AMD proposes faster x86 instructions
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(InfoWorld) - Advanced Micro Devices Inc. wants developers to start thinking about how they can speed up their software using new instructions that will appear in the company's processors from 2009. The additions could simplify the way developers code the iterative calculations used to shade graphics, render photos or add spatial effects to audio. Future x86 processors based on AMD's 64-bit Bulldozer core will understand the expanded instruction set, which the company calls SSE5. AMD published a note to developers about the SSE5 specification on Thursday. Each of the new instructions will process several pieces of data with one instruction, a feature called Single Instruction, Multiple Data (SIMD). Intel Corp. added the first Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) instructions to the x86 instruction set in 1999, and has introduced several generations since. It published the programming reference for SSE4 , the most recent, in April. AMD has typically followed Intel's lead by incorporating support for that company's extensions in its processors. With SSE5, AMD hopes to give developers and software buyers an extra reason to choose its processors over those of Intel. SSE5 defines 47 new basic instructions for speeding the execution of single-thread processes. One type, called multiply-add-accumulate, will allow developers to accumulate the results of many iterations of similar operations without a separate intermediate addition, speeding the kind of calculations used to render graphics or create 3D audio effects. Another allows them to multiply the contents of two registers, storing the result in a third -- a so-called three-operand instruction that can save developers juggling data between registers. If software buyers are to benefit from the additional performance of these instructions, though, developers will need software tools such as compilers that optimize their code to use them. By publishing the specifications now, AMD is giving tool builders some of the information necessary to adapt their compilers before the first Bulldozer chips are released in 2009.
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US chipmaker AMD on Monday introduced a faster mobile chip, Athlon 64 processor 3000+, for thin and light notebook computers. The new chip enables a powerful 32-bit computing
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AMD provides a sneak peek at how its pending quad-core chip will improve performance and save energy.
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AMD&#39;s new dual-core Opteron chip is designed mainly for corporate computing applications, including databases, Web services, and financial transactions.
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SAN FRANCISCO Advanced Micro Devices has brought forward a demonstration of its version of a new approach to processor design, with a chip that is expected to offer faster computing and relatively less power consumption.
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Blog: AMD announces its quad core server chips will ship in August
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(InfoWorld) - Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) began selling its top chip for desktop PCs made with a 65-nanometer design on Tuesday, continuing its efforts toÂ keep up with IntelÂ as the industry migrates from 90nm design to a faster, more efficient generation of processors. By manufacturing its dual-core Athlon 64 X2 chip on the smaller geometry, AMD will be able to increase manufacturing output while improving the chips' performance and power efficiency, said Jack Huynh, a market development manager for AMD. Some PC vendors are selling the new chip in computers already, and by the first quarter of 2007 that list will include Acer, Dell, Founder Electronics, Hewlett-Packard, Packard Bell, and Tsinghua Tongfang Co., according to AMD. The move to 65nm manufacturing is crucial for AMD as the company strives to keep up with aÂ flurry of new processors from Intel. Intel had a rough year in 2006, losing ground to AMD in market share, but has rallied in recent months. The companyÂ launched its Core 2 Duo familyÂ of desktop chips in July and itsÂ quad-core Core 2 Extreme in November. Intel switched its chip manufacturing plants to a smaller architecture months ago, and already sells more 65nm chips than 90nm chips. A chip made with 65nm process technology has smaller features -- such as transistors and the wires that connect them -- than a chip made with 90nm technology, said Rob Willoner, a technology analyst with Intel's technology and manufacturing group. That progression is the engine that drives Moore's Law, the prediction that the number of processors on a microprocessor will double every 18 months. One nanometer is one-billionth of a meter, meaning that the wires on 65nm design chips are far slimmer than human hairs. Minuscule as that is, chip vendors already have plans to shrink the parts even smaller.Â Intel has already announced plansÂ to use chip features of 45nm by 2007, 32nm by 2009 and 22nm by 2011. As chip features continue to shrink, engineers struggle harder to take each new step. But as long as customers demand smaller, more efficient computers, there's plenty of economic incentive for the process to continue, he said. "There's bound to be an end at some point, but we can't see it yet," Willoner said. "At one point, people said it was 1 micron, which is 1,000nm, but the industry passed that without blinking about a decade ago. Now some people are saying it's 5nm. I don't see it happening before 2020 or 2025, and by then we could have radically different technologies to compensate." AMD chose to apply the new "Rev G" 65nm design to its high-end, dual-core desktop chip first because the company's midrange, single-core Athlon and Sempron chips are already fairly efficient, running at 62 watts using a 90nm design, said AMD's Huynh. The Athlon 64 X2 operated at a high 110 watts when it was first launched in June 2005, but this migration will bring it down to just 65 watts, he said. AMD will continue to produce both 90nm and 65nm Athlon 64 X2 chips until it phases the larger-design chips out completely by the second half of 2007. Next, AMD plans to apply the 65nm design to its single-core Athlon and Sempron chips, shrinking them by the end of 2007. And the company has already begun work on the next step, shrinking its chips to a 45nm design, although AMD did not give a specific date for that goal. AMD is selling the 65nm Athlon 64 X2 chips at prices of $301 for a 2.6GHz 5000-series chip, $271 for the 2.5GHz 4800 series, $214 for the 2.3GHz 4400 series, and $169 for the 2.1GHz 4000 series, all priced in lots of 1,000. Â
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Company will break its promise to deliver a speedier chip, shifts focus to dual-core designs. Intel has confirmed its near-term plans for its desktop processors before it reaches the multicore era.
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Details are expected on Tukwila, the next-generation 64-bit quad-core CPU, at a chip conference this week.
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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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CHIP FIRM AMD has revealed more details of the dual core processors it expects to introduce next year. The firm presented at the Processor Forum in San Jose earlier today, and, according to EE Times, revealed some further details of its plans.
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Advanced Micro Devices plans to demonstrate its version of a new approach to processor design, with a chip that is expected to offer faster computing and relatively less power consumption.
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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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AMD&#39;s dual-core AMD64 chips will provide instructions compatible with Intel&#39;s SSE 3 technology, the chip maker announced at the Microprocessor Forum yesterday.
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AMD intends to hold the performance crown for desktop processors with today&#39;s introduction of the Athlon 64 4000+ (2.4 GHz) and FX-55 (2.
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Advanced Micro Devices plans to demonstrate its version of a new approach to processor design on Tuesday, with a chip that is expected to offer faster computing and relatively less power consumption.
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Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) has demonstrated the company&#39;s first dual-core microprocessors at its Austin, Texas, office, the company said Tuesday.