Here you can find all of the information about AMD. This includes their CPU’s, as well as their GPU’s built by ATI and the related software like the Stream SDK. In addition, we have information regarding CrossFire and EyeFinity hardware systems.
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FireUser.com has a user-contribution from Antonio Fontenele benchmarking a Quadro 1800FX against the AMD FirePro v5800 in a variety of tests. In an interesting twist he compares the various vendor “optimized” drivers against their counterparts provided by Autodesk (Both of these cards are Autodesk approved), and finds a startling different in performance.
In Cadalyst Systems Benchmark 2011 test, Quadro a little faster than FirePro while using AutoCAD default drivers due c2011_8.dwg file score, but it was slower than FirePro in the other files (where FirePro was 102.32% faster). However, using AutoCAD optimized drivers, Quadro earned 613 points while FirePro earned a higher score equal to 2060 points. This is means about 336.05% faster in AutoCAD 2011.
Get all the numbers in the article.
Sad news from AMD today, as they announce an unfortunate 10% Workforce Reduction (1,400 employees by some counts) that they hope will reduce operating expenses by $118 million in 2012.
“Reducing our cost structure and focusing our global workforce on key growth opportunities will strengthen AMD’s competitiveness and allow us to aggressively pursue a balanced set of strategic activities designed to accelerate future growth,” said Rory Read, AMD president and CEO. “The actions we are taking are designed to improve our ability to consistently address the needs of our global customer base and stake leadership positions in lower power, emerging markets and the cloud.”
It’s not terribly surprising, as AMD has been having a bit of a rough patch compared to NVidia and Intel. Their CPU’s are falling short of Intel’s performance figures, and their GPU’s are falling in market-share compared to NVidia and the new Intel Sandy-Bridge. With Intel rapidly entering the GPU space and NVidia moving powerfully into the mobile space, AMD will soon have to find a new way to compete.
Update: Quickly doing the math ($118 Million over 1,400 employees), that’s an average $85k per employee. Not CEO’s, but not exactly assembly line workers either.
Update #2 9PM: More info, this time from BSN via a Letter from AMD CEO Rory Read.
From what we heard, of the 1400 people that AMD laid off, there is about 60% of the marketing department, with known executives such as Patrick “Pat”Moorhead (VP Marketing), John Volkmann (VP of Brand), Dave Kroll (Head of PR), complete product reviewer support team all getting the boot.
The cuts however, did not touch just the marketing and sales staff. Key Fusion engineers were let go as well.
As the third paragraph states, AMD will announce its new course, codenamed “Project WIN”on November 9th, 2011.
via AMD Optimizes Cost Structure to Enhance Competitiveness and Accelerate Growth.
AMD has just announced their new entry-level FirePro card, a modified version of the Radeon HD 6670 that retails for a mere $189. It comes with the same driver support as the bigger FirePro’s at a mere fraction of the price.
Since AMD’s Firepro V4900 has a pretty standard AMD Turks GPU, there is support for the firm’s multi-display Eyefinity technology plus two Displayport 1.2 and a single DVI dual-link outputs, supporting up to six displays.
via Amd releases its entry-level firepro v4900 graphics card- The Inquirer.
FireUser has just posted the final piece in a multi-part series on the use of Remote Graphics in profressional environments. In it is focuses mostly on AMD’s offerings, but does a good job of showing where remote graphics can shine and where it tends to fall down.
“The real question is not if you should replace all of your high end workstations, but rather to examine when and where it makes economic and performance sense. For the true CAD power user, remote graphics is not there yet in terms of matching performance with a dedicated local workstation with a top-of-the-line FirePro or Quadro-based graphics card.
via Remote Graphics and the Professional CAD Workstation, Part 4: Sustainability | FireUser Blog.
AMD has just announced a new embedded GPU targeted at signage and industrial spaces, but comes with the impressive capability of driving 4-displays and supporting EyeFinity.
Targeted at casino gaming, digital signage, instrumentation and industrial control systems, the AMD Radeon E6460 GPU sets a new bar for features and performance in an entry-level embedded GPU with broadly scalable graphics and multimedia performance, and a planned 5 years of supply availablitly (hence the longevity in the press release title).
