Mercury | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net KitGuru.net - Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards Fri, 18 Sep 2015 04:01:26 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/cropped-KITGURU-Light-Background-SQUARE2-32x32.png Mercury | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net 32 32 ARM ups expectations: ARMv8 to be in 25% of servers by 2020 https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/arm-ups-server-expectations-armv8-to-be-in-25-of-servers-by-2020/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/arm-ups-server-expectations-armv8-to-be-in-25-of-servers-by-2020/#comments Thu, 17 Sep 2015 22:08:14 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=268284 ARM Holdings admits that large-scale deployments of servers based on chips powered by its technologies will start only in 2016 or 2017. But while there are almost no commercial ARM servers today, the company is increasing its target market share for 2020. In fact, ARM hopes that in five years from now one server out …

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ARM Holdings admits that large-scale deployments of servers based on chips powered by its technologies will start only in 2016 or 2017. But while there are almost no commercial ARM servers today, the company is increasing its target market share for 2020. In fact, ARM hopes that in five years from now one server out of four will use processors featuring its architecture.

“Last time we talked to you, we said we were shooting for 20 per cent of the server market by 2020, today we are increasing that,” said Pete Hutton, executive vice president of product development at ARM, during ARM Holdings’ analyst and investor day. “With the success we have had in this space, with the customers that are rolling out our products and with the ecosystem investments that we are making, we are going for 25 per cent target share in 2020.”

dell_copper_microserver

ARM is working with developers of microprocessors to design server-class chips with 8 – 48 64-bit ARMv8-A cores as well as with designers of software to address storage, cloud, web servers, Big Data/scale-out and some other servers. In fact, there are four institutions evaluating ARMv8-A technology for high-performance computing applications now and there are companies, who intend to use ARM for rather demanding tasks.

“We have initial deployments in storage, we have initial deployments in clouds, we have initial deployments in HPC, it is great, we are very happy with how that is rolling out,” said Mr. Hutton. “We are investing further. No part of the market is now restricted to us. The ARM partnership is going after every single bit of that $20 billion [total available market for servers].”

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The company is expected to introduce its higher-performing code-named “Ares” and “Prometheus” cores in the coming years, which will significantly expand opportunities for ARM in servers. The designer of processing technologies hopes that partners will introduce central processing units with more than 48 cores and specific functionality, which will help to address real-time analytics servers, high-performance computing and even enterprise servers later this decade. In fact, ARM wants to offer competitors not only for Intel Xeon E5, but also for Intel Xeon E7 platforms. What is surprising is that there are those, who are already evaluating ARM technology for enterprise-class servers.

“In the enterprise, we have a lot of enterprises that are starting to evaluate the technology internally,” said the vice president of ARM.

arm_servers_silicon

This year Advanced Micro Devices, Applied Micro, Cavium, Marvell Technology Group, Texas Instruments, and Annapurna Labs are expected to start commercial shipments of ARMv8-based server-class system-on-chips. Next year four more companies are projected to offer their server-class solutions featuring ARM technology. Keeping in mind that all of these companies potentially have clients to use their SoCs, ARM hopes that adoption of its cores for servers will be pretty fast.

“There are six chip vendors in production [of ARMv8-A-based server chips] already this year, we have at least four more expected in 2016,” said Mr. Hutton. “The ARM server silicon ecosystem is very healthy.”

ARM is actively working with chip designers and contract makers of semiconductors to develop specific solutions for servers. In particular, the company is creating customized physical blocks, including microprocessor cores and interconnect technologies, to be used in server-class SoCs. ARM’s server chip roadmap includes solutions to be made using 14nm/16nm, 10nm and even 7nm FinFET fabrication processes.

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At present, only Ubuntu Server Linux supports ARMv8-A server processors, but ARM hopes that the number of operating systems and applications compatible with its architecture will rapidly increase in the coming years.

