MicroTechXP

Advanced Micro Devices is making it clear that its upcoming 45-nanometer processor for servers—”Shanghai”—will compete against what Intel brings to market with its new line of processors based on the upcoming “Nehalem” microarchitecture. According to AMD Senior Vice President Randy Allen, the chip will ship in Q4 2008, and his company will be ready with its server products before Intel. “They [Intel] won’t be factoring our 45-nanometer Shanghai product and be making shipments of that by the end of the year,” Allen said.
However, despite much talk about how Shanghai will be competing against Nehalem, there was a notable absence of details about Shanghai during Allen’s press conference, held on the eve of the Intel Developer’s Forum, including specifics on performance improvements. AMD has previously said Shanghai will contain 6MB of Level 3 cache compared with the 2MB of L3 cache in the company’s current crop of quad-core Opteron processors. Something AMD has in its favor is that the Shanghai chips will be compatible with the current group of Opteron chips. With BIOS update, users can upgrade their systems fairly easily, which should help AMD move the products into the marketplace.
View: Full Story at eWeek

Dirk Meyer, the new chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices, said during a conference call with financial analysts that the company had initiated pilot production of microprocessors using 45nm fabrication process and that the chipmaker was on track to deliver actual products in volume in early fourth quarter.
“We are well on track with the 45nm plan as we have been telling this group about in the past. We have actually started production late last quarter and are on track to start buying shipments early in Q4,” said Dirk Meyer during the conference call. Earlier it was widely believed that AMD will only manage to start shipments of its 45nm microprocessors late in Q4, however, the company now seems to be a bit more optimistic about its 45nm transition.
View: The full story @ Xbit-Labs

AMD announced today that Hector Ruiz is stepping down from his position as chief executive officer in favor of President and COO Dirk Meyer, who was elected by the board of directors to fill the newly opened position; in turn, will become executive chairman of AMD and chair of the board of directors. Ruiz, 62, joined AMD as president and chief operating officer in January 2000 and became AMD’s chief executive officer on April 25, 2002. “AMD has fundamentally altered the industry landscape, leading the innovation agenda while delivering greater choice and better experiences for our customers and users,” said Ruiz. “Dirk is a gifted leader who possesses the right skills and experience to continue driving AMD and the industry forward in new, compelling directions. I am placing the company in excellent hands.” [Neowin]

“Dirk’s election to CEO is the final phase of a two-year succession plan developed and implemented jointly by AMD’s board of directors and executive team,” said Robert Palmer, lead independent director. “Under Hector’s strong leadership, AMD drove the industry adoption of pervasive 64-bit and multicore computing, became a trusted enterprise-class partner to leading technology suppliers and significantly expanded its global footprint in high-growth markets like China.“

Advanced Micro Devices, Nvidia Corp. and Via Technologies have not yet started development of their own next-generation universal serial bus (USB) controller as they cannot get specifications of the bus from Intel Corp. The latter denies any wrongdoing or intention to affect competitive positions of AMD, Nvidia and others as well as claims that the spec is not finalized. “The challenge is that Intel is not… giving the specification to anybody that competes with CPUs and chipsets,” a source close to AMD who is familiar with the dispute between chipset developers and Intel is reported to have said by News.com web-site.
While retaining full backward compatibility with USB 1.0 and USB 2.0, devices that feature USB 3.0 will be able to transfer data at up to 10 times higher speed compared to USB 2.0, or at 4.8Gb/s, meaning that a file as large as 600MB could be transferred in just a second in the best case scenario. In addition, the USB 3.0 specification will be optimized for low power and improved protocol efficiency. USB 3.0 ports and cabling will be designed to enable backward compatibility as well as future-proofing for optical capabilities.
View: The full story @ Xbit Labs

nVidia and AMD are looking to wrest control from Intel over the specification for USB 3.0.
USB 3.0 is the next-generation high-speed connection standard due out next year that is expected to offer 10 times the speed of USB 2.0.
At issue is that Intel is allegedly not giving the specification to competitors in the CPU or chipset markets. Intel responds that it is “working hard to get the complete spec” to the industry. One source close to Intel alleges that nVidia and Intel are seeking the “host controller “specification that Intel says is beyond the USB 3.0 specification.
View: CNET: nVidia, AMD vie with Intel over USB 3.0

