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After David’s presentation, we had a surprise visit by Nigel Dessau. Nigel is the senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD. Nigel thinks that simplicity is a good way to do things and it makes sense. We should base our selection of a computer on what we need it to do, and how we need it done. If offered a quality choice of good, better or best, and a choice of how the computer will be used - for home, work or play – selecting the right computer is a lot easier than when overwhelmed with dozens of machines that may or may not be as usable as expected. Nigel summed his outlook on making a company a success in a succinct sentence - “It’s OK to look back, but it’s not OK to stare.” To me, that meant, learn from your mistakes, but don’t dwell on them to the degree that they stop forward movement. That’s the attitude that I think will keep AMD on the right track. The next person we were able to talk with was Matt Mazzantini, Senior Product Manager, who explained the next integrated platform from AMD, codenamed Shrike. Shrike will be the first line of fusion computing. Few if any of us knew what that meant. Matt told us that he believes that AMD will be the first to combine the CPU and the GPU on a single silicon chip. The new term used for this will be APU (Accelerated Processing Unit). This isn’t going to be available tomorrow, but expect to see it in the second half of 2009. It will include DP, DVI, HDMI support and PCIe in and out. You’ll see a wide range of products including thin and light computers, ultra-low voltage and low voltage. We all want lighter laptops with exceptional battery life and this is certainly going to be a big step. Hal Speed, AMD marketing architect, spoke about what we can expect in the future. By future, we mean at least 4 years out. Expect to see more than 1000% performance improvements and/or 200% power savings. One of the most exciting events of the day was a visit by Charlie Boswell, Director of Advanced Marketing. Charlie showed some videos that were done in real time using AMD Live by various artists, including Peter Frampton, Austin City Limits, and Dweezil Zappa among others. Charlie noted that the AMD-powered PCs have been used in many stunning videos and movies. George Lucas used it in Star Wars, Episodes 2 and 3. It was used in Transformers. I was lucky enough to have been invited to San Francisco to Dreamworks Studios and saw a clip from Transformers on the absolutely most stunning screen and heard it in heart-pounding sound. All I can say is that it was AWESOME! Later in the afternoon we were able to head to Charlie’s sound studio. I think he really enjoys his job and it shows! Ognjen Brkic talked about discrete graphics in notebooks and a new product that’s in the works that grabbed our attention. He told us that these (code-named Lasso) won’t be marketed by AMD, but by their partners, so the final product may be seen with many variations. Being a mobile fan, I was very excited to see Lasso, which is an external box that can be used for a variety of things, depending on what the OEMs add. The technology that’s impressive here is that due to the uniqueness of features – for example, this box can be used for external video cards among a myriad of other devices. That means those of us who are committed to mobility will then be able to enjoy all the video power of any desktop. This ATI XGP technology is proprietary to ATI until August of 2009, then available to all. Because removing a video card by accidentally unplugging it would crash the computers, the connection was well thought out and tested and the result is that it’s solid and unique. Pat Moorhead then gave us a quick rundown with no fluff or frills about what’s happening at AMD. Visual Computing Trends Film Industry
Video Games
3-D Computing
Turning Point in CPU Design
Future
As I noted at the beginning of this article, ATI just released some new graphics cards. With the processing needs of upcoming graphics, take a look at the HD 4800 Series. Designed to Perform – ATI Radeon Premium Graphics The ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series offer major performance leap with the industries first TeraFLOPS GPU and 800 Stream Processors. With the first GDDR5 graphics and AMD’s second generation DirectX 10.1, ATI continues to offer the best performance at every price and says that we can expect the fastest card in the market. The ATI Radeon HD 4850 claims to be the best gaming card available for under $200. It will run highly demanding games in full HD and high settings. For you gamers out there, here are some of the specs.
With the new technology of the HD 4800 series, you’ll be able to upscale to an HD monitor without losing quality. The most impressive and amazing video of the day was that of ‘Ruby.’ You’ll be able to see for yourself when this demo is officially posted to the Web. Although experts said that it would be 2014 before we saw this quality in ‘Cinematic Computing,’ it’s here now and you’ll see it soon. Just imagine being able to actually see dust motes on the sides of a terrarium along with crystal clarity throughout the video. The ATI Radeon HD 4870 has received rave reviews. It’s already won several awards, over 30 already and that’s just in EMEA. The price is also pretty amazing - $299 and that’s the suggested retail. Power Director (Cyberlink) CPU load is above 5% and below 70%. Cyberlink, Win DVD, WMP10 and 11 are supported. Sonic, and Roxio support will be coming in a couple of months. A few other tidbits from Pat –
The new APU is going to stir things up.
That’s something I hadn’t been aware of, but that shows that one of industry’s most respected news sources respects the way AMD is doing things.
Mark Welker, AMD’s Senior Performance Analyst, talked about Performance Benchmarks, both in the lab and real world. Hearing about how some of the benchmarks were used was interesting, especially in what we usually don’t see published. For example, you’ve probably all read about some things are touted as reducing the load on the CPU by using GPU power. What we don’t read is how the CPU load is rated. If you have something that’s supposed to run on GPU power, take a look at your CPU monitor and see just how true it is. Just for fun, load up Disney or American Idol’s site and watch the CPU monitor. Was it what you expected to see? These aren’t the only sites or programs that can strain a CPU, but they’re good examples. Mark also told us something we’ve been waiting to hear for some time. This summer is when you’re going to see 64-bit computing take off. We can only hope! I’ve been seeing 64-bit computers coming from OEMs loaded with a 32-bit OS. It’s only recently that I’ve seen 64-bit Windows Vista being standard on some 64-bit machines (thank you HP and AMD). Rick Gayle is the Senior Product Manager for Platform Planning and gave a rundown of the Better By Design Program. Some of the highlights from his presentation are WLAN
Wireless USB (W-USB)
A real treat was getting to see a lot of preproduction machines. HP’s Puma-based tx2500 was there. I was anxious to test it out. Looking at it, you won’t see any difference in the form factor from the tx2000, but performance should be better. We’ll be testing this unit soon and will let you know as soon as we can. For dinner, we traveled to a legendary local restaurant, the Salt Lick, where we feasted on Texas barbecue in true Texas style. Platters and bowls were filled to overflowing, and they just kept coming. Ribs, brisket, chicken, turkey, coleslaw, beans, potato salad and bread made round after round. And to top it all off, there was peach or blueberry cobbler and Texas pecan pie. I didn’t hear one complaint about the food! To AMD - thanks for a great event! We appreciate your being straightforward. We’re glad you’re talking to the communities and listening in return. We’re glad you invited us and we’re anxious to see more. |
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2000-2009