A secret debugging mode, built into all AMD processors since the Athlon XP range, has been uncovered by a hacker - opening the doors for advanced program debugging beyond that specified in the x86 architecture.
AMD has said that it plans to continue GPU development after the company's Fusion range of combined CPU/GPU chips appear.
Writing on the AMD blog, AMD client technology unit director Godfrey Cheng wrote "I believe that the best days of the GPU are ahead of it," before citing new Mercury research indicating that the Intel and Nvidia competitor is now the market leader in discreet graphics and stating that the company intends to expand the lead further.
CHIPMAKER AMD is reporting that it is churning out and shipping its latest 8-core and 12-core processors, codenamed Magny Cours, to select OEMs and Ebay auctioneers.
Magny Cours or rather Opteron 61xx chips feature revised quad channel memory controllers and remain within the 75W power envelope occupied by their predecessors, the 6-core Istanbul chips. However the Opteron 61xx requires a new socket, the G34, so it won't be a drop-in upgrade like the step up from Shanghai to Istanbul was.
The "Llano" processor that AMD described today in an ISSCC session is not a CPU, and it's not a GPU—instead, it's a hybrid design that the chipmaker is calling an "application processor unit," or APU. Whatever you call it, it could well give Intel a run for its money in the laptop market, by combining a full DX11-compatible GPU with four out-of-order CPU cores on a single, 32nm processor die.
Advanced Micro Devices will launch its twelve-core AMD Opteron “Magny-Cours” central processing units (CPUs) for high-end servers in March, 2010, sources close to the company revealed. AMD plans to unveil a broad family of twelve- and eight-core chips for multi-processor machines with different performance and thermal design power points.
Companies rarely make big news at financial analyst day events, but AMD bucked that trend Wednesday by unveiling details of its newly revamped roadmap, its two brand-new processor architectures, and its plans for CPU/GPU integration. (AMD and Intel also made some other news together). Rather than attempt a comprehensive overview of what was announced, I'll walk you through the two new processor architectures, leaving the CPU/GPU "Fusion" revelations and roadmap specifics for a second article.
System builders and system buyers looking for lower-cost and lower-power AMD options now have a lot more. The company announced today eight new processors in its Athlon II line, including three-core CPUs and two energy-efficient 45-watt CPUs at every core count, intended for mainstream minitower, small-form-factor, and all-in-one systems.
When AMD's new Radeon HD cards launch in a few weeks, the showstopper will be a technology the company calls Eyefinity, which can power up to six monitors on a single graphics card.
At a press event outlining AMD's Vision strategy, AMD showed off a jaw-dropping 24 30-inch monitors, all powered by a single PC with four graphics cards. AMD's software combined the images, producing a single 7680-by- 3200 image using the six cards, and what apparently was a 30,720-by-12,800 image spread over a whopping twenty-four monitors.
Advanced Micro Devices on Monday introduced a low-power variant of its six-core Opteron server chip, which is codenamed Istanbul.
The Opteron 2419 EE draws up to 40 watts of power, which almost equals the lowest power drawn by AMD's existing quad-core line of Opteron server chips codenamed Shanghai. The new chip provides 30 percent more performance compared to quad-core Opterons in the same power band, the company said.
AMD has announced the release of the first OpenCL SDK for x86 CPUs, and it will enable developers to target x86 processors with the kind of OpenCL code that's normally written for GPUs. In a way, this is a reverse of the normal "GPGPU" trend, in which programs that run on a CPU are modified to run in whole or in part on a GPU.
