Marcus Pollice, Author at VR World - Page 2 of 7

Entertainment, Graphics, Hardware, Reviews, Software Programs

AMD One-ups Their APUs with Richland – A10-6800K Review

Last year AMD introduced the second generation of their A-series APU codenamed Trinity. While the mobile version was launched about a year ago, the desktop version was delayed until fall. This year Trinity is getting an incremental update called Richland. While Richland was already launched for notebooks in March, the desktop version is only debuting now. We won’t delve into the details of the architecture behind Richland in this article, because it remains basically the same as Trinity. We covered it extensively in our preview of mobile Trinity last year. However, we will look at the specifications in detail as well as discuss some of

Business, Graphics, Hardware

AMD Updates Roadmaps, Shows 28nm Kaveri for Socket FM2+

Recently AMD released updated roadmaps on their investor relations website. While most of the contents were already known by followers of the company, there are some details that are newsworthy, as they previously were only discussed in rumors. Desc.: On the mobile roadmap Kabini and Temash are prominently featured. In the high end Kaveri will make a show in the back half of the year. Unlike the desktop platform, Richland is already available. According to the updated roadmap, Kaveri is designed for the FM2+ socket, while current Trinity and upcoming Richland processors are running on socket FM2. What is unclear at the moment is whether

Cloud Computing, Enterprise, Hardware

AMD launches Opteron X-Series, Moving Jaguar into Servers

With the Opteron X-Series family, formerly codenamed Kyoto, AMD enters the market for microserver processors, which is aimed at scaleout workloads. Due the heritage of Kyoto, namely being another sibling of Kabini, it is a true SoC that also integrates the Fusion Controller Hub. After the launch of the embedded G-series APU and the consumer SKUs, now AMDs Jaguar architecture makes it’s way into servers. Given that Intel’s only competition in this segment is the Atom S1200 series ?Centerton? processor, AMD is very bullish about it’s advantages. Twice the number of cores, more than double the throughput, four times the RAM (8GB on Intels S1200 series

Business, Hardware

Intel Unveils Silvermont Architecture, Bullish Against Competition

Intel unveiled their Silvermont microarchitecture on May 6th, giving a broad overview of the innovations that will soon come to Intel Atom processors. Silvermont is the first major rework of the microarchitecture in Atom. After it’s initial launch in 2008 with the Bonnell architecture at the 45nm node, Intel only delivered a 32nm shrink named Saltwell that integrated the north bridge, while leaving the CPU cores basically unchanged. With the 22nm Silvermont core, the company introduces some major changes. Furthermore the company plans to accelerate the roadmap and plans to provide a 14nm successor called Airmon already next year. Intel doesn’t go into detail whether

Business, Hardware

AMD – Price Slashes, New Models and Phaseouts

This week there have been some movements in AMDs product portfolio. Not only did the chipmaker make some moderate price cuts, it also introduced a few new models as well as phased out some of the older offerings. In the AMD FX camp, prices remained mostly stable, but some of the Vishera SKUs got their prices reduced. Given the current pricing structure, there is no incentive to buy the older Zambezi options which feature slightly lower performance. Alongside some of the pricing adjustments, AMD introduced two new AMD FX models based on the Vishera core. The FX 6350 features a 3.9 GHz clock speed with

Business, Hardware, Software Programs

Microsoft Scores Another Licensing Agreement, Wins Injunction in Germany

After last week’s announcement of a licensing agreement with Foxconn, Microsoft’s Horacio Gutierez, Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of the Intellectual Property Group, announced the next deal in a blog. According to this, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer ZTE, joins the ranks of companies who have entered into a licensing agreement with Microsoft with regards to Android and Chrome OS. Microsoft obviously is proud about the step and expresses that they hope to sign similar agreements with the remaining companies who according to their view continue to violate their intellectual property. It seems that Microsoft is intent on tightening the grip in the ongoing legal

Graphics, Hardware

AMD Launches Kabini-based G-Series SoC

With the release of the Embedded G-series System-on-Chip (SoC) platform, the first product based on AMDs Jaguar architecture hits the market. AMD made the announcement on the DESIGN West expo earlier today. This comes rather quickly after AMD executives states last week in their earnings call that they started revenue shipments of Kabini, the very silicon that powers those new Embedded G-series SoCs. The new SoCs feature 2-4 X86 cores and come at TDPs ranging from 9W up to 25W. The cores are clocked at 1-2 GHz, feature 1-2MB shared L2 cache. The integrated GPU is based on AMDs GCN architecture and clocks at up to 600MHz.

