AMD Reveals Ultrathin Prototype, Roadmaps

i think these next 18months are going to make or break AMD. If they really can sell those ultrathin laptops at half the price of intels (or just 30%) then i think they could sell alot of these.

On the CPU side of things windows 8 will be with us soon and i think they are hoping that they will see some big improvements in benchmarks to make up for the abysmal showing bulldozer had. Also with piledriver on its way at the end of this year lets hope they've found out what happened to all that power they promised.

As for the GPU side, they have always done well here since they acquired ATI

When AMD said they weren't going to compete with intel anymore they really meant they were going to focus on the laptop market?

I don't understand the difference between Piledriver and Vishera. How can Vishera be 2nd gen when Piledriver is next in line? Is Vishera another completely different architecture then?

I wonder if this APU just ends up being a slightly souped up netbook or will it actually compete with today's SB ULV processors.

ha.. they aren't going to compete anymore. They're going to win!

ok.. kidding. They may very well do that, but they did say there weren't interested in the competition anymore.

AMD should've joined the mobile market. I think they'll become a sitting duck in 2 years.

Would be nice if AMD added some memory to their APU, like 256 or 512 MB. Rarely do you find mainstream laptops with RAM that have higher than 1066 or 1333 MHz, and such slow RAM is bound to kneecap any integrated GPU.

I think AMD meant they had no interest in headbutting Intel over who can market the most powerful CPU.

I think when AMD shrinks down to 14nm/16nm, I'll buy an ultrabook based off of their hardware. I'm happy with my Core 2 duo gaming laptop for now and I can wait 5 years or so. I'm sure the Integrated graphics in the AMD chip will be much better than the Nvidia 9800gs chipset I have right now and like a 10th the power consumption.

I honestly can't wait to see the full specifications for these new AMD ultrabooks. News sites were awash in vendor complaints about reaching the $1,000 target set by Intel for months, and the $30-$100 difference in chip price doesn't explain how AMD is hitting a $500 floor. I'm guessing that there are going to be major compromises in multiple areas (maybe display and storage). As long as the devices manage to keep a healthy price delta between similarly equipped ultrabooks, this could be a great scene for AMD. If, however, the price of the AMD-branded ultrabooks encroaches on the Intel models after choosing all the trim upgrades, I don't see any reason to go near it.

On Graphics side they are already Impressive, But I do not know why I can breakout with Nvidia maybe is cuda ...

well im just assuming but do the intel ones have real gpus or do they also use integrated? because that's one area where going amd means cheaper and less space needed. we can also assume using hdds over ssd and also intel didnt thing they would compete with amd in the untra portable, and the only thing ultras had to contend with apple that already jacks their prices so much its not hard to compete, than along come amd who are going at a far lower more competitive price.

... the GPU will be the key feature... and AMD haz that...

I dunno about mobile specifics, but the next gen Brazos roadmap is to have 2-4 cores. Trinity looks good, but the real exciting stuff is how much power they can push into the cheapest chips possible (and how that compares to Intel at the same low price point - Atom, heh!)

Energy efficient general purpose cores are still important and Windows 8 will make developers see that ARM is a capable alternative to x86, which is why AMD is working on DX11+ APU's with ARM cores in place of x86.

+1 Even before Sandy Bridge, Nehalem is quite a foe already. I had recommended the HP DM1 with an E-350 to people I know and three had bought and satisfied with it.

... good point... but the software need's to get there jet... we have x64 and multi-core, but still we use 32bit single threaded applications... at least on windows platform... and i waz talking about GPU... not cpu... there can be combinations...

WinRT will allow a lot of 32-bit applications to be very streamlined. 64-bit only make sense when you need access to more memory, but ARM is 32-bit only right now and mobile-style apps are where developers are focusing their efforts now, so anything written for mobile computing will be 32-bit anyway. As far as threading, I don't agree. Any application written now with anything to do with multimedia is going to be multi-threaded, but then, more and more of those will also use GPU acceleration. WinRT also makes these resources extremely easy to access too. HTML apps will take advantage of the GPU acceleration in the new Trident HTML5 engine in Windows 8 automatically. The new C# runtime is much simpler than the older API's and DirectX API's are moving towards native-code C++. All of this means more power to developers, but not every application requires GPU acceleration. That's the reason why NVIDIA hasn't just tried to introduce a processor that runs entirely off GPU cores.

I wouldn't mind having one, especially at that price

http://www.techpowerup.com/154357/ [...] arket.html
... there will be even ARM 64bit CPU's and we will need to address more than 3,5 Gb of ram...

Mobile is the name of the game. So battery life is of the essence.

Currently Intel's medfield platform (Single core atom - in order design) outperforms every single platform based on ARM in today's smartphones (even dual core - out of order design). I really hope not to see them in notebooks for a while.

64bit is not required for 4GB+ RAM. Intel predicted it 2 decades ago and every processor since Pentium Pro would come with PAE for 64GB physical RAM. Microsoft set a limit in 32-bit kernel for addressing even though PAE is natively supported (NT 4.0 would have allowed it but none really needed it by the time so the native support was only added later on) in order to trick businessmen into purchasing their most expensive Windows flavours. Fact is it came to the point home users eventually hit that wall as well and the promise that AMD64 would be actually faster than 32-bit lured most enthusiasts into XP64 and Vista rather than cracking XP32 kernel in order to eliminate the imposed limit. In the Linux world kernel can be set to address >4GB on 32-bit hardware with or without PAE.