“There is a large number of additional OSes, which are at the development stage,” noted the EVP.

arm_servers_acceleration

ARM is traditionally very optimistic about its prospects in the server market. The company has reasons for some optimism: there are six server-class ARMv8-based chips, there is one ARMv8-supporting server operating system, there are many companies and institutions, who are evaluating the technology. But will ARMv8-compatible processor be 25 per cent of servers in just five years?

In fact, it took AMD Opteron over three years to grab about 30 per cent of the x86 server market from Intel Xeon. AMD’s chips back in 2003 – 2006 were actually faster than Intel’s and software ecosystem support for Opteron processors was robust. ARM hopes to take 25 per cent away from Intel in five years without software and major performance benefits. That’s a bold plan! Only time will tell whether it will succeed.

Even at its analyst conference ARM did not reveal specifications of its rumoured “Ares” and “Prometheus” cores.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: Will servers powered by ARMv8 chips be competitive against Intel Xeon servers due to be released tomorrow and the day after tomorrow? Intel is not standing still and it has a lot of resources to develop unbeatable server platforms. Moreover, it has a lot more financial resources than any of ARM’s partners. While ARM’s server plans seem to be optimistic, they just do not seem to be realistic.

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ARM’s high-end ‘Ares’ core for 10nm SoCs may be unveiled next year https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/arms-high-performance-ares-core-may-be-unleashed-next-year/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/arms-high-performance-ares-core-may-be-unleashed-next-year/#comments Sat, 16 May 2015 19:49:13 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=249736 ARM Holdings may be  accelerating its development cycles in a bid to offer better solutions for the booming market of smartphones and the emerging market of low-power servers, according to a high-tech analyst. Faster design cycles mean that ARM is making a step closer to Intel's tick-tock cadence. Technologies developed by ARM Holdings power the …

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ARM Holdings may be  accelerating its development cycles in a bid to offer better solutions for the booming market of smartphones and the emerging market of low-power servers, according to a high-tech analyst. Faster design cycles mean that ARM is making a step closer to Intel's tick-tock cadence.

Technologies developed by ARM Holdings power the vast majority of smartphones and tablets in the world, but ARM itself has not developed a single system-on-chip (SoC) for any device. The company designs microprocessor architectures (e.g., ARMv7, ARMv8-A, ARMv8.1-A, etc.) and general-purpose processing cores (e.g., Cortex-A57, Cortex-A53, etc.) based on those architectures. Actual chip designers can license either an architecture to develop their own processing engines or Cortex cores to integrate them into their SoCs.

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ARM’s clients, who develop their own cores, such as Apple or Qualcomm, introduce their applications processors on their own schedule that suits them and their customers. ARM’s partners, who license Cortex off-the-shelf building blocks they can integrate, get new cores once in roughly two years. For example, the ARM Cortex-A15 was introduced in September, 2010; the ARM Cortex-A57 was unveiled in October, 2012; and the Cortex-A72 was announced in February, 2015.

If ARM follows its traditional two-year cadence, then its next-generation code-named “Ares” processor should be announced sometimes in the second half of 2017. However, Linley Gwenapp, a renowned high-tech analyst from The Linley Group, believes that the “Ares” core “could reach smartphone and tablet makers by the end of next year,” reports IDG News Service. If this is the case and the information is correct, then ARM is evidently shrinking its design cycle from 2+ years to about 1.5 years.

“ARM is already well advanced on a next-generation high-end CPU that will follow the A72,” said Linley Gwenapp in a note for clients. “In fact, this project is so far along that the A72 team could ‘steal’ some portions of the next-generation design. For example, a new floating-point unit reduces latency by 33%. The prefetcher, also from the next-gen design, improves the data-cache hit rate to boost performance. The next-gen branch predictor reduces mispredictions by 20%.”

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Not a lot of information is known about ARM’s new-high-end general-purpose cores. What we do know from a leak of an ARM’s roadmap is that the company is working on two high-performance designs code-named “Ares” and “Prometheus”, which are developed for 10nm Fin-FET process technology. It is highly likely that both are based on the ARMv8.1-A architecture, but this is not something officially confirmed by ARM. The code-named “Ares” cores with up to 1.2W thermal design power per core will be used inside application processors for high-end mobile devices as well as servers, whereas the “Prometheus” cores (with 0.75W TDP per core) are designed for premium smartphones and tablets.

