Toshiba to use AMD chip in laptop PCs
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Toshiba Corp.  said it would buy  microprocessors from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. ,  ending its exclusive ties with Intel Corp.  for the  supply of the brains that run computers, and sending its shares  higher.
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SHANGHAI - While much has been made of efforts by Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Intel Corp. to bring dual-core processors to PCs and servers, Freescale Semiconductor Inc. announced Tuesday at a conference in Frankfurt, Germany, details of a dual-core PowerPC processor designed for embedded applications, such as networking and storage.
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Toshiba Corp. (6502.T) said it would buy  microprocessors from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. ,  ending its exclusive ties with Intel Corp.  for the  supply of the brains that run computers, and sending its shares  higher.
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By Liu Baijia  China is likely to unveil the first ultra mobile PC using domestic microprocessor technology with chip design technologies transferred from the US firm AMD, posing challenges to companies like Intel.
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Through-silicon vias to boost storage capacities Toshiba has applied the through-silicon via (TSV) technique - chip makers' flavour-of-the-month technology - to boost the capacity of NAND Flash chips with only a "minimal" increase in chip size and no need for a new fabrication node.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - The Cell processor sits at the heart of a high-performance computer from IBM and the PlayStation 3,Â and now Toshiba Corp. wants to put that power into mobile devices and cell phones. A roadmap for the processor on display by Toshiba at this week's Ceatec show in Japan shows a more powerful version of the chip under development for 2007. While details of the chip were not available, a source close to Toshiba said that the new device will be manufactured using more advanced 65-nanometer production technology. The current chips are being made on a 90-nanometer line and the switch will mean lower power consumption and increased performance. Looking further ahead the roadmap calls for further increases in power between next year and the end of the decade. At the same time "mid-class" versions of the processor are also envisaged for 2008 and beyond and a mobile version in 2010. The Cell chip is the product of a joint development project by Toshiba, IBM, Sony Corp. and Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI). Each chip contains a main processor and eight sub-processors to deliver about 200G Flops (floating point operations per second) of power. It will make its consumer debut next month when SCEI puts the PlayStation 3 on sale in Japan and the U.S. but Toshiba has plans for the chip in other parts of the living room. "As the first application we are focused on the consumer electronics area such as media servers or something like that but Cell itself is not restricted to that area," said Mitsuo Saito, chief fellow at Toshiba's semiconductor company and one of the key creators of the chip, in an interview at Ceatec. "Maybe other partners are going onto the very high-end. We are focusing on the low power area. One is for more mobile types of applications such as small games or some mobile phone-like systems," he said. When the Cell partners disclosed details of the chip in 2004 both Toshiba and Sony said they planned to put the device into consumer electronics products by 2006. Toshiba said its plans have been delayed but remain very much in-place while Sony said it is currently concentrating on getting the Cell into the PlayStation 3 and will look at other uses once the games console is launched. Toshiba's Saito said the three partners are also collaborating on the software side so that Cell-based software won't end up tied to specific versions of the chip. "Also, maybe the most important thing is to have collaboration, he said. "Each type of Cell has to have the same basis of software so for this purpose we are doing a lot of effort to centralize software from the very small Cell to the very large one to have a uniform world. It's our plan to expand to that kind of area. That is a very important aspect so we are collaborating together, three companies, to enhance the Cell world." Â  Additional reporting by Sumner Lemon.
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Next-gen chipset coming next month, report claims ATI's RD600 chipset for Intel processors will launch next month, it has been claimed. Whether motherboard makers will back the product now that ATI is on the verge of being subsumed into Intel competitor AMD remains to be seen.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - A little more detail is known about theÂ new laptops from ToshibaÂ that will use processors from Advanced Micro Devices. Toshiba will launch three laptops in its Satellite range in North America based on AMD's Turion 64 X2 dual-core chip and M690 chip set, AMD said on Wednesday. Toshiba, which confirmed plans on Tuesday for AMD machines but offered no details, said Wednesday that the computers will be available in the third quarter. TheÂ M690 chip set has just been launchedÂ by AMD and will, according to the company, help reduce power consumption and lead to a 25 percent increase in battery life compared to the previous-generation AMD platform. The Japanese PC maker, which ranked fourth in the laptop market in the first quarter of this year, hasn't used AMD chips in laptops since 2000. In anÂ antitrust lawsuit filed against processor-rival IntelÂ in 2005, AMD alleged that Toshiba stopped using its chips after receiving a "very substantial" payment from Intel. Toshiba was receiving "market development funds" from Intel worth about $25 million to $30 million per quarter and those would be jeopardized if it used AMD chips, the lawsuit alleged. AMD is stepping up pressure against Intel in the laptop market and recently disclosed plans to launch a new laptop platform called Puma in 2008. Puma is AMD's answer to Intel'sÂ recently launched Santa RosaÂ laptop platform. The two companies are locked in competition at the bottom-end of the laptop market too. AMD scored the contract to supply chips for One Laptop Per Child's "$100 laptop" after which Intel introduced its own machine for emerging markets, the Classmate PC. Â
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If you pay, you can fill our slot AMD has expanded its friends and family program in an obvious way by allowing partners to plug their CPUs, accelerators and other components directly into Opteron processor sockets. AMD's unveiling today of Torrenza 2 - aka the Torrenza Innovation Socket - builds on an existing deal that let third parties tap into the company's Hypertransport technology. Now, AMD has agreed to open up the entire Opteron socket specifications to preferred partners willing to pay a licensing fee. As a result, customers could start seeing some odd but fantastic motherboards with, for example, a mix of Opteron and Cell chips or even an UltraSPARC T1/Opteron combo.â¦
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Toshiba&#39;s laptop exchange program will run worldwide from Nov. 1 to April 30. The company said 650,000 PCs could be affected. It stressed that the recall will not affect the projected recovery of its PC business.
