Posted on 05/16/2006 10:42:54 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Energy-Efficient AMD Processors Enable Sleeker PC Designs; Help Consumers and Businesses Save Energy Without Compromising Performance
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- May 16, 2006 -- Leveraging its leadership in performance-per-watt computing, AMD (NYSE: AMD) today unveiled a top-to-bottom energy efficient AMD desktop processor roadmap at the In-Stat Spring Processor Forum. Consumers and businesses alike are requesting smaller, more elegant PCs that aesthetically complement home and office environments, yet deliver the same performance as larger systems. Energy efficient AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 dual-core, AMD Athlon 64 and AMD Sempron™ processors, based on the upcoming socket AM2, are designed to provide for new freedoms in PC form factor design by offering significant performance-per-watt advantages over standard processors for commercial and consumer markets. Energy–efficient computing is a crucial step for the computing industry as large businesses seek to reduce operating costs.
“AMD is challenging the status quo for commercial clients,” said Bob Brewer, corporate vice president, Desktop Business, AMD. “Customers are demanding a renewed focus on energy efficiency and AMD is responding by delivering energy-efficient desktop processors that can help OEMs innovate and deliver small, sleek PC designs that enable businesses and consumers to save energy. AMD has established leadership in both desktop and servers with energy efficiency and performance-per-watt, and we are extremely pleased to once again raise the bar in desktop energy efficiency.”
Building on AMD’s success in the blade and general purpose server markets with the AMD Opteron™ processor, energy efficient AMD desktop processors can deliver greater performance-per-watt over standard power AMD desktop processors and can reduce overall power consumption. For instance, energy efficient AMD desktop processors can provide up to 37 percent greater performance-per-watt than standard power AMD processors, while energy efficient small form factor AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core desktop processors can provide up to 154 percent greater performance-per-watt than standard power AMD desktop processors. When running typical workloads, as reflected in the SYSmark® 2004 SE benchmark, end users could experience their energy efficient dual-core processor consuming 14 watts.+
Trends leading towards, smaller and more efficient PCs
AMD’s announcement comes as the trend toward smaller and more efficient PCs is gaining momentum in both the consumer and business markets. Businesses seeking to lower total cost of IT ownership are looking to smaller designs capable of reduced energy consumption, heat and noise associated with operation. Consumers who base buying decisions on appearance, price and performance, are also increasingly attracted to smaller form factors.
“As a leading designer and manufacturer of small form factor computers, Shuttle’s continued commitment to innovation and creativity with our XPC products has raised the bar on small form factor computer design,” said Ken Huang, vice president, Shuttle. “We expect energy efficient desktop processors from AMD will give us the opportunity to continue to differentiate ourselves, while providing competitive solutions and choice to our customers.”
“Based on advances in technology, as well as the changing business and consumer usage models, we believe that smaller machines with more innovative designs will outsell the ‘mini-tower’ designs traditionally favored by businesses and power-hungry consumers,” said Jim McGregor, principal analyst with In-Stat. “AMD’s new family of energy efficient desktop processors nicely complements PC manufacturers’ need to design and deliver smaller, sleeker form factors into the market.”
AMD remains committed to an improved global environment
The introduction of the energy efficient AMD desktop processor roadmap further demonstrates AMD’s commitment to an improved global environment. The new line of energy efficient processors will complement AMD’s award-winning Cool‘n’Quiet™ technology and advance system energy efficiency. Cool‘n’Quiet technology improves a computer’s energy efficiency by allowing a system to match processor utilization to the performance actually required. In March 2005, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded AMD’s Cool’n’Quiet™ technology special recognition for the advancement of energy efficient computer technologies.
AMD’s commitment to energy efficiency extends from its leadership in product design to the facilities it builds. Both of AMD’s wafer fabrication facilities, Fab 30 and Fab 36 in Dresden, Germany, are powered by dedicated highly efficient cogeneration plants. In addition, AMD has committed its future Austin, Texas campus to 100 percent GreenChoice power, supporting the development of alternative energy sources.