It takes developers of application processors nine to twelve months to integrate ARM Cortex cores into their designs. Then it takes hardware makers another nine to twelve months to develop new devices powered by the new APs. As a result, we can expect the first devices with ARM Cortex-A72 inside in the second half of 2016, if everything goes well.

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While shrinking core development cycle at ARM will not bring “Ares”- and “Prometheus”-based devices to the market earlier than in 2018, shortened development cycles in general mean that performance of mobile devices will increase at a faster pace, which is a good news. Besides, it means that ARM might get more competitive in servers. At the end, Intel improves performance of its Xeon server chips once a year and ARM’s partner need to offer a similar cadence in order to be more or less competitive.

It should be noted that shorter Cortex design cycles may not be a way to speed up introduction of new system-on-chips, but a mean to sustain current SoC development cycles in the FinFET era. It takes considerably longer time to design a chip with three-dimensional transistors than to create a processor with planar transistors. Therefore, ARM may just need to shrink its design cycles in order to enable its partners to roll-out new solutions every 12 to 18 months.

ARM did not comment on the news-story.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: In order to be competitive with Intel, one has to do a lot of things. One of such things is a replication of the chip giant’s tick-tock cadence. With core design cycle shrunk to 1.5 years, ARM is getting closer to where it needs to be, however, it is still not quite there.

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ARM: 20% of servers to be ARM-based by 2020 https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/arm-interest-in-64-bit-arm-servers-is-high-20-of-servers-to-be-arm-based-by-2020/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/arm-interest-in-64-bit-arm-servers-is-high-20-of-servers-to-be-arm-based-by-2020/#comments Wed, 22 Apr 2015 22:58:06 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=246291 Despite of a lot of hype about ARM-based servers in the recent years, actual number of their deployments remains very low. However, ARM Holdings is optimistic about its market opportunities and expects 20 per cent of servers to be ARM-based by 2020. In a bid to dramatically increase its share of that market, ARM plans to …

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Despite of a lot of hype about ARM-based servers in the recent years, actual number of their deployments remains very low. However, ARM Holdings is optimistic about its market opportunities and expects 20 per cent of servers to be ARM-based by 2020. In a bid to dramatically increase its share of that market, ARM plans to introduce new cores as well as to enable its partners to build chips with over 48 cores in 2017 – 2018.

ARM admits that its current position on the market of server-class system-on-chips is not exactly good and will not improve significantly until 2016 or even 2017. Nonetheless, the company stresses that it is possible to buy ARM-based servers right now in order to develop software. Makers of servers are also interested in microprocessors from alternative suppliers since today 98 per cent of server central processing units are sold by Intel Corp.

“I think the level of interest we see in ARM-based servers remains very, very high,” said Tim Score, chief financial officer or ARM, during the company’s quarterly conference call with investors and financial analysts. “Everyone I speak to absolutely wants an alternative.”

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Once server-class software stack for ARM is ready and once there are 64-bit ARMv8-compatible CPUs with performance and capabilities sufficient for modern datacenters, actual demand for ARM-based servers will pick up, according to the company.

“I do not think that server shipments are going to be a material driver of royalty this year, I think we’re still in the development phase of that,” said Simon Segars, chief executive officer of ARM. “You can buy an ARM-based server right now. […] It is progressing forwards, but I do not think it is going to be a meaningful driver of royalty revenues this year; it is probably more into 2016 – 2017.

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At present ARM targets storage, web-tier, cloud and scale-out servers with its ARMv8-A architecture as well as Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A72 cores. Three to five years down the road, the company will have improved ARMv8-A architecture as well as higher-performing code-named “Ares” and “Prometheus” cores. ARM expects that the new technologies as well as speedier cores will help it to address real-time analytics as well as high-performance computing applications. Eventually, ARM wants to compete directly with Intel Xeon processors for enterprise-class servers.

