AMD builds semi-custom SoC with Zen and Vega for Chinese gaming market

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AMD builds semi-custom SoC with Zen and Vega for Chinese gaming market

Continuing down the path with its semi-custom design division, AMD today announced a partnership with Chinese company Zhongshan Subor to design and build a new chip to be utilized for both a Chinese gaming PC and Chinese gaming console.

The chip itself will include a quad-core integration of the Zen processor supporting 8 threads at a clock speed of 3.0 GHz, no Turbo or XFR is included. The graphics portion is built around a Vega GPU with 24 Compute Units running at 1.3 GHz. Each CU has 64 stream processors giving the “Fenghuang” chip a total of 1536 SPs. That is the same size GPU used in the Kaby Lake-G Vega M GH part, but with a higher clock speed.

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NVIDIA keeps foot on gas of machine learning with lower cost development hardware

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NVIDIA keeps foot on gas of machine learning with lower cost development hardware

This week at the annual Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) conference in Long Beach, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang surprised attendees and media with the announcement of a new graphics card targeted at artificial intelligence and machine learning developers. The “NVIDIA TITAN V” might look like a traditional graphics card used for gaming, but under the hood this new product offers a different level and type of performance.

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Microsoft continues tech innovations with new Xbox

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Microsoft continues tech innovations with new Xbox

With the launch of the Xbox One X today, Microsoft reclaims the title of highest performance gaming console on the market, taking it from Sony’s PlayStation brand. The PS4 Pro, released earlier in the year, was a modest upgrade in hardware and performance capability, but the Xbox One X, previously known as Project Scorpio, offers a more significant performance increase. This will allow for 4K support, better image quality in current and upcoming games, as well as a faster and smoother console experience.

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Intel uses AMD graphics hardware in new notebook processor

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Intel uses AMD graphics hardware in new notebook processor

Today Intel announced a new product family for its 8th Generation Core family that combines a 35-watt processor and AMD Radeon graphics chip on a single package in order to create a new class of gaming notebook solution. It hasn’t been assigned a brand yet, that will likely occur with a formal announcement at CES this January. This announcement has significant impact because it solidifies a partnership between competitors AMD and Intel for a product in a space both compete in.

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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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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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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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