Pricing and Availability
The initial energy efficient desktop processor model numbers include AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core, AMD Athlon 64 and AMD Sempron processors. These new desktop processors are slated for availability in May. AMD also announced pricing for these processors:
Energy Efficient Desktop Processors++: AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processors 4800+ ($671), 4600+ ($601), 4400+ ($514), 4200+ ($417), 4000+ ($353) and 3800+ ($323).
Energy Efficient Small Form Factor Desktop Processors+++: AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processor 3800+ ($364), AMD Athlon 64 processors 3500+ ($231), and AMD Sempron processors 3400+ ($145), 3200+ ($119) and 3000+ ($101).
Full PR
When installing a computer as part of a home theater, the fewer fans the better. Energy efficient processors make for quieter computers.
A few of those would make quite a difference for our team's folding efforts
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AMD unveils 'next gen' CPU plans
Processor Forum AMD confirmed details of its "Next Generation Processor Technology" today, but it's really business as usual for the company. As AMD heads to four-core country, the company will continue to improve the bandwidth of its processor package, tweak memory and rely on help from partners to compete with an upcoming line of revamped chips from Intel.
Close AMD watchers will not be taken aback by any of the revelations made by senior fellow Chuck Moore today at the Processor Forum in San Jose. More than anything Moore just put an official stamp on what has been known for months.
The company still plans to deliver a four-core chip in 2007 and expects the product to compete well on overall performance and performance pet watt metrics. AMD pitches the no surprises approach as an advantage over Intel, which in the second half of this year will release a completely new processor architecture across its server, desktop and mobile lines. Even beyond that, Intel is expected to release more architectural changes in the coming years as it tries to improve memory performance.
The chips built with this design will have a few key changes over current products.
First off, AMD is touting a speedier version of HyperTransport that can handle 5.2 gigatransfers per second. The HyperTransport technology has proved key to AMD's performance edge over Intel. AMD expects more server makers to start shipping boxes with HTX slots that allow for add-on cards to slot into the HyperTransport framework, although companies such as Sun Microsystems continue to portray HTX as a niche play for the moment.
The second major change will be the presence of shared L3 caches in AMD's upcoming chips. AMD will continue to have "private L2 caches" but will add the on-chip L3 cache to improve overall performance.
"We believe this strikes the right balance," Moore said, during a speech. "This is a really interesting way to handle the memory hierarchy and it's in stark contrast to the brute force method (used by Intel)."
Intel has relied more and more on enormous caches to improve its chips, although the company seems to be moving away from that practice in future products.
AMD has also added better power management tools, so that a system can independently power the north bridge and CPU. In addition, future chips will have twice the floating point performance, support for 1GB memory pages, DDR2 and DDR3 (when it arrives) memory support, FB-DIMM memory support and improved RAS features such as memory mirroring and memory diagnostics.
Overall, AMD is concentrating on keeping single thread software performance high, while paving the way for more multithreaded applications. Moore urged the chip industry to provide "hooks" that can make designing multithreaded applications easier.
Today, AMD claims to enjoy up to a 95 per cent power consumption advantage over Intel. Even when Intel releases its new products, Moore claimed that AMD would still have a 43 per cent power consumption advantage, although apples to apples comparisons are close to impossible at the moment due to a lack of Intel product.
AMD expects more co-processors to start popping up for its chips in the coming years to help out with tasks such as Java, TCP/IP and SSL processing. The company's open specifications tend to make it easier for third parties to create products around AMD's gear than is the case for Intel, although Intel does enjoy a large partner network thanks to its massive market share.
Moore continued to knock Intel's dual-core and future four-core products as not being actual multicore gear for the most part. Intel has tended to create multi-core products by simply packaging numerous cores next to each other rather than building them into a single die.
AMD was able to secure a performance lead over Intel by arriving first to the 64-bit scene and then following that with dual-core products. The company, however, now seems to have run out rabbits to pull out of the hat. It's all about execution now, according to the little chipmaker that could. ®
PA Semi heads to 16 cores on back of $50m boost (17 May 2006)
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