Items tagged with Ontario
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 turning to AMD. Digitimes reports that vendors have looked to Sunnyvale to boost sales as the company's APUs are cheaper and offer better performance. Other companies are bumping up netbook features and moving to 12" screens while keeping a $399 price point. A quick check of Newegg implies that Intel doesn't have too much to worry about at this juncture....
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AMD's second-quarter results showed a small decline in sales revenue, but according to Mercury Research, a drop in ASPs year-on-year hid the smaller company's market share gains. AMD's total share of the x86 industry stood at 19.4 percent in Q2, up from 17.8 percent a year ago. Intel is estimated to have held 79.9 percent in Q2 2011, down from 81.3 percent last year. Dean McCarron of Mercury Research attributes AMD's gains to a mixture of low pricing on its older products and strong demand for the newer Fusion parts. The Llano APU has gained ground rapidly in mobile, which has long been a weak spot for AMD; historically, even when the company had strong desktop and workstation/server hardware,...
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AMD has released its Q1 financials, giving us a look into the company's execution through what is normally considered a down quarter, as well as an opportunity to judge the impact of Brazos on the company's bottom line. The results are quite good relative to AMD's financial performance these past few years. The company reports revenue of $1.61B (up two percent from Q1 2010), a net income of $510 million, and an operating income of $54 million. AMD, therefore, is in the black—even if just barely. According to acting CEO Thomas Seifert, Llano is "the most impressive processor in history." Overall sales in Q1 were driven by demand for Llano products. "First quarter operating results were highlighted...
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Tablets and eBook readers and smartphones, oh my! Is there any room left for netbooks, the forgotten hero of yesteryear? Of course there is, and to prove it, Acer is coming out with a new netbook that wanders off the beaten path in more ways than one. For starters, you won't find an Intel Atom processor inside Acer's upcoming Aspire One 722. Acer instead turned to AMD's dual-core Ontario C-50 APU clocked at 1GHz per core with integrated Radeon 6250 graphics. Secondly, the 722 teeters on the edge between a netbook and ultraportable with a somewhat non-standard 11.6-inch display with a 1366x768 resolution. If you've found 10.1-inch netbooks to be slightly too small, this could be the in-between...
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It's been a few weeks since Intel first announced that it was temporarily halting Sandy Bridge shipments to repair a chipset issue. At the time, we speculated that Intel's problems could improve AMD's quarter; a new ad campaign from the smaller manufacturer is proof that Sunnyvale agrees. Industry sources tell us that Intel's shipping difficulties have resulted in demand for AMD products. The company isn't offering specific figures at this point but expects to see some opportunity as a result. We can't comment on what that means for Q1 revenue but it should be a major plus, though when AMD gave guidance last month it indicated Q1 would generally follow seasonal trends. AMD's ad...
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The question of what's next for AMD took an interesting twist this morning as the company's stock rose ~ five percent on the rumor that Dell might be interested in acquiring the CPU designer. To say 2011 has been a tumultuous year for AMD thus far would be an understatement; the company has launched major new products, fired its CEO, turned in a solid Q4 2010, and dismissed two additional board members all in the last six weeks. The rumors of a potential buyout aren't just leaking in anonymously. This latest is courtesy of Barrons and Bloomberg with the latter noting that, according to Patrick Wang with Wedbush Securities, "there's no management team there [at AMD]." According to Wedbush, while...
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Both TSMC and GlobalFoundries have released new information on their respective plans for the next few years. TSMC has announced its intention to double its 2011 R&D capital expenditure to $700 million, while it simultaneously spends $7.8B over the next year in order to increase its manufacturing capacity by approximately 20 percent. This is presumedly over and above what the company has spent thus far on constructing its new "gigafab" foundry, Fab 15. TSMC began work on Fab 15 last summer, but the plant isn't scheduled to come online until 2012; TSMC is most likely building out capacity at an already established plant. TSMC's production growth over the past few years. Information provided...