Right now, we do not know a lot about ARM’s future server-class cores. What we do know is that the company’s Cortex-A72 – which is 80 – 90 per cent faster than the Cortex-A57 – has 1–1.2W power envelope per core, which is comparable to that of Intel's “Broadwell” cores inside the company’s Core M and Xeon D processors. Based on the company’s roadmap leaked recently, ARM is also working on the code-named “Ares” core for high-performance applications, which is going to be made using 10nm FinFET process technology and which will at least double performance of ARM’s Cortex-A72. For ultra-dense servers that do not require truly high single-thread performance, ARM is prepping code-named “Prometheus” technology with 600-750mW thermal design power per core.

arm_roadmap_cortex_futureict-cortex-a-roadmap-strategy-april-2015

ARM did not comment on characteristics of its future Cortex-A cores.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: ARM continues to be very optimistic about its server-class solutions and expects its partners to offer an alternative to Intel’s Xeon microprocessors for every single market segment. But even if ARM manages to create cores that are comparable to Intel’s in terms of performance, functionality and power consumption, it remains to be seen whether ARM’s partners will actually be able to compete against Intel. AMD once had a strong lineup of Opteron processors for servers that outperformed Intel Xeon products. However, the company could not fight against its arch-rival for a long time because of financial and business reasons…

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ARM CPU roadmap revealed: Ares, Prometheus, Ananke and Mercury in development https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/arm-cpu-roadmap-revealed-ares-prometheus-ananke-and-mercury-in-development/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/arm-cpu-roadmap-revealed-ares-prometheus-ananke-and-mercury-in-development/#respond Mon, 20 Apr 2015 21:09:00 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=245940 ARM Holdings is developing a broad family of general-purpose processing cores that will be made using 10nm and 16nm process technologies, according to a roadmap that was revealed earlier this month. Just like today, the upcoming cores from ARM will address different segments of the market. Earlier this year ARM introduced its second-generation 64-bit Cortex-A72 …

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ARM Holdings is developing a broad family of general-purpose processing cores that will be made using 10nm and 16nm process technologies, according to a roadmap that was revealed earlier this month. Just like today, the upcoming cores from ARM will address different segments of the market.

Earlier this year ARM introduced its second-generation 64-bit Cortex-A72 core previously known as “Maya”. Later this year the company is expected to unveil code-named “Artemis” general-purpose core that will power system-on-chips made using 16nm FinFET process technology and similar nodes. “Artemis” is intended for premium smartphones and tablets, it features 64-bit ARMv8-A micro-architecture, according to a roadmap published by several web-sites (1, 2).

arm_new_opportunities_cortex_armv8_armv7

ARM’s next-generation general-purpose processing cores that will be based on the improved ARMv8-A micro-architecture will be featured inside SoCs due to be available in 2018 or later and will be made using 10nm FinFET process technologies. Code-named “Ares” cores with up to 1.2W thermal design power per core will be used inside application processors for high-end mobile devices as well as servers, whereas “Prometheus” cores (with 0.75W TDP per core) is designed for premium smartphones and tablets. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. will initiate production of 10nm chips sometimes in 2017.

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In addition, ARM is working on “Ananke” and “Mercury” cores for ultra-low-power as well as inexpensive mobile devices. Such cores are not designed for leading-edge process technologies and will be used for system-on-chips manufactured using a variety of nodes. Traditionally, small cores like ARM Cortex-A7 have a multi-year lifespan.

ARM did not comment on the news-story.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: ARM seems to have rather ambitious plans. It is noteworthy that the company will keep designing its own cores for servers, even despite of the fact that developers of server-class system-on-chips – AMD, Cavium, Qualcomm, Samsung, Nvidia and others – design their own custom ARMv8-A-compatible cores.