Business, Software Programs

Microsoft Signs Agreement with Foxconn, Broadens Licensing Program

Microsoft announced that they signed a worldwide patent licensing agreement with Hon Hai Precision Industry, the parent company of Foxconn. Foxconn is known to manufacture many gadgets and devices like smartphones, tablets, notebooks or game consoles such as the Xbox 360. Under the IP licensing program targeting Android and Chrome OS, Microsoft wants to make sure that their technologies are properly licensed when used in products based on open source software. While the exact details of the agreement are not disclosed, Microsoft collects royalties on a per device basis. Given the high sales numbers of Android devices, this rakes in a considerable amount of money. Microsoft’s

Hardware, Software Programs

BSN* Exclusive: AmdMsrtweaker v1.1 Released, Trinity Support Inside

AmdMsrTweaker is a command line tool for Windows which allows to reprogram the P-States used by various CPUs and APUs of AMD for their Cool&Quiet power saving technology. The P-States are available via model specific registers and can be changed to allow for undervolting or even overclocking on unlocked chips. This gives greater flexibility compared to a fixed offset voltage in BIOS. One thing I found particularly interesting is the fact that AMD actually has a competitive advantage here they never really highlighted. To the contrary, on Intel’s chips the registers to control this behavior are write-protected and thus can’t be altered by the user.

Business, Hardware

Intel Confirms Haswell Chipset Bug

In the past weeks Intel had to face a lot of negative coverage for their upcoming Haswell processor which is due for introduction later this year and to be branded as 4th generation Core processor. One of the unofficial claims was that there was a serious bug with the accompanying Lynx Point ?8 series / C220? chipset that causes USB devices to disappear after the computer transitioned into standby mode (specifically S3). Now Intel steps in and ? albeit quietly ? confirms the chipset issues. In a Product Change Notification (PCN) they announce a stepping conversion from C1 to C2 which is going to fix

Graphics, Hardware

Analysis: AMD Kaveri APU and Steamroller Core Architectural Enhancements Unveiled

Recently, we exclusively unveiled that Kaveri, successor to the current "Trinity" high-end APU (Fusion A8 and A10 family) features a GDDR5 memory interface. This time we will talk about architectural enhancements of AMDs upcoming mainstream APU Kaveri as well as enhancements of the Steamroller cores which will also make their way into servers and high-end desktop systems in 2014. The information comes from a "Preliminary BIOS and Kernel Developer’s Guide for AMD Family 15h Models 30h-3Fh Processors" (you can find a similar document here, dated January 2012) document, available to interested developers. AMD Kaveri APU Processor will feature 4-6 Steamroller cores, Sea Islands GPU and Northbridge

Graphics, Hardware

AMD Kaveri Unveiled: PC Architecture Gets GDDR5

We were able to take a peek at AMD NDA information (aimed at engineers) that details the technical features of the Kaveri APU. According to this information, Kaveri features a GDDR5 memory interface consisting of four 32-bit memory channels. This is perfectly matching the width of a GDDR5 chip which is also 32-bit. However, the memory controller has to be set up in a way so that two 32-bit channels work in tandem, half-channel use is not supported. The total width is 128-bit, so the main advantage comes from higher clock speeds of GDDR5 memory. This is in addition to the 128-bit DDR3 interface that

Entertainment, Rumors, Software Programs

Blizzard News: Starcraft II and WoW Trailers, New Game on PAX East?