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AMD has released its fourth quarter 2010 financial results and they're nice numbers to end a year on. The company's revenue of $1.65B was up two percent quarter-on-quarter and flat compared to 2009. Despite the sales plateau, AMD's position has substantially improved over the past 12 months; the company reported a Q4 net income of $375M for the quarter and $471M for the year. Part of that improvement is due to trimming costs—the company's yearly R&D expense was just $352M compared to $432M in 2009—but a hefty chunk of AMD's net income for the year comes courtesy of a legal settlement. AMD evidently settled a patent dispute with an as-yet-unknown company who paid AMD $283 million...
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VIA Technologies formally announced that its new dual-core, 40nm Nano X2 processors have been released. At present, processors are available to motherboards and OEMs, with systems available in Q1 of 2011. VIA will most likely have at least a few motherboards and notebooks/netbooks on display at CES, but the company has yet to name any major partners for these products. "The VIA Nano X2 processor arrives at a time when software architectures are now optimized for multi-thread computing," commented Richard Brown, VP International Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc. "Improvements in semi-conductor fabrication means we can now double the number of processor cores while maintaining the same low energy...
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At CES today, AMD will both launch its first Fusion Application Processors (APUs) and discuss the new platform's design wins. According to the CPU manufacturers press release, desktop, notebook, and netbook systems should be available now, with tablets and embedded options launching before the end of Q1 2011. "We believe that AMD Fusion processors are, quite simply, the greatest advancement in processing since the introduction of the x86 architecture more than forty years ago,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, AMD Products Group. "In one major step, we enable users to experience HD everywhere as well as personal supercomputing capabilities in notebooks that...
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When we covered AMD's Analyst Day last week, there was a slide in Emilio Ghilardi's presentation that we didn't cover, but in retrospect , probably should have. Amid the usual slides of various supporting OEMs there was an unmentioned, unremarked Apple slide. When later asked if this should be taken as confirmation of a product launch, agreement, or future partnership, AMD said no. An increasing amount of evidence suggests that the two companies really might be working together on a future project—provided AMD didn't just blow its own foot off. According to Fudzilla, AMD and Apple will announce a deal in 2011 with Apple adopting next-generation 28nm Krishna processors. There's also mention...
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Last week we brought you a detailed overview of AMD's first ever, fully integrated CPU-GPU combination born out of the company's "Fusion" technology initiative. Dubbed the first ever APU or Accelerated Processing Unit, AMD's claimed goal is to offer a more balance and efficient low power platform for thin and light notebooks and netbooks. The CPU codename is "Zacate" and the new mobile platform AMD has been developing, is internally referred to as "Brazos". But we're sure you're not here to read buzz words and code names. The data we shared with you last week was pretty much everything we knew, short of performance metrics. We know, no fun at all. AMD wanted that...
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Last week we brought you a detailed overview of AMD's first ever, fully integrated CPU-GPU combination born out of the company's "Fusion" technology initiative. Dubbed the first ever APU or Accelerated Processing Unit, AMD's claimed goal is to offer a more balance and efficient low power platform for thin and light notebooks and netbooks. The CPU codename is "Zacate" and the new mobile platform AMD has been developing, is internally referred to as "Brazos". But we're sure you're not here to read buzz words and code names. The data we shared with you last week was pretty much everything we knew, short of performance metrics. We know, no fun at all. AMD wanted that...
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Today was AMD's Analyst Day and the CPU manufacturer was anxious to show its execution triumphs and discuss future plans through 2011. One of the most important announcements concerns AMD's Brazos platform, which will debut running both Ontario and Zecate processors. As of today, the first Brazos shipments have begun, with products on store shelves as early as January. We've discussed Ontario and Zecate quite a bit in previous articles; these are both 40nm parts built by TSMC with an integrated CPU. While they aren't direct competition for Atom, they'll be slugging it out in a very similar space. The slide above illustrates how AMD wants to change the current integrated GPU paradigm. In current...
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Fusion has been a long time coming for AMD but it looks as if they may well have chosen the perfect entry point to release their first generation APU from the starting block. The market is currently in what seems like a complete frenzy for anything to do with ultra-portable computing, from ultra thin and light notebooks, to netbooks and tablet PCs. Consumers can't seem to get enough of the thin and sexy stuff and with AMD's first Fusion release, they've certainly chosen the right product segment to attack with a new low power processor. Back in the September time frame, we gave you a quick look at AMD's upcoming processor codenamed Zacate. Targeted at light mobile platforms,...
