AMD chip socket makes room for others
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Licensing move will let others build specialized coprocessors that will plug into sockets tailored to Opteron or Athlon.
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Race for bragging rights favors Intel again -- for now. But AMD is fighting back with a workaround it says will keep  it in the running until it can bring out its own quad core. By Dan Goodin.
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Chip power has increased dramatically in the last few years, thanks to new multicore processors from Intel, AMD and other chip makers. The problem is, software developers who understand how to utilize the new hardware are in short supply.
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Chip-making technique to fuel AMD64, PowerPC, 'Cell' production
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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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SAN FRANCISCO - After years of holding meetings with analysts and media at rival Intel's biannual developer conferences, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) plans to host its own developer conference this year in the U.S.
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AMD&#39;s Opteron processors will soon be able to take advantage of the same powermanagement technology the company has already built into its desktop and laptop processors.
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Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD.N,   the world's number two maker of microchips for personal   computers, has sealed a deal to supply China's second-largest   PC maker with chips, scoring its latest victory in a market   share battle with bigger rival Intel INTC.O.
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(InfoWorld) - Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) launched a motherboard with four cores on Thursday, targeting gaming enthusiasts in an effort to keep pace with the release of quad-core chips by rival Intel. AMD's Quad FX Platform includes two dual-core Athlon 64 FX-70 series chips and uses Nvidia's 680a chip set. AMD's choice of components shows it is willing to follow open standards even though the companyÂ acquired Nvidia's rival ATI TechnologiesÂ earlier this month, said Ian McNaughton, product manager for Athlon 64 FX products. The launch highlights a debate in the industry about the definition of quad-core processors. Intel hasÂ claimed it won the quad-core raceÂ on Nov. 14 by packaging two dual-core chips together in the Xeon 5300 for servers and Core 2 Extreme QX6700 for gamers. But AMD calls its Quad FX Platform a "4x4," and says it won't release a true "quad-core" processor until 2007, when it combines four cores on a single piece of silicon called "Barcelona." Analysts say they won't be able to judge the winner of the debate until they can test comparable products. In the meantime, one thing is certain: a PC with four computing cores can run a lot of applications at once. PC vendors who use the Quad FX will attract more than just hard-core gamers, McNaughton said. A desktop with four computing cores can be a workstation for "megataskers," those users who watch high-definition video while burning a DVD, downloading a BitTorrent file, and chatting on a TeamSpeak connection, even as their PC runs antivirus software, Skype, and instant messaging applications in the background. "The PC usage model has changed. It's evolving, it's getting crazy and we love it," he said. "People are doing four, five, six things at the same time." Of course, gamers are still a core audience for this product. The extra cores will allow fans of multiplayer online games to play two instances of the game simultaneously, controlling two characters in a single episode of EverQuest, World of Warcraft or Lineage, according to AMD. Many of these gamers have been using AMD's Opteron server chip to manage their heavy computing loads, McNaughton said. The Quad FX Platform will be a more efficient tool for the job and will allow them to upgrade to a pair of quad-core Barcelona chips in the middle of 2007. As the hardware industry relies increasingly on multicore designs, chip power is measured by scalability and efficiency, not just frequency, said AMD spokesman Bubba Wolford. That development is pushing chip vendors to grow from being simple component suppliers to selling entire platforms. AMD has followed that trend to produce its AMD Live product for media center PCs and now the Quad FX. AMD is selling the Quad FX Platform with three types of chips built with a 90-nanometer process, charging $599 for a pair of 2.6 GHz FX-70 chips, $799 for a pair of 2.8 GHz FX-72 chips, and $999 for a pair of 3.0 GHz FX-74 chips, if purchased in lots of 1,000 units.
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Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) continues to plug away at microprocessor rival Intel&#39;s (Nasdaq: INTC) lead, which once seemed insurmountable.
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A new chipset offers high-end features for less cash, an effort to spark PC makers to update their low-price offerings.
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Power consumption continues to climb, so Intel will reach into the bag of tricks to keep Moore's Law going.
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Chip maker rolls out energy-efficient processors AMD is to sell low-wattage processors in a bid to join the campaign of many IT companies to be seen to be green.â¦
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A smaller and more efficient design could help the chipmaker better compete.
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The quad-core server chip won't appear until later this year, but AMD's trying to show potential customers the chips are up and running.
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Single-core Athlons for the chop sooner, it's claimed AMD looks set to introduce Socket AM3 processors in the second half of 2008, reports coming out of Asia suggest. Sooner, though, it will begin phasing out single-core Athlon-branded chips, the moles also allege.â¦
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HDMI, DisplayPort, UVD to be added to laptop chipsets Mobile Roadmap AMD's roadmap for its notebook-oriented has taken a decidedly avian turn as the chip maker gears up to battle Intel's Centrino, a plan that will see it support Flash-fitted hybrid hard drives, 802.11n Wi-Fi, HyperTransport 3 and DirectX 10.â¦