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FarCry 3 sales highlight AMD’s graphics challenge https://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/faith/farcry-3-sales-highlight-amds-graphics-challenge/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/faith/farcry-3-sales-highlight-amds-graphics-challenge/#comments Wed, 09 Jan 2013 07:19:41 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=121111 If your local supermarket starts to hand out free milk, how much milk will you buy from another store?  We reckon ‘much less'. Data just in to KitGuru highlights the present disparity in sales for GeForce and Radeon in the channel. The abacus gets a dusting off as we ponder the significance of software sales …

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If your local supermarket starts to hand out free milk, how much milk will you buy from another store?  We reckon ‘much less'. Data just in to KitGuru highlights the present disparity in sales for GeForce and Radeon in the channel. The abacus gets a dusting off as we ponder the significance of software sales data.

A huge number of you downloaded the KitGuru Annual Awards article at the start of January. It covers all of the major component areas, with detailed analysis before a winner is appointed in each category. After reading it – and then following the links to both the 6GB Sapphire 7970 Toxic and VTX3D 7870 Black – you'd be forgiven for thinking that AMD pushed out some of the best cards in 2012. And you'd be right.

But when it comes to the market as a whole, most people buy mainstream cards. In that market segment, a lot of responsibility goes to the reseller/store where you buy from. They will be pushing offers based on the stock available in the channel. In other words, if there's loads of nVidia stock in the market, then THAT is what you will see on the shelves – which will influence what you end up buying.

When AMD launched its ‘Never Settle' campaign for Q4, it was warmly welcomed by gamers who could get games like FarCry 3, Hit Man Absolution and Sleeping Dogs bundled with every card from the Radeon HD 7770 and above.

So that brings us to the headline.

Fact: The top selling game in our market for December was FarCry 3. That means that more money was taken in our stores, for Far Cry 3, than any other game.

But it was FREE with many AMD cards.

So who would BUY this game?

We reckon it must be people who did NOT get it for free.

Which must mean a significant number of nVidia GeForce customers did make the purchase.

Over at CES, nVidia's former head of global GPU sales, Roy Taylor, is busy plotting a crusade toward redressing the balance between AMD and nVidia in the channel. AMD's CSO John Byrne has been quoted as saying “Roy’s enthusiasm and passion for technology evangelization will help strengthen our channel business as we bring new low-power APUs and discrete GPUs to market in 2013”.  Hmm…  We'll revisit this area in a while and let you know what progress (good or bad) is being made.

According to Roy Taylor, it's a jungle out there - survival of the fittest and all that

KitGuru says: One of the reasons you need to pay a game publisher so much for a bundling deal, is because the software companies know that sales will be lost in the high street. Doing a deal on a game, which subsequently hits number one spot week after week, is not quite the perfect result for a bundler.

Comment below or in the KitGuru forums.

KitGuru says:

Comment below or in the KitGuru forums.

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Craig Connell reveals the inside scoop on AMD https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/faith/connell-reveals-the-inside-scoop-on-amd/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/faith/connell-reveals-the-inside-scoop-on-amd/#comments Sat, 21 Aug 2010 09:11:24 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=13535 Craig Connell spent years driving sales for nVidia before moving across to the red team almost a decade ago. He knows both of the graphics companies intimately and, through the processor giant’s acquisition of ATI, he’s also an expert on AMD’s CPU business.He's just the right person to prod for information. Originally destined for a …

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Craig Connell spent years driving sales for nVidia before moving across to the red team almost a decade ago. He knows both of the graphics companies intimately and, through the processor giant’s acquisition of ATI, he’s also an expert on AMD’s CPU business.He's just the right person to prod for information.

Originally destined for a career in football, Connell still runs several soccer teams near his home town of Milton keynes. That's what he does for fun.

Work? Well, right now, Connell is running things for AMD across Northern Europe. With AMD Fusion, the 6000 series and a load of CPU launches coming up, we wanted to know what life is like on the front line.

Connell says AMD offers a fast paced environment. Whoosh.

KitGuru likes to start with a little history, so we asked Connell about AMD’s share of the graphics market. Specifically, how have things changed over the past 12 months or so?

