AMD showed us working Trinity-based notebook
While Intel’s IDF was in full swing, AMD used the opportunity (like previous years) and set up a demo room to show off their latest and greatest for journalists around the world. Very interesting presentation was HP dv6 laptop in two editions, one with Intel second Core Generation i5 and other with the next-generation Fusion A-series accelerated processing unit (APU) code-named Trinity. This is the first time when AMD shows off a running Trinity-powered system up-and-close.
One of the coolest things was that on this notebook prototype based on Fusion Trinity APU was running Deus Ex Human Revolution game as well as on Intel counterpart. While both systems were set to the maximum of their capabilities, Intel was vas visually inferior in terms of visual quality. Since Intel HD graphics is DirectX 10 compatible and Deus Ex offers DX9 or DX11, it couldn’t go past DirectX 9 settings which are visually inferior to AMD APU’s latest and greatest Direct X11. Also, FSAA settings couldn’t be on the same level. That didn’t helped performance, as Intel system was noticeable choppy and not close to fluent FPS presented with AMD system. HP dv6 with next gen AMD APU did really great in latest Deus Ex game, with all settings maxed out and in 1366x768 pix resolution.
AMD also demonstrated another comparison: decoding video material on CPU, without use of GPU part. And while at the first moment it looked really good scoring almost 50% greater fps then Intel Core i5 counterpart, we did noticed that hyper treading on Intel platform wasn’t turned on, and that would for sure narrow difference gap quite a bit. Stay tuned for a detailed review of new platform in upcoming months, but we can say that we are quite impressed with graphic performance and stability of the new APUs even in this early stage. AMD’s second-generation code-named Trinity APU for mainstream personal computers (Comal for notebooks and Virgo for desktops) will be made using 32nm SOI HKMG process technology at Global Foundries. The APU will feature up to four x86 cores powered by enhanced Bulldozer/Piledriver architecture, AMD Radeon HD 7000-series Southern Islands graphics core with DirectX 11-class graphics support, DDR3 memory controller and other improvements.
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YouTube introduces 2D to 3D conversion
Video-sharing system YouTube has received a new update that brings to the table the option of converting a 2D clip to 3D with a simple click, and provides access to two more video creation platforms - Vlix and Magisto, for adding effects or short clip editing.
To convert your uploaded video, just select Edit Info and then click on 3D Video . The move from 2D to 3D will be made automatically so just click, wait a bit, and then you can start linking your 3D video wherever possible. Both Vlix and Magisto and all their options are available at youtube.com/create (http://www.youtube.com/create/). As a little bonus to these additions, YouTube is also dropping the 15-minute upload limit to more users. To take advantage of this you need to have a clean track record and complete an account verification.
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I-O Data makes BDXL-supporting external Blu-ray writer
I-O Data will soon be rolling out in Japan a new external optical drive, the BRP-U6XE Blu-ray writer which measures 137 x 154 x 20 mm, has USB 2.0 connectivity, and features support for BDXL discs, going up to 100GB in terms of capacity.
I-O Data's drive comes with a built-in cable, is bundled with Corel's WinDVD BD3D and Nero Express Essentials, and is capable of disc writing speeds of 6x for single/dual-layer BD-R, 4x for triple/quad-layer BD-R, 2x for BD-RE, 8x for DVD-R/+R and DVD+RW, 6x for DVD-RW and dual-layer DVD-R/+R, 5x for DVD-RAM, 24x for CD-R, and 16x for CD-RW. The BRP-U6XE is backed by a one-year warranty and will sell for about $233.
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Samsung starts making 20nm-class DDR3 memory
South Korean Samsung has two reasons to celebrate these days as it began operations at its new Line-16 memory fab which is claimed to be the biggest in the world, and it kicked off mass production of the first 20nm-class DDR3 DRAM chips.
Samsung's 20nm-class DDR3 is claimed to improve productivity by 50% and reduce energy consumption by 40% compared to 30nm-class chips. For starters, Samsung is going up to 2Gb in terms of density with with 2xnm DDR3 DRAMs but by the end of the year it plans to have 4Gb chips so as to allow for high-capacity (16GB and 32GB) memory modules. As for the recording-breaking Line-16 fab, it's located at Samsung's Nano City Complex in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, it takes up a 12-story building and has about 198,000 square meters of workspace. This fab represents a $10 billion investment aimed at consolidating Samsung's leadership in the memory market.
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Toshiba AT200 tablet available for pre-order
Toshiba AT200 Android tablet, announced earlier this month, has started to pop up in Europe with Deutsche Telekom's t-online-shop.at listing both the 16GB and 32GB models. The two devices are up for pre-order and don't have a solid shipping date.
Priced at €479 and €584, the 16GB and 32GB AT200 tablets are just 7.7mm thin, and have a brushed aluminum back, a 10.1-inch (1280 x 800) LED-backlit touchscreen, a 1.2 GHz OMAP 4430 dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, a microSD card slot, a rear-facing 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, a front-facing 2MP camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a micro USB port, a micro HDMI output, and a battery enabling up to eight hours of operation. The two listings say that the AT200 come with Android 3.1 but Toshiba announced them as being pre-loaded with the latest Honeycomb release which is versions 3.2.
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Most tech advanced countries have fastest Internet
According to a report from content delivery company Pando Networks, South Korea has the fastest Internet speeds in the world with an average download speed of over 17 Megabits per second. By comparison, German speeds were barely above 5 Mbps, which was still better than the US or UK. Those countries had average speeds of 4.93 Mbps and 4.79 Mbps respectively. The report is based on data collected on downloads from Pando's content delivery network during the first half of 2011.
