Persian Penguin Network

Looks like some hardware enthusiasts have worked out a method to enable debug mode within AMD processors. The original site isn’t loading for us, but the text has been mirrored in this comment. Getting the chip into debug mode requires access passwords on four control registers. We’ve read through the writeup and it means very little to us but we didn’t pull out a datasheet to help make sense of the registers being manipulated. It shouldn’t be hard to find an old AMD system to try this out on. We’d love to hear about anything you do with this debug system.

By H.a.D

Alright AMD, we still haven’t forgiven you for burying the glorious name that was ATI, but if your next GPU refresh is as mighty as these numbers indicate, we might at least let you in from the doghouse. A slide detailing two flavors of the upcoming 40nm Barts chip has sprouted up from two independent sources online, and it shows some appreciable gains between generations. The new HD 67×0 cards appear manifestly speedier than their predecessors — with faster clocks, more texture units, and more ROPs — but the fun really gets going when you compare them to the HD 5870 and 5850, AMD’s previous high-end cards. Memory bandwidth and pixel fillrate are identical between the HD 6750 and 5850, while the HD 6770 even manages to beat the formerly imperious 5870 in a couple of areas. Of course, this is all still unconfirmed information, but considering that Barts is only an “upper midrange” chip that’s already stepping on the toes of last year’s finest, we feel safe in expecting some pretty big things from the flagship Cayman silicon when it lands — which will be soon if all these leaks and rumors are anything to go by.

By Engadget

Yep, the rumors are true.  AMD does indeed intend to do away with the ATI name, eliminating the “ATI Radeon” co-branding the company has steadfastly maintained since its acquisition of ATI.  The firm briefed us on its plans late last week and explained several factors influencing its decision.

As one might expect, a major motivator is the fact AMD plans to introduce a range of new products incorporating both AMD microprocessor technology and a Radeon graphics tech on the same chip.  The first fruits of the CPU-GPU “Fusion” initiative are slated to arrive soon.  “Ontario,” which will combine two copies of the low-power “Bobcat” CPU core with Radeon graphics, is slated to ship before the end of the year. The more powerful “Llano” APU, which mates quad Phenom II-class CPU cores with presumably a more capable GPU, is scheduled for the first half of 2011.  Obviously, the combination of the firm’s CPU and GPU technologies into single-chip products could create some consumer confusion, if folks were to continue to think of AMD and ATI as separate entities—especially if the ensuing marketing messages emphasize the benefits of CPU-GPU integration.

Furthermore, AMD tells us it feels confident in making this change right now because its graphics business is “on a roll,” having surpassed rival Nvidia in discrete graphics shipments last quarter, according to analyst estimates, and having secured high-profile design wins with the likes of Apple.  Also, the chastening of Intel via its settlement with the FTC gave AMD some extra assurance that the expansion of its brand into graphics wouldn’t hurt its relationships with major PC makers.

Of course, such decisions aren’t made without market research, and AMD shared a snippet of its internal research on this topic with us.  We think it’s worth relaying verbatim, in the form of a handsome corporate PowerPoint slide:

The long and short of it is that, according to AMD’s own survey results, consumers savvy enough to know something about discrete graphics cards tend to know the Radeon name, they tend to like AMD, and they don’t mind seeing the AMD name on graphics cards once they realize AMD merged with ATI.  The folks at AMD read those results as “permission” to jettison the ATI brand name.

The plan, then, is to replace “ATI Radeon” and “ATI FirePro” with “Radeon” and “FirePro”, along with a sprinkling of AMD corporate identity.  The badges you see above will be used for systems with discrete Radeon and FirePro graphics cards.  The lower row omits the AMD logo, so PC makers shipping Intel-based systems will be able to avoid the oil-and-water combo of Intel and AMD branding, if they wish.

If you just bought an “ATI Radeon” and are proud of that fact, fear not.  Existing products, including the Radeon HD 5000 series, will not be renamed.  Instead, AMD says the first products to carry the “AMD Radeon” label will be introduced later this year.

The first “Fusion” APUs will participate in the radically simplified “Vision” branding that AMD introduced last fall.  That program, when introduced, consolidated a ridiculous constellation of separate badges and stickers for pre-built PCs and laptops into a much smaller number.  AMD apparently intends to further consolidate under the Vision banner going forward, although those badges seem to multiply like guppies, so we wouldn’t place any large bets on things getting straightforwardly simpler.  For one example, look no further than the “ATI Eyefinity” technology; that will be re-branded as “AMD Eyefinity” and otherwise kept intact.

Interestingly enough, the corporate “Fusion” branding program will be coming to an end, as well.  The Fusion name apparently won’t carry over into APUs, believe it or not.

