Sign up for our Technology Newsletter 
AMD Ships One Million Llano Processors
It appears that AMD has successfully managed to ship one million Llano chips in the second quarter, which is weeks ahead of the official launch.
AMD released the news during its earnings conference call. Where interim CEO Thomas Seifert said demand for Llano was strong. “We expect Llano ramp to outpace the Brazos ramp,” he noted.
If you look back at AMD’s Brazos launch, they managed to ship around one million units ahead of its scheduled launch, in the fourth quarter of 2010. Conversely, introducing Llano will be a bit more challenging, because AMD is planning to offer many varieties of mobile and desktop SKUs; including affordable dual- and triple-core processors. Therefore, Llano is expected to outpace Brazos very soon. AMD also made mention in their earnings call that total APU shipments for the quarter hit seven million. That said, so 6 million of them were Brazos processors.
It is believed that AMD Llano chip will take 50 percent of their total CPU shipments by the end of the year. In the first quarter of 2012, the Llano is expected to garner over 60 percent of their shipments.
AMD A75 Motherboards Economically Priced
Comments Off on AMD A75 Motherboards Economically Priced
It appears that AMD’s A75 motherboards have finally started to hit the streets. Furthermore, we were truly shocked to see these MB’s economically priced for about $60.00.
Do not get too over excited in reference to the pricing because this gets you a decent A75 micro-ATX motherboard with up to four USB 3.0 ports and six SATA 6Gbps ports matched with a FM1 socket. It’s also worth pointing out that you will not get these same features like USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps on a comparable Intel platform in the same price range; you’d pay more.
We noticed that online retailer Newegg.com has an AMD motherboard selling for $59.99 after the rebate; otherwise it will cost $72.99. We expect the more serious computer geeks to opt for more muscle in regards to their motherboards; so they can whet their appetite for a good A75 for about $150.00.
Gigabyte Debuts New Motherboards
July 14, 2011 by admin
Filed under Uncategorized
Comments Off on Gigabyte Debuts New Motherboards
Gigabyte just announced their new slate of motherboards that will support AMD’s A75 series chipsets and the latest AMD A-Series APUs or Llano. The new A75 based motherboards are said to offer DIY PC builders and developers a higher level of 3D and multimedia performance that is scalable and said to offer the best value upgrade path imaginable.
Gigabyte’s VP of Service and Marketing Henry Kao is quoted as saying that the new boards were new and exciting as AMD new APU’s were “ground breaking” APU technology. As well as bringing AMD A-Series technology to DIY users who demand excellent gaming and multimedia performance on a budget, these motherboards also offer a compelling upgrade path that includes Dual Graphics configurations.
The A75 motherboards from Gigabyte feature an AMD A75 ‘Hudson’ chipset supporting the latest 32 nanometer AMD A-Series APUs. That said, these chips are the first ever to combine a DX11-capable, high performance graphics processor with the option of a dual or quad core CPU on one silicon die, offering a 3D gaming and multimedia experience which is similar to a discrete graphics configuration.
AMD’s Bulldozer Overclocked To 4.63 GHz
It appears that those techies toying around with samples of AMD’s FX-8130P were able to overclocked this processor to a remarkable 4.63GHz.
That said, Bulldozer appears be AMD’s fastest offering where the eight cores run at 3.8GHz, or up to 4.2GHz with AMD’s Turbo Core 2.0. The processor 8MB of L2 cache, 8MB of L3 cache, supports DDR3 1866MHz and is said to have a 125W TDP.
TSMC May Beat Intel To Market With 3D Chip
Comments Off on TSMC May Beat Intel To Market With 3D Chip
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is competing with Intel to become the first technology firm to offer three-dimensional chips that boost the density of transistors in a single semiconductor by up to 1000 times.
TSMC, the world’s largest contract chip maker, could make its first 3D chips commercially available before the end of 2011, according to a person close to the situation who wishes to remain anonymous.
The time frame for TSMC matches the end of 2011 schedule that Intel has set for the launch of its 3D Tri-Gate chips, which the company expects to be the world’s first commercial 3D chip and the most significant advance in chip technology since the development of the chip transistor in the 1950s.
With several layers of silicon stacked together, a 3D chip can achieve performance gains of about a third while consuming 50% less power. For this reason, 3D chips are particularly well suited to power new generations of mobile devices such as tablets and mobile phones, businesses where Intel has so far failed to establish a significant presence.
“This is definitely a new business opportunity for TSMC,” said Shang-Yi Chiang, senior vice president for R&D at TSMC, in an interview. “We are building a patent portfolio now.”
3D chips are expected to solve a number of problems for chipmakers who are aiming for performance increases in ever-smaller chips. As transistor density rises, the wires connecting them have become both thinner and closer together, resulting in increased resistance and overheating. These problems cause signal delays, limiting the clock speed of central processing units.
“3D chips look more attractive because of their greater density,” Chiang said. “However, it is more difficult to make them because of the testing issues. If you have five stacked dies and one of the dies is bad, you have to scrap the whole thing.”
AMD’s Bulldozer Will Be Late
AMD has confirmed that their Bulldozer chip-set will be delayed until later in the summer.
The FX Series which is codenamed Zambezi is based on the Bulldozer architecture. Unfortunately, AMD didn’t provide an official date they just said that the FX Series is coming in “late summer”, which means do not expect to the chip until probably late August.
AMD Drops Prices On Certain Chips
As AMD casually outed their new processor pricing lists. Over all AMD dropped the Athlon series between 2 and 25 percent based on the model. The highly sought after Athlon II X4 645 dropped from $112 to $102 and the eco-friendly 605e dropped from $122 to $98. Dual core and triple core Athlons were shown love as well with cuts between 3 and 12 percent, and 5 and 25 percent respectively.
There are many Phenom deals as well with the dual-core 560 dropping from $102 to $90 bucks. The EE quad-core 905e processors got a price drop around $65.00 dollars bringing the price to $100.00. AMD’s much touted 9xx Black Edition saw roughly a 10 percent price drop too with the flagship Phenom II X6 discounted from $239 to $205.
AMD Outs Phenom II X4 980
AMD just let the world see the glory of its processor prowess with the introduction of its fastest quad-core processor; which is called the Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition.
The chip is said to run at a lightning fast 3.7GHz. The processor is also features a 6MB of L3 cache and a 125W TDP. Like previous Black Edition processors, the new Phenom is unlocked, which will also those techies to freely overclock the Phenom over 4GHz with no issues.
ARM Has Explosive Quarter
ARM is kicking but this quarter by reporting another yet another quarter yesterday, their sales were up 26 percent year-over-year.
The revenues for ARM hit $191 million, with a profit of about $35.5 million. Unfortunately, the bad currency exchange rates reduced the profit to $20.3 million.
Analysts are estimating that about 1.85 billion ARM-licensed chips were manufactured this quarter and global shipments are expected to surpass 8 billion units by the end of the year, making ARM a part of the billion dollar club.
The sales were driven by the strong demand for smartphones and tablets which ARM owns a considerable share of the market since many manufacturers use their processors like the Cortex.
2GHz Smartphones On The Horizon
April 19, 2011 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
Comments Off on 2GHz Smartphones On The Horizon
According to Asian sources, Samsung is apparently developing an ARM based 2GHz dual-core processor. The smartphone is expected to be the first on the market next year about of the Samsung’s Exynos line.
Apparently, this news was leaked from an executive at Samsung who also said the company intends to offer the new processors on its competitors to put on their smartphones and tablets. Samsung is also claiming that the processor will offer PC performance. Our question is what will the performance be based upon?