AMD plots single thread boost with x86 extensions
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Bulldozer injection Still intent on improving single thread software performance, AMD has outlined some planned additions to the x86 instruction set that will appear in chips shipping in 2009.â¦
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One of the most ambitious new features ever to be built into an x86 motherboard is now publicly available: a hypervisor-based computer that runs both the operating system and its underlying BIOS under the control of a virtual machine monitor. Underneath these physical and virtual layers is Intel's latest and boldest implementation of the Trusted Computing platform.
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With its new low-voltage Athlon 64 3000+ processor, &quot;AMD is essentially going up against the Centrino in the low-end processing market, where 64-bit technology is not that significant,&quot; says Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff.
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Processor could steal spotlight from AMD, Intel's forthcoming dual-core chips.
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CrossFire DirectX video acceleration added AMD has posted fresh versions of its Windows and Linux Catalyst graphics driver package. The update takes the code to release 6.12. The Windows incarnation introduces the ability to accelerate DirectX video playback across multiple GPUs in CrossFire configuration.â¦
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When Fully buffered DIMMs attack A recent benchmark comparing quad-core chips asserts that Intel Xeon-based servers have an edge in performance but are complete power hogs when compared to the dainty energy appetite of AMD Opteron-based servers.â¦
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SAN JOSE, Calif.--Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday detailed performance results for its forthcoming dual-core Opteron processor, showing a speed boost of 30 percent to 55 percent compared with today&#39;s single-core models.
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Eyeing Sun's Niagara flow Intel has confirmed plans to "tick" and "tock" AMD into submission.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) showed a laboratory version of its promised "Barcelona" quad-core Opteron 8000 server chip to analysts on Thursday, saying it planned to begin selling the product in the second quarter of 2007. AMDÂ will pitch the chip to users of high-end, commercial workstations and servers, who could see performance improvements of up to 70 percent in database applications and 40 percent in floating-point applications compared to AMD's dual-core "Rev F" Opteron. The demonstration Thursday, to analysts gathered in Berkeley, California, was AMD's second effort to show that it is keeping up with quad-core chips from rival Intel Corp. AMD also launched its "4x4" Quad FX Platform, a motherboard with two dual-core Athlon 64 FX-70 series chips intended for the desktop gaming market. Intel lost significant market share to AMD in 2006Â as it was criticized for being slow to produce chips that emphasized power efficiency instead of pure calculating speed. Intel hasÂ bounced back in recent monthsÂ with the launch of dual-core chips including the Core 2 Duo for desktops and Xeon 5100 "Woodcrest" for servers. On Nov. 14 Intel reached the market first with quad-core chips, with the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 for gamers and Xeon 5300 for servers. Intel has alsoÂ led the industry in converting its chip designsÂ from the 90-nanometer process to 65 nm, including all four processors mentioned above. In response, AMD has criticized Intel's quad-core design as merely gluing two dual-core Woodcrest chips together, whereas the Barcelona chip includes all four cores on a single piece of silicon. Analysts are divided on the impact of that distinction, and say they cannot measure the difference until they compare benchmarks from both finished versions. Still, AMD trumpeted Barcelona as an engineering achievement that marks the company's shift to 65-nm architecture. By shrinking the processor die, AMD is able to improve power efficiency and squeeze an extra level of shared cache memory onto the design, said John Fruehe, AMD's worldwide market development manager for server and workstation products. "As you add more cores, it becomes less about brute force and more about the efficiency of how many things you can do at once, and how efficiently you can order them," he said. "From a customer perspective, those who will see the biggest bang for their buck with quad-core are people running applications like larger databases. The more threaded an application is, the more benefit you get." The users who will see the greatest return on their quad-core investment are users of multithreaded applications like CRM (customer relationship management), ERP (enterprise resource planning), e-commerce and virtualization, Fruehe said. AMD will first launch the Barcelona design on a four-socket board (running four quad-core chips) and a two-socket board (running two quad-core chips). The company will wait until later in 2007 to launch single-socket Barcelona boards, which are used mainly to develop new applications for the larger servers or to run Web farms to handle multiple simultaneous processing requests. AMD expects servers vendors such as Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. to adopt the new technology for their servers in 2007, although none of those companies has yet made a public announcement.
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Chop, chop AMD has followed up last week's Opteron price cuts with a round of reductions applied to its Athlon-brand processors. The latest cuts affect both single- and dual-core versions of the 64-bit CPU family.â¦
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Chipmaker's Isaiah processor architecture is expected to double performance but consume same amount of energy.Images: Isaiah architecture up close
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Chip-making technique to fuel AMD64, PowerPC, 'Cell' production
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(InfoWorld) - Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has pumped up the performance of its Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processor and cooled down two single-core Athlon 64 processors. The top-of-the-range AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processor is now the 6000+, with a clock speed of 3GHz and 2MB of L2 cache. It sells for $464 in quantities of 1,000 or more. The previous fastest model, the 5600+ with a clock speed of 2.8GHz, now sells for $326 in quantities of 1,000 or more. With its high-performance dual-core systems, AMD hopes to profit from the introduction of Microsoft's new operating system Windows Vista, which places greater demands on computing hardware. There's no speed boost for the single-core Athlon 64 processor, but AMD is now manufacturing the 3500+ and 3800+ models using a 65-nanometer production process, reducing the chips' die-size and energy consumption while offering the same computing performance. The latest versions consume 45 watts, compared to 62 watts for the previous generation, in which the smallest features etched on the chips had a spacing of 90nm. The 3500+ sells for $88 in quantities of 1,000 or more, and the 3800+ for $93. The faster dual-core chips will appeal primarily to gaming enthusiasts, and will appear shortly in PCs from Alienware and Voodoo, the gaming PC divisions of Dell and Hewlett-Packard, respectively, said AMD. Fujitsu Siemens Computers (Holding) will use the lower-power processors in its Esprimo enterprise desktop range, which it promotes as an energy-efficient range, the company said. Two weeks ago, AMDÂ introduced new dual-core Opteron processorsÂ for servers that are either faster or consume less power than previous chips. While AMD had begun to pull ahead in the market for low-power server and desktop chips, IntelÂ is fighting back. Last month,Â Intel persuaded Sun MicrosystemsÂ to use its Xeon processors in future servers and workstations based on the x86 architecture. Sun had only used AMD chips in those machines in recent years, and will now use chips from both manufacturers. At the top of the scale, Intel took the lead in the market for quad-core server chips last November, with the launch of its Xeon 5300 series, previously known as Clovertown. AMD won't introduce its range of energy-efficient quad-core server processors, code-named Barcelona, until the middle of this year.
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Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) is expected to unveil its most powerful desktop processors to date on Tuesday, a few days after rival Intel Corp. disclosed changes to its desktop processor road map.
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Enterprise apps to run on games hardware, company hopes ATI - effectively AMD - has begun pitching its Radeon X1900 graphics chip at corporates, not for running graphics on workstations but for processing large data sets much the way Intel's Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) are meant to.â¦
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Athlon 64 X2 line extended AMD this morning rolled out its 65nm Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processors, as expected. The chips are pitched as "energy efficient" products, and come in at the same price as their 90nm equivalents.â¦
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Multithread frenzy takes another step at Sun: "Victoria Falls" chip will mean 128 threads in a single server.Video: Sun CEO looks to future