March 27, 2008
AMD’s triple play
The maths for guessing the future of computer processing power is no longer “Think of a number and then double it.”
It should be getting easier in this multi-core world. We’ve gone from single brains to two brains and now quad-core microprocessors, so eight should be next, right?
Actually, the answer is three.
Advanced Micro Devices came out with the industry’s first triple-core chip today and it signals that cores are being viewed more flexibly than pure performance drivers. Instead, they are providing different price points and functionality for users.
“We’ve really started a debate in the industry with this,” Pat Moorhead, vice president of AMD’s advanced platform marketing, told me.
“Just like there’s a spot for $20,000, $30,000 and $40,000 cars, there’s room for two, three or four cores in the market. I see our competitor [Intel] now agrees – it’s announced a six-core server processor.”
Mr Moorhead says there are plenty of PC makers ready to support triple-core. It’s an in-between solution – for basic capabilities go for dual-core, for top performance, it’s quad-core, for something perhaps 30 per cent better than dual-core, triple-core will fill an important niche, he says.
The big shift is that Moore’s Law – the doubling of transistors on chips around every 18 months – is being de-emphasised by the two major processor makers in favour of “visual computing” – combining microprocessors with graphics processors to provide 3D interfaces and high-definition video.
“It’s going to become all about video, you get this incredible high-definition playback at 1080p with triple-core combined with our graphics,” says the marketing man, hammering home the message.
Africa and Latin America (and now Cuba) need a simple PC ready to video, to teach, to barter, to sell and trade , to train, to show and to unite…and AMD, Google and laptop.org/ ( with FT of course) could do it, if we had normal intelligent and honest politicians as well as smart local leaders , the lift of these regions means trillions of euros in sales, in commerce, in markets and services, their success and health means profits for the rest of the world, but first every household and citizen in these regions needs a PC,laptop and mobile phone, and better yet, one with all these services, AMD could be the processor and Google the software…all we need is smart honest politicians.
Posted by: blogger | March 29th, 2008 at 8:47 pm | Report this commentGraphics, in the context of the current market maneuvering, don’t have much to do with high-definition video or audio (HDTV, etc), notwithstanding sales and marketing pitches. In reality-land, modern audio codecs are much more CPU intensive than video codecs, so if you wanted optimized hardware to make playback smoother your average consumer should prefer audio chips.
In a similar vein, when AMD and Intel [engineers & executives] talk graphics, they aren’t talking about accelerating HDTV video or the like, either. They’re referring to video–usually three dimensional–which is generated and/or manipulated on the computer, such as for video games, virtual worlds like Second Life, and, of course, gimmicky animation techniques in Windows Vista.
The state-of-the-art in actual audio and video acceleration, for things like HDTV, or even YouTube (similar algorithms), comes out of Taiwan and China. The technology isn’t limited by fabrication of chips–its quite simple, relatively speaking–but by the interface to the chips. The market is limited because such solutions, to be wide-spread, require the ability to specify a standard software interface. But small Taiwanese and Chinese outfits don’t have the clout to force larger vendors–like Microsoft or Intel–to adopt those interfaces in things like Windows, or the various hardware interface standards that Intel effectively controls.
That’s not about to change anytime soon, because such narrowly tailored hardware runs against the grain of Microsoft’s and Intel’s businesses, which are oriented toward general purpose solutions.
Historically that wasn’t something to lament, because audio/video codecs evolved rapidly, and the wise choice, from an engineering perspective, was to sell general purpose hardware, and let software handle the content. But, the market has shifted. The pace of evolution in audio/video compression has slowed; the market is settling on a handful of standards; and there’s a far stronger argument today that Microsoft’s and Intel’s focus is contrary to the interests of the consumer. Evidenced by the fact that sales and marketing promises one thing to the consumer, but in reality the product is delivering something different entirely (in an attempt to boot-strap demand for complex, three-dimensional, generated virtual worlds, and “grow” a mass consumer market on the back of the existing audio/video market).
Adding an additional core (or CPU) to your computer will indeed speed up playback. But the same improvement in playback of audio/video content (DVDs, YouTube, etc) can be had for pennies on the dollar by using specialized chips. That additional core might cost a consumer an additional $20 or $30; a specialized chip could cost maybe $1, maximum–were the market not fractured for the above stated reasons–and physically be much, much smaller.
Posted by: Bill | April 2nd, 2008 at 9:26 pm | Report this comment