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"Fusion." We've heard that word from the good folks at AMD for what seems like an eternity, to be perfectly honest. Fusion is AMD's marketing moniker for the company's next generation of integrated processors with on-board graphics -- a "fusion" of the CPU along with the GPU into what AMD now affectionately calls an "APU" or Accelerated Processing Unit. Fusion has been a long time coming for AMD but it looks as if they may well have chosen the perfect entry point to release their first generation APU from the starting block. The market is currently in what seems like a complete frenzy for anything to do with ultra-portable computing, from ultra thin and light notebooks, to netbooks...
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AMD's 2H Investor Day is tomorrow and rumors whisper that the company will display Bulldozer performance for the first time ever. In the past, AMD has often used Analyst Days to demonstrate upcoming products or to at least discuss them in more detail than it's done previously. If Bulldozer does make an appearance tomorrow it'll have a lot of weight to carry. AMD's share of the server market was flat in Q3 compared to Q2, despite the rapid proliferation of Magny-Cours processors and the AMD 6000/4000 platforms. We covered Bulldozer's architecture in detail a few months ago and there hasn't been a lot of new technical info released since then. There's been some talk that AMD might try to launch...
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When Intel announced it would miss its Q3 targets in late August, there was speculation as to whether or not AMD would escape the same fate. With the third quarter having officially ended, the answer is no. According to a statement the company made late last week, revenue will be down 1-4.5 percent compared to second-quarter revenue of 1.65 billion. AMD didn't provide much detail on the change, saying only: "The sequential decrease is due to weaker than expected demand, particularly in the consumer notebook market in Western Europe and North America." AMD's new mobile processing is supposed to pack a punch, but that only helps if people buy them. AMD picked up a significant bit of notebook share...
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AMD always hosts an event in the shadow of Intel's Developer Forum, so it wasn't surprising to hear the company was demoing its upcoming Zacate processor this week. Zacate is the codename associated with AMD's 18W dual-core APU and will target the $500 notebook market. The second chip, Ontario, is a 9W APU that'll chase after Atom's business. According to AMD's Director of Fusion Marketing, John Taylor, Zacate-class APUs are ideal platforms for what he calls "no-compromise cloud computing." Why's that? He's glad you asked. Increasingly, we go online for collaboration and social interaction...Nowhere is this more evident than on social networking sites. These sites...often requir[e] quite a bit...
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In the wake of AMD's architecture discussions at Hot Chips last month, eyes have increasingly turned towards the company's upcoming Bobcat processor. Now, AMD's director of Fusion marketing, John Taylor, has written a blog post with additional details on the diminutive chip, including several photos. We know the unveiling of this info was in Europe, but would it have killed someone to plunk down a quarter? We've covered much of the company's plans before, so we'll skip straight to the new stuff. Taylor notes that the upcoming Fusion processor will include a "new" UVD block, though we're guessing this term refers more to the need to redesign a block for the APU as opposed to a new set of features/capabilities....
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Yesterday, we chided AMD for its decision not to reveal more details about Bulldozer and Bobcat, but it turns out we didn't have all the facts. AMD was planning on disclosing more information later in the day at Hot Chips—but the company failed to disclose that tid-bit before we went live with our previous coverage. We're going to take a look at the new information about Bobcat and Bulldozer that's subsequently been revealed; if you want more general backround data you can get it here... Next-Gen AMD Bobcat and Bulldozer CPU Deep Dive...
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Yesterday, we chided AMD for its decision not to reveal more details about Bulldozer and Bobcat, but it turns out we didn't have all the facts. AMD was planning on disclosing more information later in the day at Hot Chips—but the company failed to disclose that before we went live with our previous coverage. We're going to take a look at the new information about Bobcat and Bulldozer that's subsequently been revealed; if you want more general background data, check the links above. Bully For Bobcat We'll start with the high-level block diagram of Bobcat's architecture, then step through some of the pertinent details. Bobcat shares certain characteristics with Atom but AMD's new...
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