By Tech Report

One of these days AMD is gonna have to stop talking about its Atom-killing Bobcat and Xeon-ending Bulldozer cores and finally release them. But, until that happy moment arrives in 2011 (fingers crossed), we’ll have to content ourselves with more presentation slides. First up, the Bobcat core is AMD’s long overdue play for the netbook/ultrathin market. Pitched as having 90 percent of the performance of current-gen, K8-based mainstream chips, AMD’s new mobility core will require “less than half the area and a fraction of the power” of its predecessors. That sounds like just the recipe to make the company relevant in laptop purchasing decisions again, while a touted ability for the core to run on less than one watt of power (by lowering operating frequencies and voltages, and therefore performance) could see it appear in even smaller form factors, such as MIDs. The Bobcat’s now all set to become the centerpiece of the Ontario APU — AMD’s first Fusion chip, ahead of Llano — which will be ramping up production late this year, in time for an early 2011 arrival.

The Bulldozer also has a future in the Fusion line, but it’s earliest role will be as a standalone CPU product for servers and high-end consumer markets. The crafty thing about its architecture is that every one Bulldozer module will be counted as two cores. This is because AMD has split its internal processing pipelines into two (while sharing as many internal components as possible), resulting in a sort of multicore-within-the-core arrangement. The way the company puts it, it’s multithreading done right. Interlagos is the codename of the first Opteron chips to sport this new core, showing up at some point next year in a 16-core arrangement (that’s 8 Bulldozers, if you’re keeping score at home) and promising 50 percent better performance than the current Magny-Cours flagship. Big words, AMD. Now let’s see you stick to a schedule for once.

By Engadget

If you’ve enjoyed unlocking hidden cores on AMD Phenom CPUs in recent years, you’re going to love what’s in store with certain upcoming parts.

As you’re no doubt aware, AMD is preparing to launch its first hexa-core parts for the desktop as part of the Phenom II X6 line, codenamed Thuban. What’s interesting is that the launch will also be joined by a new quad-core part; the Phenom II X4 960T, codenamed Zosma.

What we’ve heard about the chip to date has been merely speculation, but we’ve now reason to believe the X4 960T is indeed a full-fat Thuban processor underneath – only, with two disabled cores. Clocked at 3GHz, the seemingly quad-core chip has all the inner workings of the hexa-core Thuban architecture – right down to the 6MB of L3 cache, 512KB of L2 cache per core and Turbo CORE technology.

And you know what that means, right? Yep, that means you should be able to unlock those two hidden cores with nothing more than a little jiggery pokery. Better still, for those wanting a hassle-free solution, pop the chip into an ASUS board – here’s one we reviewed earlier – and ASUS’s Core Unlocker technology will scan your processor and automatically enable any working cores or caches that were previously hidden.

The proof of a pudding is in the eating. Here’s the Phenom II X4 960T running out the box with its standard four cores.

Enable ASUS’s Core Unlocker and hey presto – what once was four is now six. We can’t guarantee it’ll work with every Phenom II X4 960T processor, but if you’re lucky you’ll be in for a surprise treat.

Why not just buy a Phenom II X6 from the off? Well, we all enjoy getting our hands on a bargain, and though there’s no official pricing yet, this could soon be the cheapest way to get a hexa-core processor. We reckon it could fall close to the £120 mark.

ASUS Core Unlocker is currently supported on the company’s M4A89GTD Pro and M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 motherboards. Expect to see another wave of supporting boards introduced in the coming weeks.

By Hexus

AMD might be playing catch-up with Intel at the moment, but at least it’s keeping the distance fairly close. Intel has yet to fully transition its desktop line over to its Turbo Boost-boasting Core 2010 series, yet its competitor has already announced its own, imaginatively titled, competing technology in the form of Turbo Core. It’s a less sophisticated auto-overclock, whereby three of the six cores are decelerated in order to give the other trio some extra voltage and speed for more serialized workloads. The truly impressive thing is that operation under the Turbo Core mode and the default hexacore arrangement will fit within the same power envelope as current Phenom II X4 CPUs, while AMD also reassures its loyal users that the new Phenom II X6s will be compatible with existing AM3 and AM2+ sockets. Nice. The table above, provided by AnandTech, confirms the models we heard about a couple of weeks ago, though we’ll have to wait a little bit longer to get confirmation on pricing.

AnandTech & Engadget

The chip core war continues to heat up. Today Advanced Micro Devices is announcing the release of new server microprocessors with 8 or 12 processors on a single chip.

The announcement comes less than two weeks after Intel introduced its first 6-core chips and a day before another major Intel server chip announcement. These announcements are timed so close together it’s like watching a pro tennis match.

But AMD argues that its new chips, based on its Magny-Cours code-named design, will beat Intel’s in processing performance and energy efficiency, as well as cost per computing power. The new chips have 119 percent better performance than AMD’s earlier generation of server chips and use the same amount of power.