There will be, but not for a couple of years. Don't expect any support in Windows 8 either.[citation]

[nom]doron[/nom]Currently Intel's medfield platform (Single core atom - in order design) outperforms every single platform based on ARM in today's smartphones (even dual core - out of order design). I really hope not to see them in notebooks for a while.[/citation]

Medfaild doesn't bring multimedia capabilities to the table though. Intel is so far behind AMD for low-power multimedia. Customers buying ARM stuff are generally surprised by the multimedia support (fully accelerated H.264, OpenGL ES 2.0) whereas Intel Atom buyers are left wanting for more. ARM will win out just on cost and battery life. Customers looking for more performance in the same price point as Intel will want AMD. Intel sits in the middle, but there are too many compromises.




PAE is unstable and brings a lot of compatibility headaches, which is why Microsoft doesn't use it be default, and why Intel doesn't recommend it. It's a band-aid designed by Intel to support an inferior platform, and Microsoft was pushed by them to support it, just like Vista Basic and 7 Starter. This is yet another attempt by Intel to keep the computing world behind so they can sell more old chips.

Piledriver, steamroller... my word!

AMD is doing very well, contrary to what any bashers paid by Intel or Nvidia may post. They've been posting on the AMD yahoo finance discussion group for years, and now they are posting here as well. Ignore the Intards and Nvidiots!

There is no mention of ARM cores in these, plus theres no reason to HAVE an ARM core in X86. ARM flounders under high loads. AMD I think is doing it the right way, as their 45nm and 32nm Chips offer resistance to the mainly 32nm shovelware Intel Chips. Also remember Intel and Nvidia fanboys, AMD is the only thing that keeps the price down on CPUs and GPUs. These are thin-light ultrabooks, and with this kind of processing power, compared to the seemingly hotter running INTEL (ive got Phen2 in my laptop and it runs the same, if not colder than my friends I5) really, 8-4 cores in an area where it used to be absurd if there was a Dual-Core? Seems legit to me, lets just hope on Piledriver. After all, which new architecture worked well the first time? Compare the Phenom1 and 2, or the first major Dual and Quadcores. ALL OF THEM SUCKED. Then Intel and AMD messed around with them and they were the best thing you could get for the time. Bulldozer may have let AMD fans down, but never give up on AMD. They've saved themselves before.

AMD is working on ARM-based chips for the low-end. You wouldn't have heard any public announcements about them recently, but this is why AMD made a big presense at that recent ARM show from last year. What AMD wants is better power efficiency out of the general computing cores and x86 can't provide that. Microsoft's plan to support ARM as a mainstream architecture alternative to x86 is opening the door to a new world of cross-platform software compatibility too. What ARM is getting out of the deal is AMD's experience with extending existing architectures to the 64-bit world without breaking compatibility, along with better graphics options. ARM has decent multimedia support (better than Atom for HD media), but they want to have better 3D options along the lines of DX11 (ARM only currently supports OpenGL ES 2.0 which is, at best, similar to the capabilities of D3D7).

None of this has any bearing on their current plans for x86 in the mainstream and high-end chips - for now. This is only relating to the low-cost chips where media consumption requires high-end multimedia performance without much in the way of general computing (beyond the capabilities of ARM, anyway).

Maybe by the time Windows 9 is announced, we'll see an announcement from AMD. This is the next major Fusion project for AMD though so it will likely take a few years.

....and if you're wondering: trade show reps have loose lips.

2013 for second Gen FX now that sucks, I was trying to be hopeful that they would have had it done this year.

Hmmm. I wonder what this will mean. It may still be too late for me as I am considering an Intel build for a new PC; Intel is something I have not done in more than 10 years.

As to 18mm ultrabook and at "half" Intel's price: I just bought my wife a Toshiba Z835-P330 ultrabook, i3-2367M, 120GB SSD, 13.3" LED backlit LCD. 2.4 LBS, and 16mm thin - $800 US. Now I realize that the APU will have significantly better graphics, but my wife does not play games, nor watch movies on the thing, so that is not a consideration for us.

What bothers me about this is that given the specs and price on the ultrabook I just bought, how is $500 to $600 half of $800?? To me, this sounds like AMD is still up to their marketing blather, er, uh, I mean crap, and that really, really bothers me after the BD fiasco. If they continue to spin their stuff as the greatest thing since sliced bread, I think they better watch out as anything that does not meet the implied expectations of their marketing crap will backfire on them and give us "loyal AMD fans" even more of an extremely bad taste in our mouths. Setting customer expectations high and then disappointing those same customers again will not please people like me - IMHO.

IMHO, for the desktop realm, intel has some decent "value" processors available, and AMD better watch their six rather than market more bling.

I think AMD expected 10% improvement on Piledriver over Bulldozer, this closes the gap to intel cores (looking at CPU only, over 25% at same clock ?). Considering Bulldozer is 5% slower than PhenomII, new trinity APUs will get 5% more CPU horsepower over current APUs, is that ?
Don't know what to expect at the graphics side (in fact, nothing else to expect there, any improvement is welcome).
I am considering changing my new development desktop computer to A8 (cost conscious, OpenCl is something I would like to dig in) or i5-2500 (CPU horsepower).
I just can't decide (won't go wrong with none of them), and now Trinity makes things worse ? sorry, but waiting for Bulldozer was disappointing. 5% CPU over A8... should I expect something in 3D worth the wait for trinity then ?

In the mobility space, AMD should have the best product, with an SSD, 4 cores and a powerful enough GPU you get a 4 years old desktop power into mobility factor (plus the fact of multicore and SSD responsivity) and that's enough horsepower for today's apps in a truly attractive form factor based on fewer components and a simpler design.

I think when AMD has the CPU, IGP, and discrete video card all computing in harmony under HSA they will be hard to stop.
As far as " not competing with Intel" They are leaving Intel the raw power King as raw power no longer
is a problem any 4 core cpu has more than ample power. Instead AMD has been as busy as a bee
creating the next era in computing. HSA will change for ever how computers work.