AMD News Release
- Biggest infusion in graphics to date
- Well adopted by developers even at this stage
- AMD will deliver the first DX 11 hardware in the second half of 2009
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- Leading edge technology
- Volume
- Close design and process interaction/collaboration with AMD
After the wafer presentation, we finally got to see the DX 11 demo sneak peak.
The first demo was of a character being rendered using tessallation in real time. As you can see from the pictures, the detail of the character is amazing.
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The next demo we saw was a terrain demonstration. In it you can see the difference tessallation makes in the sheer number of triangles used to make the scenery much more life-like.
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The final demo was of the Frogmen which combined terrain and character rendering using DX 11 software and hardware to render the scenes with tessallation. Again, tessallation allows more triangles that smooth out the jaggedness you see in previous generation gaming graphics. All of this is done without impacting the graphics footprint.
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After the demos, Rick talked about the key points of AMD’s DX 11 hardware. The key points were as follows.
- compute shaders
- new instruction set.. pixel shader 5.0
- HDR Compression technologies
- Multi-Threading
- Tessellation
Compute Shader allows for smarter AI that is not possible with a processor alone. The computing power of the upcoming DX 11 hardware will allow for much better gaming AI, making gameplay more interactive and challenging. The Pixel Shader 5.0 instruction set with help improve the look and feel of future games along with HDR Compression technologies. Multi-threading will make more use of all the horsepower sitting under the hood of the future DX 11 hardware from AMD. And, as we saw from the tessallation demonstrations, we will see richer and more detailed gaming environments.
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Before the press conference was finished, we got a glimpse of what AMD has planned for their notebook and low power platform future.
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AMD plans to fight Intel’s ULV notebooks with their own sub ~20W BGA processors, the Yukon platform and the future Congo platform. The Congo platform, available Q309, will utilize a mobile 780G chipset along with an integrated HD 3200 graphics processor. Available now is the ultrathin HP Pavillion DV2 using the Yukon platform. This notebook is priced under $750 and comes with Blu Ray. We asked if AMD plans on entering the netbook market and they said they are concentrating on the ultrathin and affoardable market as the netbook segment is leveling out.
On the midrange notebook side we are looking at sub ~25w BGA processors offering a thin and light package. Desktops are also included in AMD’s low power client platform focusing on 25-65W CPUs. As SFF computers are becoming more popular, AMD has targeted this segment as well.
AMD took this press opportunity to release two new processors. First up was the Phenom II X2 520 Black Edition CPU. With a speed of 3.1GHz, 8MB of cache, DDR2/3 support and compatible with AM3 socket motherboards, the new BE comes unlocked at a great price of $102.
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The second CPU released at the press conference was the Athlon II X2 250. Specs on this processor show it running at 3GHz with 2MB of cache in a 65W envelope. Pricing sets this chip at $87.
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To reiterate what we said about Istanbul at the beginning of the article, it is a 6-core processor that is drop in compatible with current server setups. AMD’s approach to the server segment has always been to offer the customer a complete solution at all price points. That is why they offer AMD-V and AMD-P technologies in all their server processors. As a comparison, the Istanbul CPU offers 14x the performance(integer) as the original Opteron released in 2003, all within the same thermal envelope.
Overall, we got a good feeling from AMD. They seem to be pushing the envelope on GPU die shrink technology and continue to become more competitive on the CPU front. We are eagerly awaiting some benchmarks of the recently released 6-core Istanbul server processor. Stay tuned for more information from the AMD booth and many of their partners as we continue our Computex coverage.