AMD '4x4' technology discussed at analysts' meeting

San Francisco (CA) - A very small conference, gathering together certain selected AMD technology supporters, including VooDoo PC and Microsoft, was held last Tuesday, the topic of which was the company's upcoming double-dual-core hardware platform, code-named "4x4." Among the few journalists invited to this micro-gathering was John Virata of Digital Media Online. His report on the conference was just published late this week by his sister publication, IT Business Net.

Among the speakers at the conference Virata quoted for his story were Brad Peebler, president of 3D rendering software company Luxology; and Rahul Sood, president of VooDoo PC. Their testimonials provide the first look, independently of AMD Corp., at the possible performance gains of 4x4:

Said Luxology's Peebler, "Our users are incredibly power hungry, and when we started this company, we were betting on threading." Running the company's Modo application on the 4x4 systems, Peebler saw an extreme boost in rendering capabilities. "The end result is we get 90 percent boost as we add multiple cores to handle the rendering tasks. It is all about multiple CPUs. If your app is threaded properly, you'll see near linear rendering."

At the other end of the extreme megatasking spectrum stood Rahul Sood, president of game PC maker Voodoo PC. PC gamers are always at the cutting edge of the PC market, buying the latest and fastest components money can buy, a market that AMD is obviously going after with 4x4. "Hardcore gamers are about the bare minimum," Sood said. They want all the processing power directed at the game they are playing, and not allowing the CPU to perform other tasks. With 4x4, game players will be enabled to perform multiple tasks, he said. "Most visionaries in the industry see 4x4 as the next step in gaming," Sood said. "Multitasking on the enthusiast platform is the next big thing."

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