If chipmakers competed on the basis of code names rather than products, then
Advanced Micro Devices might have beaten Intel a long time ago.
At its financial analyst day Wednesday, AMD laid out its plans for a dizzying
array of upcoming PC chips with names like Bulldog, Bulldozer, Danube, Brazos,
and Ontario.
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The onslaught starts with a high-end graphics chip code-named Hemlock that will
go on sale next week, priced at about $400 to $500. It comprises two GPUs and
delivers five teraflops of graphics computing power, according to Rick Bergman,
senior vice president and general manager of AMD's products group.
Four new PC processors will follow in the first half of next year, including a
quad-core notebook chip that aims to give seven hours of battery life, and a
six-core chip for high-end desktops that includes AMD's Eyefinity multidisplay
technology for gamers, Bergman said.
AMD also described plans to bring its new Fusion chips to desktop and laptop PCs
in the first half of 2011, starting with a product code-named Llano.
Fusion, which AMD has been talking up for several years, will combine a graphics
chip and a general-purpose CPU on the same piece of silicon, which AMD says will
lead to faster performance and lower power consumption.
Llano, the first Fusion chip, will have about a billion transistors and be
manufactured on a 32-nanometer process, Bergman said. For comparison, AMD's
current Phenom II processor has 758 million transistors and is made with a
45-nanometer process.
Llano will appear in mainstream laptops in 2011 as part of a platform called
Sabine, which will have four CPU cores and support DDR3 memory and DirectX 11
graphics, Bergman said.
For mainstream desktops, Llano will appear at about the same time in a platform
called Lynx, which will also support DDR3 memory and include up to four CPU
cores.
AMD also discussed two new x86 architectures it is developing -- Bulldozer, for
larger and more powerful chips that will go in servers, desktops, and laptops,
and Bobcat, which is designed to use less power for ultrathin laptops and
netbooks.
Bulldozer will appear first in 2011 as part of the Scorpius platform for
high-end enthusiast desktops. It will be offered in four- and eight-core
versions and be coupled with DDR3 memory and a discrete graphics chip. A
dual-core Bobcat processor will also come in 2011, as part of a platform called
Brazos, which will include a Fusion chip known as Ontario.
Having spun off its manufacturing facilities earlier this year, AMD is
redoubling its efforts to design new products that can help with its perennial
task of clawing away market share from Intel.
President and CEO Dirk Meyer suggested that the antitrust cases against Intel,
which have been waged in Europe and Asia and recently began afresh in the United
States, will create a more level playing field for AMD.
"I’m looking forward to a future where our ability to succeed in business is
governed by the quality of our products and our customer relationships. That
hasn't always been true in the past but in the future it will be," he said.
It's an uphill battle for AMD, however. Intel extended its share of CPU
shipments to 81.1 percent in the third quarter, while AMD's share declined
slightly to 18.7 percent, according to figures from IDC.