Leading up to the imminent release of the second part of StarCraft II called Heart of the Swarm, Blizzard Entertainment released an epic cinematic trailer for the game. The game will be released on March 13th but for now, this is as close as it gets: Not only will Blizzard deliver the next installment of StarCraft II in less than two weeks, the release of a major content patch for the current World of Warcraft expansion (Mists of Pandaria) is scheduled to be released very soon. While an official release date is not yet announced, chances are the patch will arrive as soon as next

Business, Hardware

Itanium Gets the Final Nail in the Coffin

On January 31st 2013 Intel issued a statement on their website, which basically nullifies their bold plans for their Itanium line of processors, which were only publicized a little over three months ago. Accompanying the launch of the Itanium 9500 series codenamed Poulson, Intel laid out a roadmap where the follow-up dubbed ?Kittson? would be shrunken to 22nm process technology and share a common platform (i.e. socket, chipset, etc.) with the x86 high-end Xeon E7 line. Those plans are now null and void. The statement reads:?Intel has updated the definition of the next generation Itanium® processor, code name ?Kittson?. Kittson will be manufactured on Intel?s 32-nm

Business, Software Programs

AMD moves AFDS Developer Conference to California in November 2013

After two years of holding the AMD Fusion Developer Summit (AFDS) in the first half of June, AMD decided to move the next installment of their developer conference to the second half of the year. Instead of following up Computex, which traditionally is held at the very beginning of June, AFDS 2013 will be held from November 11-14. This was publicized last week by Bob Whitecotton, Senior Manager of Developer Outreach at AMD, announcing the call for papers. Not only did AMD change the date of their developer conference that focuses more on the technical aspects of their current and future products, but also the

Business

AMD Appoints Devinder Kumar as CFO

AMD today announced that Devinder Kumar has been appointed as CFO of the company, effective January 2nd 2013. After the sudden departure of Thomas Seifert as AMD’s CFO, Devinder took over the role of interim CFO of the company in September 2012, after being a corporate controller for eleven years at AMD. According to AMD’s press release, the company underwent a thorough search for internal and external candidates but ultimately settled with the previous interim CFO. "Devinder has been with AMD for more than 28 years and is a talented finance veteran with deep industry knowledge," said Rory Read, CEO of AMD. "As we accelerate

Hardware

Gigabyte Ends the Year with a Bang: Kills AMD FX-8350 CPU

UPDATE January 2nd, 2013 – We’ve been in contact with GigaByte’s Taiwan HQ and its North American subsidiary to work on the issue of the failed component. The motherboard in question served as a review platform for several AMD processors and we’re sending it back to Taiwan in order to see what components failed. According to GigaByte, the company updates its components on the motherboard to ensure reliability. Our version was 2.0, and it featured new electronic components. Original ArticleWhen people talk about ending the year with a bang, they usually talk about festivities involving beautiful fireworks. In the days after Christmas we experienced our

Business, Hardware

Andrew Feldman of SeaMicro Talks Small x86 Microserver Business

On Wednesday we had the opportunity to talk to AMDs Andrew Feldman, founder and former CEO of SeaMicro who now runs the Data Center Service Division (DCSS) at AMD. We got some insight about their current business, the needs of their customers as well as a glimpse what products are around the corner in 2013. As we reported earlier, AMD circulated a press release where it critizises Intel over their Atom S1200 launch. On the call Andrew made it clear that there are positives and negatives about the Intel launch. On the positive side he sees Intel?s commitment to this new product category of microservers. With

Business, Hardware

Intel Launches Atom S1200 For Microservers

On Tuesday, Intel introduced the server variant of their Atom processor. Formerly known under the codename Centerton, it will now be advertised as Atom S1200 series and is available immediately from launch and the company reportedly has 20 design wins. From a technical standpoint, the launch is not very exciting. Unlike other Atom SKUs aimed at consumer products, Intel simply enabled all of the capabilities that laid dormant in the silicon. Namely 64-bit technology and hardware-assisted virtualization, both of which were part of the Atom architecture from the start but disabled on most SKUs, in addition to that Centerton supports ECC memory up to 8GB.

Business, Hardware

AMD Commits to 2013 Wafer Targets, Revises Globalfoundries Agreement

A bit earlier than previously expected, AMD announced the details of their new amended Wafer Supply Agreement (WSA) for 2013 in a conference call yesterday. The event was hosted by Devinder Kumar, AMDs interim CFO and corporate controller. As part of the call, the restructuring plans laid out during the third quarter earnings call were reiterated again. The New Agreement One major component of the 2013 WSA is a reduction of wafer orders for the fourth quarter of 2012. AMD was in a take or pay agreement and committed to a wafer volume of $1.5 billion throughout 2012. Of this amount, some $500 million was