Northern European countries were well represented in the top 15, including Sweden (7th), Denmark (9th), Netherlands (11th), Finland (12th) Norway (15th). Looking at the speed data overlaid on a map, one thing that stands out is how slow Internet speeds are in developed countries with strong content production industries. On the other end of the spectrum, countries where tech industries dominate the economy, including South Korea and Finland, tend to also have relatively fast Internet service. Japan is something of an outlier, likely reflecting the fact they are representative of both categories.
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IDF: Everything you want to know on Ivy Bridge
During Intel Developer Forum there was a lot of talk about Ivy Bridge (coming in H1 2012), and here is what we know up to now. In research and development of Ivy Bridge three teams were talking part, including one from Israel which originally designed first Core processor. As with Sandy Bridge, they are continuing their 2 chip platform (one CPU, one GPU). A bit more surprising is that it will be usable in same socket as Sandy, which wasn’t often case in past few years. New, smaller, 22 nm processes will be used, together with new, tri gate transistors. Graphic part of the chip will receive most improvements, included but not limited to full DirectX 11 compatibility. If you are familiar with Intel nomenclature Tick and Tock part of development will be familiar to you, and while CPU part is Tick, for GPU they are saying as it is Tick + as it beside smaller manufacturing process also bring some improvements architecture. It will support up to three displays at the same time, which was by Intel words very desirable to customers, and in some way giving nice credit to AMD Eyefinity technology.
One of the very interesting new technologies implemented will be Configurable TDP. That means that it will be possible to have multiple TDP levels within same processor part, and configuring in line with requests, cooling solution etc. Ivy Bridge processors will have three TDP options for each CPU model: the minimum TDP, the nominal TDP and the maximum TDP. It means that with proper cooling and sufficient power supply the CPU can significantly exceed its nominal frequency without any concerns for the limitations of the nominal TDP. This is something that the Turbo Boost technology the way it is today doesn’t allow, because it is closely connected with the TDP settings. The opposite is also true: if for whatever reason you need to save some power, then you can always switch the processor TDP to a lower level.
To further improve battery life with better power management (optimized voltage choice for all operating frequency) and low power mode, DDR3L comp ability is introduced, where it stands for Low voltage DDR3 memory support. It was specifically with Ultrabooks in mind that they decided to integrate DDR3L memory support into their current memory controller. DDR3L is the memory with lower power consumption that uses only 1.35 V voltage feed. And we are talking not just about lower signal voltages, but also about the ability to shut off I/O power to DDR memory in deep sleep states. Another new word was used – PAIR which stands for Power Aware Interrupt Routing, chooses best core to service interrupts based on its status e.g. not to wake up sleeping core if there is no need for that.
The biggest improvements are expected to be in Graphic chip of new Ivy Bridge. If you were asking yourself if that means that Intel continues with its two chip strategy, it does means exactly that. And while CPU chip is regular tick process (no design change, smaller production process) Intel thinks that GPU improvements are big enough to call it tick+. What is change or added you may ask? Well, a lot of things for sure. First, it will be full DirectX 11 compatible graphics, which is quite improvement comparing to now quite old DirectX 9 compatibility in available chips. Hardware Tessellation unit will be added enabling nice performance boost in latest games, as well as adding L3 cache which wasn’t all that necessary in previous architecture. This will result in roughly 60% better performance compared to current offering, and they believe that will significaly narrow gap between them and competition in GPU performance.
The only exact number which is publicly available at this time is the number of transistors inside the Ivy Bridge die. They will increase to 1.45 billion. It means that the upcoming processors will be 45% more complex than Sandy Bridge and a significant contribution to the transistor count will come from the graphics core. It will now occupy more than 30% of the semiconductor die.
One interesting question was asked during this presentation: in light of recent trend of IT companies suing each other over patents, do they think that AMD can take similar steps. It appears that last year dill to end all legal disputes between two companies is still active as Intel representative told us that “Intel and AMD won’t sue each other over patent claims”.
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AMD 7000 demoed during IDF
In another room of the really big AMD apartment which was used as showroom during IDF was really interesting stuff – next gen graphics. On a board which engineers usually use for testing was a very interesting MXM graphic. If you are a bit more in to the topic, you will probably know that this format is usually used for laptop parts, so the real question is what it is doing there? After a lot of questions and not so many answers we got some parts of the puzzle. On the table and working, was a next gen 28nm graphics from upcoming 7000 series (Southern Islands). As AMD usually first introduce desktop and then latter on notebook parts, it was very interesting that they already have these silicon part up and running. As AMD guys where very secretive about, well, basically everything, we can only guess that usual cycle won’t be broken, and conclude that next gen desktop 7000 series is very, very close.
Knowing that new series of mobile graphics are usually architecturally identical to previous desktop parts but in smaller manufacturing process, while new desktop parts always brings design/architecture change, we can try to conclude something. We can for example guess that AMD encountered some problems with design, and still doesn’t have working silicon for desktop part. Or, we can speculate that this specific VGA will have similar usage as 4770, to check if everything is ok with new manufacturing process and to iron out some problems which can surface out. Nothing of this matters that much if the performance will be on expected level. For that, we only had one game to check, and that was a Dirt 3 replay in a loop. Frames were good, and effects were rich, obviously DirectX 11, but we did noticed that replay is not running in native display resolution. We got answer that it is in game feature, and for replay to be smooth as possible Dirt 3 itself is lowering video resolution. This wasn’t the first time we heard about something like that, and it probably was the case, but if you know please leave a comment. Anyway, this should be mid range graphics with unknown amount of on board memory, and while Dirt 3 is not a most demanding game out there it is still very good result for midrange notebook part.
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Available Tags:AMD , notebook , YouTube , 3D , Blu-ray , Samsung , DDR3 , Toshiba , tablet , Ivy Bridge , Everything ,
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