AMD momentum accelerates with chip advances for 2018 and 2019

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AMD momentum accelerates with chip advances for 2018 and 2019

By nearly any measure, 2017 was a banner year for AMD. The company was able to return not only to relevancy but transformed itself into an entity with technological advantages over rivals that had previously towered over them. CEO Dr. Lisa Su has realigned the corporate warship, pushing execution in key markets and product segments where its technology can flourish, rather than hap-hazard attempts in areas in does not posses a chance of success.

At the company’s event in Taipei, Taiwan during the annual Computex technology trade show, Su and other key executives trumpeted up past and current successes before describing the future of its roadmap for consumer and enterprise products for 2018 and 2019. A combination of 2018 chip launches and advanced process technology integrations for 2019 show an AMD that appears to be smelling blood in the water.

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New AMD Ryzen Pro brings competition and performance to commercial PC markets due for a refresh

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New AMD Ryzen Pro brings competition and performance to commercial PC markets due for a refresh

Back in late June, AMD announced a commercial version of the Ryzen product family. The Ryzen Pro series of processors levies the success of the Zen architecture and the Ryzen consumer products in hopes to make in-roads on the enormous market opportunity that commercial and managed enterprise desktop sales offer. The top three PC OEMs are on-board with AMD for the first time, bringing an air of credibility that previous commercial products lacked.

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Nvidia and AMD are deluged with orders for PC graphics cards

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Nvidia and AMD are deluged with orders for PC graphics cards

For the first time in nearly a decade, the sales of PC graphics add-in cards rose in the second quarter. Add-in cards are the discrete, high performance graphics solutions for PCs that are typically used by gamers, workstations, rendering farms, and enterprise segments that need high performance graphics capability. Based on data from Jon Peddie Research, add-in card sales rose by 30.9% sequentially and more 34.9% year over year.

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Intel increases laptop performance to prepare for coming fight with AMD, Qualcomm

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Intel increases laptop performance to prepare for coming fight with AMD, Qualcomm

Intel is taking an aggressive stance with this release, doubling the processor core count from two to four, essentially doubling the amount of computing that each processor will be able to perform in the power restraints of the laptop segment. Because a notebook has to operate with limited power consumption and heat creation to stay inside a standard form factor, balancing performance and power draw is of critical importance. Intel is placing a bet with the 8th Generation Core products that the added processing capability will be used more effectively by software going forward, and that it can offer that capability without sacrificing the vital performance of higher clock rates needed by today’s applications and operating systems.

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AMD Puts More Pressure on Intel with Threadripper

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AMD Puts More Pressure on Intel with Threadripper

hough reviews aren’t launching for another couple of weeks, on July 13th AMD showed all of its cards for the summer’s hottest CPU launch, Ryzen Threadripper. With the hyper-aggressive naming scheme to go along with it, Threadripper will be a high-core-count processor and platform, based on the EPYC socket and design, targeting the high-end desktop market (HEDT) that Intel has had to itself for nearly that same 10-year window.

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Samsung Memory Ramp Improves AMD GPU Outlook

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Samsung Memory Ramp Improves AMD GPU Outlook

Earlier this week, Samsung announced that it would begin ramping up production of its 8GB HBM2 technology in order to address the rapidly expanding need for high-bandwidth memory in the market. HBM2 is used in high performance processors used for artificial intelligence, HPC (high performance compute), graphics, gaming, networking, and enterprise servers because of its low power, high throughput capability. HBM technology uses stacked memory dies that are vertically connected by TSVs (through silicon vias) to improve density and capacity, while also preventing overheating to guarantee higher reliability.

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AMD and Intel Race Towards High Core Count CPU Future

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AMD and Intel Race Towards High Core Count CPU Future

As we prepare for a surprisingly robust summer season of new hardware technologies to be released to the consumer, both Intel and AMD have moved in a direction that both seems inevitable and wildly premature. The announcement and pending introduction of high core count processors, those with many cores that share each company’s most modern architecture and design, brings with it an interesting combination of opportunity and discussion. First and foremost, is there a legitimate need for this type of computing horsepower, in this form factor, and secondly, is this something that consumers will want to purchase?

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Anecdotal: Early AMD Ryzen Pre-orders Show Exceptional Demand

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Anecdotal: Early AMD Ryzen Pre-orders Show Exceptional Demand

With dwindling market share in the consumer space and most recent reports showing well under 20% for AMD, the excitement and demand for Ryzen is a welcome change for its CPU division. AMD’s marketing team is well practiced in churning up fans and communities to enthusiasm levels well beyond most other silicon providers thanks in large part to the personnel in its GPU/Radeon division. It now appears that the passage of time, and the pent-up demand for any competition to Intel in the mainstream gaming and enthusiast markets, is going to provide a boost for AMD in 2017.

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