“I’m really pleased with the results so far”, Connell replied. “Independent research shows AMD holding strong at 51%. That’s something we haven't had for quite a while”. That’s true, this time last year nVidia was hovering around 59%. Using maffs, KitGuru calculates that AMD moving its discrete market share from 41% in 2009 to 51% for 2010 is an increase of more than 24%. Looking at Connell during the interview, KitGuru believes he must take some of the blame for this increase.

By the way, when nVidia or AMD says discrete, they are not refering to the hiding of an affair. Instead, they mean a graphics solution that is completely seperate from the CPU/Northbridge/Southbridge.

Connell told us that this uplift in graphics has helped elsewhere, “Over the past 12 months, as the recession really bit into the global market, AMD’s R&D has been winning market share in the graphics area like never before. That huge increase in demand for AMD graphics created a nice cascade effect into our CPU and chipset businesses. There’s still room for a lot more growth, but we’re happy with the progress made”.

Given that nVidia effectively created the GPU as we know it today and has carried on working hard to develop the market, it’s a tough competitor. We asked Connell what he felt was the single biggest factor in delivering the growth being reported by Mercury Research and others.

Experts on graphics. Both AMD and nVidia love to quote em.

“AMD's biggest advantage? It’s got to be DX11. Right now, we’re so far ahead with our deployment that I have to keep pinching myself”, said Connell. “Looking back, ATI landed the world’s first DX9 product ahead of schedule with the Radeon 9700 and that gave us a huge market swing. Then, with the launch of Vista at the end of 2006, nVidia came back strongly with the 8800 series.  Traditionally, there has always been an ebb and flow in this business. But this time, with DX11, it feels different. nVidia is only just bringing its DX11 parts into the mainstream and we’ve not heard anything about the mass market products”.

KitGuru can tell you that most graphic cards sold will cost the end user less than £100/$150/€120. Not having a DX11 solution in that space is painful. The other knock-on is the notebook market. Until Johan Alben and Philip Carmack are ready to unleash the 50w Fermi that KitGuru reported on back in May, AMD's offer to the mass market (especially Taiwan/China) remains very attractive.

Graphic companies compete with each other on what they call the product stack. It’s a moveable feast, with both sides able to change the stack by dropping prices or increasing performance.

For example, offer the GTX470 to the public at £300 in May and sales are limited. Drop the price 25% to to £225 today and it seems much more appealing. There are very few genuinely bad cards, just poorly selected price points. For AMD, the booby prize winner has been the Radeon HD 5830.

We asked Connell about the current line-up, “AMD has the only complete DX11 product stack. Starting with the Radeon HD 5970, which is the world’s fastest card, through to the highly affordable Radeon HD 5450 that retails in the UK at just over £30, we’ve got a great selection for customers at every price point”.

Connell is surprised that the competition for sales has not been stronger, “To be honest, I was expecting it to be a lot closer. nVidia has been a great competitor in the graphics space for many years and we expected a full set of Fermi products to be in the market by CeBIT in March. When they had not arrived by Computex in June, we thought it was very strange. Now there’s every chance that before nVidia deploys a full series of first generation products, AMD will already be selling second generation DX11 technology. It’s not often you get to be a whole series ahead in the graphics business. It’s like lapping a former champion in an F1 race – it feels strange, but you also feel a strong sense of pride”.

It's a past and present thing. Apparently.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about whether companies should sell just one kind of graphics processor.  Choosing either AMD or nVidia. Selling both means you can switch according to market demand – whichever innovator is offering the best feature set. We asked Connell about his views on single-source graphic card companies.

“Looking at the recent fortunes of brands like BFG, being single source for graphics is not a problem as long as you choose AMD’s Radeon products. Given the complete lack of deployment from nVidia in the mid-range and all important sub-£100 space, it must be quite a challenge to stay loyal right now. Companies like Sapphire, HIS and Powercolor have been going from strength to strength in my region and the drive we have seen from newcomer XFX has been equally impressive. Alongside Asus, Gigabyte and MSI, AMD has some great partnerships right now. It’s our responsibility to make it as easy as possible for our partners to sell Radeon graphics, said Connell.  “Business is all about making money and AMD’s lead in the design, development and deployment of a complete DX11 product stack has made it easy for everyone to make money with us”.