AMD used the Computex show in Taipei this week to propose XGP - eXternal Graphics Platform, a slimline box you connect your GPU-lite laptop to when you need more graphics horsepower.
Fujitsu Siemens (FSC) was on hand to demo the concept with its Amilo GraphicBooster, an AppleTV-like unit with an AMD ATI Radeon HD 3870 GPU built in and hooked up to 512MB of GDDR 3 memory. The box can drive four displays simultaneously, the company claimed.
AMD’s pitch is that users will be able to connect their slim’n'light laptops to an XGP, which will supply the level of graphical grunt that they don’t need when they’re on the move and, more importantly, running on battery power.

View: The full story @ The Reg

AMD has launched several new graphics solutions for notebooks and new processors for servers – the ATI XGP (external graphics platform) technology, the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3800, the ATI PowerXpress, and the quad-core Opteron 1300 series. XGP technology, a new external PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 graphics platform, is designed to deliver enthusiast-class desktop graphics performance and true multimedia upgradeability to notebooks, according to the company.
ATI XGP capitalizes on PCIe 2.0 to deliver graphics via a connected cable to an externally powered and cooled device, delivering up to 4.0Gb/s bandwidth in each direction between the notebook and external graphics. XGP is fully optimized for new AMD Turion X2 Ultra (Puma) notebook platforms, which AMD also announced.
View: The full story @ DigiTimes

AMD is preparing to show its Puma Laptop Platform to the world, with the launch penned for June during the Computex trade show. Around 100 laptops based around the Puma platform are being readied in time for the launch
The Puma platform highlights includes:

• AMD Turion X2 Ultra CPU (Griffin)
• Both Intergrated Graphics & HD3400 Discrete GPU (Using Hybrid technology to switch between the two to save power)
• WIFI a/b/g/n

AMD won’t be alone in introducing a new laptop platform though; their main rival Intel is also set to release its Atom low power CPU and its Centrino 2 platform at the same event.
VIA is also set to try to take some market share releasing its Isaiah processor, which is scheduled to be available during the middle of this year. [Neowin]

If your interest in processor speeds doesn’t extend much beyond “is it fast?” then these juicy tidbits likely aren’t for you. That said, AMD is certainly getting excited about its upcoming Barcelona successor: the 45nm Shanghai. The main points of interest out of the gate are HyperTransport 3.0, which was nixed late in the game on Barcelona, and six cores, which are meant to pit the chip up against Intel’s upcoming six-core Dunnington chip. Where things get really exciting is a few months after Shanghai’s late 2008 debut, when AMD plans do release a twin-die version, with 12 cores of happiness connected by HyperTransport 3.0. What does all that mean? Beats us, but we hope it’s fast. [Engadget]

Chip-maker AMD revealed some first quarter financial numbers today, and the results aren’t exactly stellar. Total revenue for the company was $1.505 billion, but it had sustained a net loss of $358 million, or $0.59 per share, and an operating loss of $264 million. These results include an impact of $50 million, or $0.08 per share, from ATI acquisition-related charges. However, although first quarter revenue decreased 15% compared to the fourth quarter of 2007, it actually increased 22% compared to the first quarter of 2007.
“A seasonally weak first quarter was amplified by a challenging economic environment for consumers and lower than expected revenues of previous generation products, resulting in lower than expected revenues in all business segments.” said Robert J. Rivet, AMD’s Chief Financial officer. “We remain committed to achieve operating profitability in the second half of the year, driven by our portfolio of new products and platforms and aggressive restructuring programs.” [Neowin]