AMD Reveals Ultrathin Prototype, Roadmaps

[exfileme]

In addition to revealing its 2012 and 2013 roadmaps, AMD sported an ultrathin form factor packed with its Trinity APU.

AMD Reveals Ultrathin Prototype, Roadmaps : Read more

 

[irish_adam]

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

 

[erunion]

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

 

[pharoahhalfdead]

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?

 

[msgun98]

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.

 

[coder543]

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.

 

[JOSHSKORN]

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

 

[A Bad Day]

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.

[citation][nom]erunion[/nom]When AMD said they weren't going to compete with intel anymore they really meant they were going to focus on the laptop market?[/citation]

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

 

[danwat1234]

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.

 

[Achoo22]

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.

 

[_Pez_]

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

 

[alidan]

[citation][nom]Achoo22[/nom]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.[/citation]

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.

 

[DjEaZy]

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

 

[waethorn]

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!)

 

[waethorn]

[citation][nom]DjEaZy[/nom]... the GPU will be the key feature... and AMD haz that...[/citation]

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.

 

[zodiacfml]

+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.

[citation][nom]irish_adam[/nom]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[/citation]

 

[DjEaZy]

[citation][nom]waethorn[/nom]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.[/citation]
... 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...

 

[waethorn]

[citation][nom]DjEaZy[/nom]... 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...[/citation]

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.

 

[spookie]

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

 

[DjEaZy]

[citation][nom]waethorn[/nom]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.[/citation]
http://www.techpowerup.com/154357/ARM-Going-64-Bit-To-Compete-In-High-End-Desktop-Market.html
... there will be even ARM 64bit CPU's and we will need to address more than 3,5 Gb of ram...

 

[digiex]

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

 

[doron]

[citation][nom]waethorn[/nom]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.[/citation]

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.

 

[K2N hater]

[citation][nom]waethorn[/nom]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.[/citation]
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.

 

[waethorn]

[citation][nom]DjEaZy[/nom]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...[/citation]

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.

[citation][nom]K2N hater[/nom]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.[/citation]

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.

 

[HansVonOhain]

Piledriver, steamroller... my word!