AMD's upcoming Kabini SoC sits at the heart of the PlayStation 4, the next-generation Xbox 720 (unofficially), and is central to the company's tablet and laptop plans for 2013. It's also a key component of Sunnyvale's new embedded strategy, which is part of what makes the new crop of embedded products AMD announced...Read more...
It has been a rough few years for AMD. The company has found itself increasingly behind the eight ball and outmaneuvered, thanks to strong competition from Intel and less-than-stellar performance with recent releases of their A series integrated APUs. At a press event yesterday at CES 2013, the Sunnyvale-based...Read more...
It has been a rough few years for AMD. The company has found itself increasingly behind the eight ball and outmaneuvered, thanks to strong competition from Intel and less-than-stellar performance with recent releases of their A series integrated APUs. At a press event yesterday at CES 2013, the Sunnyvale-based company focused on demonstrating...Read more...
There's a bit of quoted wisdom that's been making the rounds in tech news, recently. Up until now, I've ignored it, in the hopes that it would die out and go away. Instead, it seems to be showing up with greater frequency. It looks something like this: "Like Intel, AMD was caught flat-footed in recent years with the...Read more...
AMD is launching its first tablet-optimized APU today, in a bid to challenge Intel's de facto dominance of the Windows 8 tablet market. Dubbed Hondo, the new Z-60 draws less power than any Brazos-based part AMD has launched before. Some of you may remember that AMD launched a tablet processor last year, but the Z-01...Read more...
Earlier this summer, AMD launched its HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) foundation with a number of core partners. Now Samsung has joined the collaborative effort as well. This could be the beginning of an unprecedented level of cooperation between the APU designer and massive smartphone/tablet developer. The...Read more...
After more than six months of high-to-mid profile executive departures, AMD has major news to announce on its new executive hire -- and he's a welcome addition. Starting today, Jim Keller will serve as a vice president and the company's Chief Architect for CPU Cores. Keller has spent more than thirty years in the...Read more...
At Computex this week, AMD has launched a refresh of its popular Bobcat APU. The new Brazos 2.0 chips are slipping in at the top of the Bobcat product stack and offer marginal speed increases as well as an assortment of new features. On the performance side of things, virtually nothing changes. The new E2-1800 is 50MHz (three percent) faster...Read more...
Inside sources have leaked information to the press claiming that the CPU in the next-generation PS4 (codenamed Orbis) is an AMD Llano A8-3850. The chip will supposedly be paired with an AMD Radeon 7670 GPU with 1GB of integrated VRAM. With all due respect to IGN, this is the sort of report that deserves a...Read more...
Rumors about next-generation consoles like the Xbox 720 (codenamed Durango) and the PlayStation 4 have been milling about for several months, but the Sony side of the equation has just gotten a significant update. New information suggests that the PS4 is codenamed Orbis, will be built around an AMD x86-64 CPU and GPU...Read more...
When AMD held its Analyst Day a few weeks ago, the company focused on how it was fundamentally changing its approach to semiconductor research and product development. Years of attempting to compete with Intel drained company coffers and exposed it to tremendous competitive pressure. Consumers unquestionably profited...Read more...
It's amazing what you can discover by digging around the Web. Head over to the FCC's website, for example, and you might stumble upon an intriguing Fusion-powered nettop from Sapphire. Rather than release another pint-sized system with an Intel Atom processor and Nvidia Ion graphics running the show, Sapphire's upcoming Edge-HD3 Mini PC will...Read more...
Today is AMD's Financial Analyst Day -- and it's been a long time coming. Questions about the company's future have been piling up since Bulldozer launched and AMD layed off much of its PR/marketing teams. Today, the company lifted the veil on what it's planning for 2012. In graphics, the roadmap is straightforward --...Read more...
AMD announced its fourth quarter and 2011 results yesterday. The figures aren't bad in and of themselves, but the company's overall position headed into 2012 is decidedly uncertain. Yearly revenue was flat at $6.57B, with total net income for fiscal 2011 at $495M, up four percent from 2010. "AMD shipped more than 30 million APUs in 2011, resulting...Read more...
Intel's decision to join Google and become a major Android developer was big news in 2011, but it appears the CPU giant's fondness for x86 support in Android is a wee bit more specific than you might have thought. Intel has made a number of major contributions to Android in the past six months, but the Android-x86 project, which substantially...Read more...
AMD's initial layoff announcement yesterday implied that the dismissals would occur across the company's global sales force. While that may still be true, it has become clear that AMD has slashed its PR and marketing departments in particular. The New Product Review Program* (NPRP) has lost most of its staff and Director of Product Planning,...Read more...
Intel's overall revenues continue to be excellent, but the company's report was marred by the continuing slump of Atom sales. Intel's Atom business slumped 32 percent year on year, total revenue in that segment was just $269 million in the third quarter. Sales have reportedly taken a hit from the increasing popularity of tablets and by manufacturers...Read more...
This week has been a good news / bad news for Sunnyvale--but the bad, at least, was somewhat expected. The company gave notice today that its third quarter revenue would be lower than expected, with estimated quarterly income up 4-6 percent from Q2 levels. That's significantly less than AMD's original projection of...Read more...
AMD released its results for Q2 2011 today and the news was generally good, though not as strong as investors might have preferred. Sales revenue was $1.57B, down two percent from Q1 and five percent year-on-year. AMD notes that Q2 was a 13 week quarter as opposed to the 14-week Q1, but that's not something that hurt Intel's results. Operating...Read more...
ARM made good on its announced intention to introduce server products today through a partnership with Calxeda (formerly Smooth-Stone). The CPU developer has been planning to introduce server products for quite some time. ARM, in this case, isn't alone--Intel is planning to launch Atom-flavored Xeon processors, while...Read more...
AMD's GPU solutions have come a long way since the company acquired ATI. The combined companies have competed very well against Nvidia for the past several years, at least at the consumer level. When it comes to HPC/GPGPU tools, however, Nvidia has had the market all to itself. Granted, the GPGPU market hasn't exactly exploded, but Nvidia...Read more...
Microsoft's tablet strategy (or complete lack thereof) has drawn significant criticism, but the rumor mill suggests the manufacturer may take unprecedented steps to establish itself as a player in this space. DigiTimes, quoting unspecified industry sources, claims Microsoft may build and market its own tablet. MS is allegedly cooperating with...Read more...