The chips are officially named the AMD Opteron 6000 series (aimed at the high-end) and the 4000 series (aimed at low-end, energy efficient). The chips will be housed on AMD’s Maranello platform with AMD server chip sets, which are secondary traffic cops in a computer. These Operton chips will be used in high-volume servers, which have two or four chips each. The chips are twice as fast as AMD’s previous line of six-core processors introduced about a year ago.

Gina Longoria, director of product management in AMD’s server and workstation division, said in an interview that AMD’s Magny-Cours chips are designed to be easily integrated into a platform and make much more efficient use of a cheaper form of memory. While Intel tends to change a lot of platform elements with its new chip introductions, AMD tries to keep the platform housing the chips consistent, leading to lower overall costs.

AMD is also introducing its Direct Connect Architecture 2.0, which allows a microprocessor to communicate with four other microprocessors simultaneously, instead of the previous three. The DCA 2.0 supports as many as 16 cores together.

An estimated 25 server platforms will be introduced over time. Starting today, new models will be announced from Hewlett-Packard, Acer, Cray, SGI and Dell. Software support is available from Microsoft and VMware. These new chips mean that customers will be able to replace many aging servers with a single Magny-Cours server and get by with better performance, lower power, and lower maintenance costs.

The race will continue through next year. By then, the code-named Interlagos chips from AMD will be launched with 12 and 16 cores, while the low-end Valencia will debut with 6 and 8 cores.

By Venture Beat !

When it comes to either building or buying a new computer one the things you have to decide on is what processor (cpu) will be controlling everything in your computer. You have the choice of either AMD or Intel and if you don’t know much about computers it may be hard to make a wise decision on which one to purchase. Lucky for you I have built computers that have used both AMD and Intel and I know a thing or two about computers as well.

What AMD Brings to the Table

AMD is known for being the company to go with when you are building a kick ass gaming computer. What AMD lacks in data crunching it makes up for in pure FPS which for a gamer is the only thing that matters. Almost every benchmark you look at for an AMD chip has that chip out performing a similar Intel chip when it comes to games. But maybe you don’t play games, does this mean that AMD is completely worthless to you? Absolutely not, AMD also has the cheapest processors, allowing you to get the most bang for your buck. At the time of this writing you can buy an AMD Phenom II X4 965 (the top of the line) for a penny under $190 do you want the top of the line Intel chip? Well you better be ready to drop around $1,000 on just the processor alone. Not only that but the Phenom II processors can stand their own against Intel’s offering.

What else does AMD bring to the table? Their processors are able to operate at much more extreme temperatures while also staying cooler than Intels under normal use. The reason why this is good is because you can use liquid nitrogen to cool the AMD processor and it will run just fine where as the Intel does have a chance to break under such extreme temperatures.

What Intel Brings to the Table

Their processors are bar none, top of the line. If you want the best of the best you will have to go with Intel because all they offer is the best. Intel almost always comes out on top overall in benchmarks against AMD. Why is that? Probably because they updated their chip architecture, and are so innovative they are almost always one or two steps ahead of AMD. Right now the new Intel chips completely by pass the need for front side bus. Because of this you get a much much faster processor able to handle much more. You can also overclock the new Intel “i” series chips much easier because you can do it without even doing anything. The chips will automatically overclock when you need the extra power, this can in theory help out with games as well.

What is Right For You?

Are you a hardcore gamer looking to build your computer? If you are then AMD is most likely the way to go. You will save money buying an AMD chip and then you can use the money you save to spend more money on a newer graphics card and thus your games are going to look that much better. If you aren’t going to play a ton of games and will do more work with your computer then I would say hands down go with Intel. You can buy an i5 chip for a similar price to the Phenom II X4 and they perform a little better than the Phenom too. Now if you are just buying one from Dell or Gateway I would go with Intel unless the price difference is substantial with going AMD however last I checked it’s not a major change in price.

What do I use now?

I owned a Phenom II X4 for a few months before the heatsink gave out and it burnt out. When that happened I decided it was time to upgrade to an Intel system. The reason I didn’t earlier is because the newer AMD chips use the same motherboard socket so you can upgrade without buying a new mother board and save some money. With Intel I would have to buy a new motherboard which then requires a new type of memory so it would cost me much more money to upgrade. Anyway since my computer died on me and I wasn’t positive if it was just the processor or if it was more than that I decided to just upgrade to an Intel i5 system. It was not like night and day between the 2 systems however I do notice a pretty good difference between the i5 and Phenom II series of chips. Programs open faster and their is much less hang time between doing multiple things. For me Intel just works out better for me, most of my gaming is done on my PS3 so I don’t even have the “greatest” graphics card anyway.

With the way technology evolves it’s always a good idea to do a little research before buying anything. Just google the processor you are looking at for benchmarks. This will usually give you a good idea as to which processor to get. In the end neither company is better than the other, they both have their own pros as well as their own cons.

BY E.N.O