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The AMD processor, which is designed to compete with Intel&#39;s high-end Centrino chips, offers extra protection against the spread of malicious viruses when enabled by Microsoft Windows XP SP2.
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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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OCTOBER 05, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Toshiba Corp.&#39;s new desktop-replacement multimedia notebooks, introduced on Tuesday, are further evidence that US consumers still have yet to embrace the mobility offered by Intel Corp.
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(InfoWorld) - Toshiba on Thursday revealed a new high-performance chip aimed at multimedia applications such as video processing in consumer devices. The new chip, called SpursEngine, uses cores derived from theÂ Cell microprocessor, which was developed with Sony and IBM. Toshiba plans to show off the capabilities of the new chip in laptop PCs to be unveiled at the CEATEC Japan 2007 technology trade show at Makuhari Messe, which starts Oct. 2. The company will demonstrate the stream processor's capabilities in 3D image processing and manipulation. In rendering changes to an image of a face, the chip can immediately transform hair styles, make-up, and change facial expressions, position and angle in video and render the changes as computer graphics, Toshiba said in a statement. The SpursEngine works alongside a microprocessor to process video streams, recognize and process images, and tackle other multimedia chores. The multicore chip uses Toshiba's own image processing technology. The prototype of the SpursEngine operates at 1.5GHz and consumes 10 to 20 watts of power. It usesÂ Rambus' XDR DRAM memoryÂ due to high data transfer rates required by multimedia applications.The company plans to market SpursEngine after the CEATEC trade show finishes. Toshiba has already started developing products using the processors, and will sell the chips to other companies for use in their products as well. Development of the Cell microprocessor architecture started early this decade to create a new processor with expanded multimedia processing capabilities. Its first major commercial success was inÂ Sony's PlayStation 3Â game console.
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Shares of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD:NYSE - news - research) took a joyride Friday as news circulated that server giant Dell (DELL:Nasdaq - news - research) may adopt AMD&#39;s server chip.
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AMD (NYSE: AMD) has unveiled a new mobile processor, adding to its portfolio of chips for notebook PCs and keeping pace with Intel's Centrino offering.
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(InfoWorld) - Advanced Micro Devices is undaunted by rival Intelâs recent headline-grabbing announcements of 45-nm (nanometer) processing technology and a deal to supply Xeon chips to Sun Microsystems. Interviewed at the DesignCon 2007 conference in Santa Clara, Calif., last week, Steve Polzin, chief platform architect in the Computation Products Group at AMD, said his company would, in time, also use 45-nm manufacturing technology through its alliances with Sony, Toshiba, and IBM. âWe have access to very similar technology that weâll be able to use in 45-nm,â Polzin said. âItâs a weapon in our arsenal.â Intel sent tremors through the hypercompetitive chip market last week when it made good on promises to begin producing 45-nm chips by the second half of this year. More concerning for AMD, Intel said the new chips would consume less energy and generate less heat than existing chips, thanks to a new material dubbed âhigh-kâ that is used in the insulating material for transistors. Polzin would not commit on a time frame for when AMD would use 45-nm, except to say that the company would do so âwhen it makes sense.â AMD currently uses 65-nm processing technology in its Opteron CPU line. âPushing technology for technologyâs sake is not what we do,â Polzin said. The 45-nm technology will be applicable from systems ranging from laptops to datacenters, he said. Intel does not have a big jump on AMD, said analyst Mary Olsson of Gary Smith EDA, and 45-nm systems will not be heavily used for three to four years. As for Sunâs deal to use Intel CPUs after having relied on only AMD for x86 chips, Polzin said the arrangement was not unexpected, with Intel now leveraging AMD-championed technology in Xeon. âWe knew that one of the key factors that attracted Sun to AMD was the 64-bit extensions to x86,â Polzin said. âAMD64 is great technology. Intel decided to copy it, so what the heck.â Sun, as an AMD customer, is free to choose whichever suppliers it wants, Polzin said, adding that Sun is one of its âvery valued customersâ and that the companies still work closely. At the conference, Polzin cited the evolution of processors, which have grown from 16-bit to 32-bit and 64-bit units. Multicore processors also have arrived, he noted. The company plans its quad-processor Opteron offerings for a midyear release. Eight-core chips are on the drawing board as well. In 2009, the company plans to offer graphics processors and CPUs on the same chip as part of its Fusion initiative. This technology will be offered in the mobile Turion chip, Polzin said.