Whats Next with AMD in 2007?

Hello,
I was just reading onlne and came across Santa Rosa Platfor for 2007 by intel..I was wondering what competing product AMD has shoved up its sleeve?
any article links or info helpful!

 

They're preparing their next-gen of CPU's. Native quad core, with a bunch of improvements to rival Core 2.

Don't know what their platform plans are (other than Quad FX/4x4 and Torrenza (The thing allowing you to plug 3rd party coprocessors into CPU sockets)

AMD is less platform-focused than Intel though. They're going to launch some nice CPU's in '07, and they're going to launch some interesting motherboard/platform initiatives, and apart from that, both they (ATI) and NVidia are certainly going to spam the market with motherboards including every Santa Rosa feature.

 

Actually I'd say AMD is more platform-focused than Intel, unless you're really focusing on the fact Intel has the Centrino model (which we all expect AMD to counter). Aside from CPUs, where the Core 2 architecture is king right now, AMD has better scalability and I'd say more future-proof-ness. The new QuadFX boards really show how AMD boards can be glorious.

For notebooks, I honestly don't know what AMD's plans are. They are going to release their Stars ("K8L") processors in mid '07, and I fully expect them to be great, but they're all desktop/server processors as far as I know. OctoFX will probably become one of -the- nastiest computer systems to ever be produced for the enthusiast market, but in terms of the mobile market...AMD has been relatively quiet. I find that odd, since their last market report had them selling far more Turions than they had expected.

Expect the 65nm shrink in the next few months, but after that, I don't know what changes they have planned. There will be a Stars variant (more likely a dual-core version for a long time rather than quad-core) a little bit after they come out for the desktop, but I don't know when or details to go with it.

Santa Rosa will be an interesting, and overall good, next step for Intel systems. Not sure what their expense will be, though.

 

Yes, but by platform-focused I meant trying to sell an entire platform instead of just a CPU or motherboard.
Centrino is a good example. Instead of just selling their (very good) mobile processors, they bundle them with their own motherboard, wifi and graphics, and call it a platform. Same with Viiv, with Centrino Pro and yes, Santa Rosa.
Intel isn't trying to sell you individual hardware components, they're trying to bundle them up so their good hardware can improve sales of the less stellar stuff (How many GMA950's would have been sold if they weren't such an important part of Centrino?)

AMD's CPU architecture is definitely more scalable and, in some ways, are more "future proof" (that is, they can probably go further by modifying the K8 architecture than Intel can with the Core 2)

They are working on separate architectures for server, desktop and notebook. They announced that a year or so ago, back when the K8 was at its highest. They established separate teams to work on these three designs in parallel. Of course, I don't know if we're going to see any results of that effort in 2007 (or ever).

Stars? Where've you heard that name? Haven't run into that before...

Early rumors have it it's been plagued by bad performance, high power consumption and bugs bugs bugs though. Of course, they are only rumors, and for all we know, the final chipset might perform perfectly, but it might also turn out to be pretty mediocre... We'll see in a couple of months.

 

4x4...so what? Woodcrest...

I have low hopes for everything mentioned here. I'm waiting for Intel's 45nm shrink.

 

Well, I would fully expect Santa Rosa to have bugs, it IS new technology. I wouldn't be too worried about that. As for power consumption, as soon as I heard about all the new things Intel wanted to put into it, I knew it would negatively impact battery performance. That 800Mhz FSB doesn't just appear without more power.

"Stars" is the family of processors whose cores are named after stars, which is what the next round of processors takes their names from. Up until now AMD typically has used city names to name their cores(Windsor, Barcelona, Venice, et cetera), in the K8 run of things. The server/desktop processors will be nearly identical in most ways, save for socket type and a few obvious but minor differences.

If I can find a link for the naming, I'll postit.

 

AMD and ATI are working on a CPU that takes the role of both CPU and GPU but it wont debut in 2007. Its name is Fusion. I assume is a 4+ core CPU. Might take the crown from Intel. (Think bout it, the Intel integrated gpu sux, the AMD one might sux also but could be better than the intel ones since it's ATI engineered or joint venture)

Link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Fusion

 

AMD already has access to *good* integrated gpu's though. They have ATI's own ones, and a pretty good working relationship with NVidia. They have plenty of good integrated solutions. Fusion is going to be very nice in the low-end (or low-power) market though. Its main purpose as I understand it is to provide a low power consumption, and low price, solution for notebooks.

Sticking a separate GPU chip onto the motherboard drives up costs, and it consumes more power. No one likes that. But I wouldn't expect miracles performance-wise.

 

AMD certainly has the resources to compete aggressively with Intel, especially considering that they own ATI. Will this Fusion CPU/GPU also include the wireless n standard? If yes, I'm buying!

 

The Fusion GPU will be good for low-end systems, but will also DRAMATICALLY improve the floating point performance of systems that have discrete graphics solutions installed, since, if done correctly, the power of the GPU core would be used for processing if unused for graphics. For gaming, it would be a dedicated physics core, for processing, it would be a FP monster.

I expect Fusion to debut on four or eight cores.

 

I wonder how long that good working relationship will last once AMD/ATI starts competing directly against nVidia in the GPU market.

 

Nvidia sells a LOT of AMD chipsets, so I'm assuming it won't change that quickly. It wouldn't be any different than Nvidia/Intel is now.

 

Since it's a CPU, I doubt it. The motherboards for it may do so, but Fusion is just the (code)name for a CPU with integrated GPU. Doesn't say anything about what features the motherboard should integrate.

Most likely four cores. It's targeting low-end systems, after all.
As for floating-point performance, it's too early to say. The potential is certainly there, but you have to realize that there are some pretty big differences between GPU and CPU floating point math. (The CPU operates on 32, 64 or 80 bit values, the GPU on 16 or 24 typically, but may also support 8, 24 or 32)
Further, there are a number of points where GPU fp math doesn't follow the IEEE floating point standard, which would pose a problem for CPU usage. Of course, it's nothing that can't be worked around, but only at the cost of more complex floating point units than the GPU part would otherwise need.

Still, I obviously don't know any exact details, just pointing out that using the GPU part for CPU processing isn't 100% straightforward.

We'll see. For now, at least, both companies are loudly proclaiming that it will continue. That also makes sense since NVidia quite frequently has the best motherboards available , and it would be foolish for AMD to not take advantage of that.

The fact that NVidia is so far the only company to have a 4x4 motherboard also hints that they're still working pretty closely together.

But you're right, all that can easily change... Guess we'll see.

 

Right when the Santa Rosa Platform launches, i want to see AMD/ATI come out with a mobile quad core chip!! That would really kill the Intel's Platform!!! I am waiting to spend my big bucks for santa rosa plat form unless AMD shows some magic..