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AMD has announced the launch of the first teraFLOPS graphics card, the ATI Radeon HD 4850, and the first graphics card featuring ultra high bandwidth GDDR5 memory, the ATI Radeon HD 4870. These two innovations combine with AMD's energy-efficient design and DirectX 10.1 compatibility to deliver superior performance at the high-volume mainstream and performance price points.
Both the ATI Radeon HD 4850 and ATI Radeon HD 4870 are immediately available. "The ATI Radeon 4800 series represents a 2X performance jump over the ATI Radeon HD 3800 GPU, the biggest generational increase since the game-changing launch of the Radeon 9700 in 2002," said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Graphics Products Group, AMD. "AMD made a strategic decision to focus on GPU designs that maximized our efficiency and allowed us to provide enthusiasts, performance and mainstream users with the most compelling value proposition at every price point. The ATI Radeon 4800 series sets a new industry standard in key metrics such as performance-per-watt, performance-per-mm2 of chip die size, and performance-per-dollar.
" The ATI Radeon HD 4870, carries a suggested retail price of USD$299, and represents 1.2 teraFLOPS of visual compute power. It features a stock GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, 512 MB of GDDR5 memory rated at 3.6 gigabits/second, and comes in a dual-slot PCI Express 2.0 configuration with a maximum board power of 160 watts. The ATI Radeon HD 4850, carries a suggested retail price of USD$199, received and is the world's first teraFLOPS graphics chip, with 800 stream processing cores (identical to the ATI Radeon HD 4870), a stock GPU core clock speed of 625 MHz, 512 MB of GDDR3 memory rated at 2 gigabits/second, and comes in a single-slot PCI Express 2.0 configuration with a maximum board power of 110 watts.
AMD has announced the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2, looking to advance visual computing and delivering 2.4 teraFLOPS of processing power. They have also announced ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 graphics card which looks to deliver blistering performance at a compelling price point.
These cards comprise the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series, combining two ATI Radeon HD 4800 series GPUs with a more advanced cross-GPU connection based on the PCIe 2.0 standard, plus two gigabytes of memory based on an advanced 55nm design and leading DirectX 10.1 support, the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series delivers engineering elegance and the industry's most compelling feature set. The ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 is immediately available from e-tailers worldwide priced at USD $549, while the ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 is scheduled to be available in September at an estimated price of USD $399. "The ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series is proof that our graphics strategy is working. The response from OEMs, system integrators, game DEVELOPERS, press, and most importantly, from gamers regarding the ATI Radeon HD 4800 series products has been incredibly positive. Now, only a few short weeks after the launch of those products, AMD reclaims the ultimate performance crown and continues to deliver winning products to market in the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series," said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Graphics Products Group, AMD.
Intel Corp. cracked the lid Tuesday on a new chip design that is at once a big challenge to smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and an admission that AMD
nailed a key design feature before it slipped into a severe financial slump. Intel, the world's largest computer chip maker, showed off the new blueprint, known as a microarchitecture, for its chips at a developers conference in San Francisco. Though some of the details were already known, the design's formal unveiling represented another demonstration of Intel's advantage over AMD in cranking out new chip designs once every two years, a factor that helped send AMD's stock price down 5 percent in an overall down day for TECHNOLOGY shares.
AMD has racked up nearly $5 billion in losses during the past 18 months and last month replaced Hector Ruiz, who had been running AMD for six years, with a new chief executive, Dirk Meyer.
The details of Intel's microprocessor architecture are always highly technical. But they're also closely watched because of the ubiquity of Intel's chips in personal computers and corporate SERVERS. One of the most significant changes was already known. Intel now plans to build a part called an integrated memory controller - which moves information between the microprocessor and the COMPUTER'S MEMORY - directly into the processor itself.
That's a key change because processors are asked to do more and more, and any lag in communication can seriously hurt performance. AMD has already been incorporating integrated memory controllers into its processors.
Because of that and other tweaks, Intel said its new design, which is code-named Nehalem, will triple the speed at which data can be written to memory or read back, compared to previous generations. Intel says Nehalem also will have nearly double the 3-D animation capabilities as past chips, and better utilize the multiple "cores," or processing engines, on each chip.Chip makers are adding multiple cores to their chips, essentially jamming many separate processors onto the same slice of silicon, to make sure they're able to continue ramping up performance without running into overheating problems.
Intel said four-core Nehalem chips, which are due to be in production by the end of 2008 and will first target servers and desktop computers and later laptops, have the ability to turn individual cores on and off and can be programmed to boost the speed of active cores when the workload ramps up.
AMD is working on releasing new Phenom processors in the 2008 timeframe. However, the highest frequency available for now is still in the 2.6 GHz range.
According to the company's newest roadmap, the higher-end Phenom chips are slated to arrive later in the second quarter of 2008. The chip manufacturer plans to introduce two new Phenom CPUs in the 2.4 - 2.6 GHzrange. The AMD Phenom 9750 will run at 2.4 GHz and will come with a thermal envelope of 125 Watts, while the more powerful Phenom 9850 runs at 2.5 GHz in the same thermal envelope. AMD also plans to introduce a new stock keeping unit for the Phenom 9750 that will deliver the same performance at a lower energy cost (95 Watts only). During the third quarter of 2008, AMD will introduce its highest-end processor, called the Phenom 9950. It will be the company's last high-end chip built on the 65-nanometer process node and will feature a thermal envelope of 140 watts - the highest thermal envelope of all AMD's chips until now. According to the same roadmap, the company will release another SKU of the Phenom 9950, but there are no details on the chip's thermal envelope.
Advanced Micro Devices will also release two new processors in the mainstream sector next month. The Phenom 9550 will feature a core clock speed of 2.3GHz, while the Phenom 9650 will reach lower clocks, namely 2.2 GHz.
The Toliman family will get new members during the second quarter, with the advent of three mainstream units: the AMD Phenom 8450, Phenom 8650 and Phenom 8750. The chips will be clocked at 2.1GHz, 2.3GHz and 2.4GHz, respectively, and are alleged to deliver more horsepower than the dual-core counterparts.
They will feature a thermal design power of 95 watts and will be based on the bug-free B3 silicon stepping. The B3 revision will also be the latest update to the 65-nanometer silicon, as AMD will move to the 45-nanometer process node during the last quarter of the year. The first 45-nanometer processors to hit the market will be based on the Deneb and Propus silicon. The new chips will be built using a quad-core architecture and will feature 2MB of L2 cache. While the Deneb version will share the L3 cache pool among its four cores, the Propus will come without it.