It also includes HDMI 1.4, Stereoscopic video, and DisplayPort 1.2. Not bad for an embedded chip.
AMD is pushing into the GPU-compute space hard with systems like Fusion, and has now managed to get their FirePro discrete card certified for OpenCL acceleration of the Abaqus Finite Element solver.
“Many of the tasks that used to take a full day to complete can now be done in about half that time with GPU compute, saving engineering time and resources during product research and design, and reducing overall time to market,” said Sandeep Gupte, general manager, AMD Professional Graphics. “With SIMULIA’s latest realistic simulation software, which is compliant with OpenCL standards, engineers can achieve precise results in their design analysis with minimal hardware limitations.”
In the ongoing battle between OpenCL & CUDA, AMD has launched the next volley with their latest AMD Accelerated Parallel PRocessing SDK v2.5.
In related news, AMD earlier this month announced [press release] the availability of its AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) Software Development Kit (SDK) v2.5. This OpenCL-driven SDK offers programmers tools to add general-purpose GPU (GPGPU) computing support to their applications. AMD seems to be taking a wise tact here, as its CPU performance trails that of rival Intel Corp. (INTC), but its GPU performance is well ahead of its rival. With GPU-enabled apps, Fusion APUs may finally start performing their Intel comparables in everyday applications like Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Office suite or Adobe Systems, Inc.’s (ADBE), assuming the app-makers add support.
This comes along with the announcement of their new C-series and E-series processors, boosting the speeds of their existing Fusion APU’s to new heights. The new E-series is, however, a bit slower and seems to be targeted more at the ultra low-power mobile market. Both series however now support DisplayPort++ and HDMI 1.4a.
via DailyTech – AMD Unleashes New GPGPU Computing Tools, 3 New Fusion Chips.
Just like NVidia, AMD has a big presence at SIGGRAPH this year and the first details are coming out. Over at FireUser he’s got a list of their tech talks and presentations, along with some details of their new “Experience Zone”.
Hands-on training sessions including Autodesk 3ds Max workflow; configuring an AMD Eyefinity technology multi-display system; and modo by Luxology workflow.
Plus a chance to win an HP Z400 Workstation with three HP 24-inch displays powered by an AMD FirePro V7900.
All the details over at FireUser.
Experience AMD FirePro, Eyefinity & OpenCL technology at SIGGRAPH 2011 Aug 7-11 | FireUser Blog.
AMD has a clever advertising campaign going on right now for their upcoming 8-core Desktop CPU in the form of an online Comic called “Operation Scorpius: The Legend of FX”. The story of 8 heroes, a core of master ninjas, who come together to fight enemies in the OVerlord Syndicate and “free technology users everywhere”. It even includes “Agent Ruby”, whose reputation for “graphic destruction” needs no introduction.
Available online as a downloadable PDF or online viewing in their flash widget.
AMD is touting their new Radeon HD 6990M as the “world’s fastest notebook GPU” with some interesting slides showing it beating recent NVidia mobile offerings.
Slides from AMD show the chip outperforming both its own Radeon 6970M and NVIDIA Corp.’s (NVDA) GeForce GTX 580M in games like Batman Arkham Asylum, Dragon Age 2, Shogun 2, BattleForge, Left 4 Dead, Metro2033, Wolfenstein MP, The Chronicles of Riddick, and ET: Quake Wars. No independent benchmarks have been released yet, so the validity of these claims depends on how much you’re willing to trust AMD.
The chip will land as an option for Dell Inc.’s (DELL) Alienware M18x and Clevo’s P170HM and P150HM notebooks, both of which also offer the GTX 580M.
The chip offers 1120 SPU’s, 56 Texture units, and an impressive 715Mhz core clock. The memory clock and ROP’s remain unchanged, so there may not be much of a different on anything heavily memory dependent. The new chip will support Eyefinity, but won’t support any type of switchable graphics.
via DailyTech – AMD Claims to Have “World’s Fastest Notebook GPU”.
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