AMD to demonstrate its expertise in chip design: AMD’s dual-core chips quickly became very popular and quad-core processors, although hit by massive delays, became the world’s first monolithic quad-core chips. Thanks to improved execution, AMD is showing off its twelve-core chips now and is likely to be the first company to introduce twelve-core processors in 2010, something that further shows transformations of AMD.

Further converting itself into a supplier of various computing solutions, in 2006 AMD acquired ATI Technologies with an aim to converge central processing units with graphics processing units. Eventually, however, the acquisition forced AMD to spin-off its manufacturing facilities into Globalfoundries joint-venture.

Quite a lot has happened with AMD in its first 40 years, but there is a lot of work to do in its next 40 years as the world and technology continue their transformation.

Using Your Computer Screen as a Television

I used to think people who watched TV and movies from their computer screens were insane. How could you possibly get comfortable at your desk? It wasn’t too long ago that even the largest of screens couldn’t give picture quality that was good enough to sit back and avoid squinting. If you didn’t have external speakers hooked up, forget about it.

As monitors upgraded to flat-panel LCDs, upped their screen size, stretched to wide-screen and adopted digital video inputs like DVI, watching a two-hour movie off your computer monitor has started to make more sense. Add decent built-in speakers and it’s a no-brainer.

A couple weeks ago I asked Apple to send me a review unit of their 24-inch LED Cinema Display. All I wanted was to check out their three-in-one cable system for notebooks, which includes the controversial new mini DisplayPort (more on that in a later post). But DisplayPort aside, I was finally convinced that turning your home office into a miniature home theater makes total sense.

I live in and work from a large studio apartment in Brooklyn, so space is in limited supply for me. My home office sits within a former closet across from my bed — five feet from the foot of my bed. The other night all I wanted was to lie in bed and veg out to some Law & Order: SVU (I’m a huge Ice-T fan) via Netflix.

I wouldn’t be able to fully lay out my limbs on the couch in front of my TV, so I decided to pull the LED display to the very front of my desk and see if I could stand watching this way. To my surprise it was almost as good as watching the traditional way.

I wouldn’t recommend doing this with a screen smaller than 24 inches. I’ve tried with my 19-inch HP wide-screen and it ends up feeling like I’m in the nosebleed seats. At 24 inches I could get far enough away from the screen, about 6 to 7 feet, so that I didn’t feel as if I was sitting on top of the display.

And when I was working at my desk, the 24-inch display didn’t overwhelm my desktop. I know you dual-monitor users out there will argue that 24 inches isn’t big enough, but you don’t live in my apartment, O.K.?

Contrast levels are a lot higher than in previous Cinema Displays – 1000:1 compared to 700:1. This results in a lot more detail in the dark and dirty scenes Dick Wolf’s franchise is known for. And while many people (myself included) groan about the new DisplayPort connectivity, which currently limits peripherals that can be connected to the display to only new Apple computer products, it does lead to improved picture quality over DVI.

According to the DisplayPort Web site, “The first version of DisplayPort provides over twice the capacity of single-channel DVI over the same number of wires through a much smaller and easier to use connector… In addition to greater resolution, DisplayPort also supports greater color depths and higher refresh rates.”

So while it’s a bummer that there currently isn’t an adapter to connect older Macs and PCs to the LED Cinema Display, it is exciting that there’s a new connection standard that the majority of computer manufacturers have adopted which, later this year, will really improve video quality on LCD monitors.

The built-in 2.1 speakers on the LED Cinema Display are pretty decent as well. Sure, you wouldn’t want to watch a blockbuster with only these on hand, but watching standard TV fare is totally doable.
My biggest gripe, and this comes as no surprise, is that the Apple Cinema Display is $900. Obviously, there are tons of manufacturers out there that are now offering wide-screen HD displays, so shop around. My only recommendations, if you’re looking to have your monitor work two jobs in your house, is to go with a minimum of 24 inches of screen size, make sure it has digital inputs like DVI or DisplayPort, and also features a 1000:1 contrast ratio at minimum.

But be wary of manufacturers who claim astronomical contrast ratios (such as 2,000,000: 1, which you’ll see out there). You can read about how manufacturers juice their specs here. I’m not saying manufacturers who quote such high figures are fixing their specs, but a number that stratospheric does make you wonder what they’re basing that figure on