That's one market, but AMD competes in several areas. Some are a lot tougher than others.

AMD may well be almost twice the size of nVidia. But when you look at Intel's financials, you can see just what kind of challenge lies ahead.

Competition is much tougher in the CPU space. We asked Connell if he’s finding this market as easy as graphics. He replied, “Not at all. AMD has some great technologies, but there’s a huge difference in scale between AMD and Intel. We’re focusing on the areas in which we’re sure we can bring a lot more value to the table. Our 6 core products have been very popular, both with local system builders and with the multi-nationals. I saw a TV interview with Pat Gelsinger once in which he said “More cores are always better” and our customers are finding that out for themselves right now. Not every application is heavily threaded, but the ones that are show great performance improvements for 6 core processors over mass-market quad core parts”.

So has Craig managed to increase CPU sales anywhere?  Connell replied, “Looking at unit shipments, it’s very territorial. One of the major European markets has seen AMD grow market share by almost 10%. That’s something we’d love to see repeated everywhere”.

Selling units is one thing. Making money on those sales is something else. We asked Connell about AMD’s ASP – the Average Selling Price – a strong indicator as to whether processors are genuinely competitive. He smiled and said, “Margin? Now that’s something that has increased almost universally. AMD’s Phenom II X6 products have not only been in high demand, they are also great revenue generators”.

Connell believes his strongest customer offering, is his six appeal

Companies like AMD and Intel won’t generally discuss products that are under NDA (a non discloser agreement), but KitGuru asked anyway. Specifically, we wanted to know which innovation from AMD does Connell think will make the biggest difference to the world over the next 2 years?

Connell considered the question, and replied “AMD Fusion. Those two words will change the world. Never before has the world’s leading graphics manufacturer harnessed powerful GPU and CPU technology to create an integrated APU [Accelerated Processor Unit – Ed]. Right now, every customer meeting ends with them asking me for more information about the new AMD Fusion APU. When AMD launches Fusion to the market, there will be a sea-change in the way products are specified, manufactured and sold. At the same time, at the high end, our engineers are working hard to solve a completely different set of customer demands. Overall, we’re expecting 2011 to be a very busy time for AMD and the market”.

Given that AMD is still the only company with a CPU, GPU and chipset business, we asked Connell if that gave him any other advantages.

Another knowing grin, followed by “Definitely!  You need to remember that all of the growth AMD has enjoyed recently, has come with products that were – largely – already in development when the two companies came together. In the coming months, you will start to see fresh fruit dropping from the AMD Fusion tree – and it’s going to energise the global market”.

KitGuru has already reported on the movement from Sony, Clevo and others toward AMD with their 2011 roadmaps. If AMD Fusion can hit the right balance of power consumption, performance delivery and price, then it will be interesting to see just how much mobile market share they can pick up over the next 12 months.

Will Fusion power be enough to change the planet from blue to green?

Channel stuff to one side, we could not Connell go without asking him about the crown jewels.

KitGuru has already run performance predictions for the AMD Radeon 6870 card that we expect to be launch before Christmas 2010. If correct, it would be a huge leap forward. Did Craig care to comment?

[Knowing smile] “Sorry, AMD does not comment on unannounced product”

Any final messages for your business partners?

“The same one we’ve been working to for years, work hard, make money and have fun!” said Connell.

Nice chap.

KitGuru says: Recent meetings with AMD, Intel and Kingston have give us a strong impression of just how powerful PCs and laptops will be by the end of 2011. This is about as exciting as it's been since AMD launched the FX or Intel broght us Conroe. It would be nice to see nVidia and its partners step fight up with Fermi and to see some strong price competition in the mainstream.KitGuru has put in the call, we'll let you know the response. Parting thought? Although no one from AMD has told us officially that the ATI brand has been closed down, we noted that Connell didn't refer to in once in the whole interview. Accident? We don't think so.

Comment below or tell us what you think in the KitGuru forums.

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