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AMD's Shanghai Chips Available Now

Paul Lilly — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:45:38 -0600

AMD has released its new Shanghai platform, signaling a move to 45nm. The first chips out the door are quad-core Opteron parts, which AMD claims will deliver up to 35 percent more performance and up to a 35 percent decrease in power consumption when idle.

"This enhanced AMD Opteron processor represents the most dramatic performance and performance-per-watt increases for AMD products since the introduction of the world's first x86 dual-core processors nearly four years ago," Randy Allen, AMD senior VP for Computing Solutions Group, said in a statement. "Simply put, the quad-core AMD Opteron is the right technology at the right time."

Shanghai, which is essentially a refresh of Barcelona and not an entirely new architecture, supports DDR2-800 memory and comes with a tweaked Direct Connect Architecture. The current batch of 75-watt Shanghai chips will be followed up by a launch of 55-watt Opteron and an SE 105-watt part in Q1 2009. And according to CNet, a desktop platform (codenamed Dragon) consisting of 45nm Shanghai desktop CPUs along with AMD 700 series chipsets and ATI Radeon HD 4000 graphics will also see the light of day in the same time frame and attempt to compete with Intel's Core i7 platform.

Will Shanghai get AMD back on track? Hit the jump and give us your take.

Image Credit: AMD

Got 2 Grand? AMD Shanghai Chips Begin Appearing at Online Resellers

Andy Salisbury — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:28:32 -0500

Race fans, fire up your wallets! AMD’s first 45nm chip, the Shanghai quad-core has finally made its appearance at online resellers.

These bad boys aren’t cheap, either. The quad-core 2.7GHz chip will run potential buyers $2,499 over at PC Connection and $2,240 (for the chip without any fan) over at Buy.com. And these prices are pretty standard all the way across the board.

Admittedly, expectations might be low for these chips considering the debacle caused by the massive delays of Barcelona due to the production issues. Still, AMD’s hopes remain high. Shanghai is currently in full production, and supposed to have a 20 percent performance boost over Barcelona. There have also been confirmations from the likes of Sun Microsystems for plans to offer the chip in current x64 platforms that are running Barcelona by as early as Q1 2009.

While these chips do offer surprisingly low power consumption for a quad core chip (only 75 watts) and some burly clock speeds, the prices are pretty difficult to swallow. Although, to be fair, they’re meant for servers… or badasses.

Image Credit: Chip-Architect.com

AMD to Launch Nine 45nm Shanghai CPUs this Month

Paul Lilly — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:19:05 -0500

Perhaps AMD's assembly line has kicked it up a notch, but whatever the reason, the chip maker is informing its server partners that it plans to bump up the launch of its 45nm server CPUs (Shanghai) from January 2009 to the middle of this month. According to sources at these server makers, nine processors will initially be released, ranging in core frequency from 2.3GHz up to 2.7GHz.

Five of the Shanghai chips will ship as a 2-way model, with the remaining four being 8-way models. All of them will take residence in AMD's socket F (1207) and boast an on-die DDR2 memory controller. Each will also come outfitted with 6MB of L2 cache.

AMD will follow up these initial CPUs in February 2009 with five 55W models (three 2-way and the two 8-way), and two 105W models (one 2-way and one 8-way).

Image Credit: AMD

AMD Shifts Focus to Shanghai, Learns from Barcelona Debacle

Pulkit Chandna — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:33:12 -0500

Barcelona might have been a sullen nightmare for AMD but it seems to have moved on. It has now pinned its hopes on Shanghai, a quad-core processor for the server market, which happens to be its first processor to be synthesized on a 45-nanometer process.

The company has begun shipping Shanghai to its OEM partners. Shanghai will be launched ahead of time, before the end of this year, unlike Barcelona that was plagued by delays.

Pat Patla, general manger of AMD’s server and workstation division, candidly admitted to having learnt a lot from the blunder that was Barcelona. The chip is claimed to be 20% more efficient than Barcelona. AMD has increased the cache memory from 2MB to 6MB. A six-core processor from the AMD stable will be launched in Q4 2009.

Image Credit: PCPER

Is Christmas Coming Early?

Chris Moody — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:56:53 -0500

TomsHardware.com is reporting that the originally scheduled launch of Nehalem based Bloomfield processors will be moved up to September. Imagine that, a hardware launch ahead of schedule! The X58 chipsets will launch along with it..

Some early tests of samples of Nehalem show it beating out current processors by 20 to 30 percent. It appears to like overclocking as well with some overclocking tests going to almost 1Ghz over stock. Nehalem ditches the traditional front-side bus (FSB), and instead uses an external multiplier to control the link between CPU core, memory controller, and north-bridge.

This is only going to further mash AMDs toes as their next CPU, Shanghai, doesn’t look promising for catching up to Intel. Unless AMD has a hat trick waiting, we’ll have to wait until San Paolo and Magny-Cours come out in 2010 to see if AMD can catch up. A year and a half is a long time and a lot can happen in the CPU world. With Nehalem looking to come out early, Intel stretches its lead.

Is Nehalem seductive enough to get you to upgrade?

(Image Credit: Based on image from flickr.com BAD RABBIT INC)

Peek at AMD's Socket G34 and Future Roadmap

Chris Moody — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:53:03 -0500

What sort of crafty tricks can AMD be working on to get them out of their slump? A little poking around finds some juicy details in a report from DailyTech.com on a new socket architecture to support AMD’s planned 8 and 12 core CPUs in 2010. Socket G34 has supplanted the planned G3 socket that was to replace Socket F (1207). As far as AMDs documentation goes, G3 ceased to exist in March 2008.

Socket G34 will support AMDs two new 2nd generation 45nm processors, the 8 core San Paolo, and a monster 12 core now named Magny-Cours. Both of these processors will feature four HyperTransport 3 interconnects, 12MB of L3 cache and 512KB L2 cache per core. AMDs current roadmap claims standard support will include speeds from 800 to 1600 MHz.

DailyTech.com also counted 1974 pin connects on a leaked G34 diagram, which is 767 more pins than AMD's current LGA1207 socket.

2010 is a long time away in computer terms, and anything can happen with company roadmaps. As things stand AMD will launch Shanghai and Intel will launch Nehalem by the end of this year. It doesn’t appear that Shanghai will be a serious contender with Nehalem according to leaked documents from Sun (but you never know until you have the CPUs in hand), so I am expecting status quo in 2009, but hoping for better. However, things look to get interesting in the processor wars in 2010, so we definitely have something to look forward to.

What do you think, is 2010 the year for an AMD comeback?

Image Credit: Based on image from flickr.com BAD RABBIT INC

Phenom Line Gets 3 New Additions

Chris Moody — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:44:25 -0500

AMD’s Phenom line gets some new additions with three new CPUs. The Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition which is now AMD’s fastest quad-core CPU at 2.6GHz is joined by the Phenom X4 9350e at 2.0 Ghz and the X4 9150e at 1.8 Ghz.

A few of the specs for these processors:

L1 Cache Sizes: 64K of L1 instruction and 64K of L1 data cache per core (512KB total L1 per processor)
L2 Cache Sizes: 512KB of L2 data cache per core (2MB total L2 per processor)
L3 Cache Size: 2MB (shared)
Memory Controller Frequency: Up to 1.6GHz - 2.0GHz with Dual Dynamic Power Management

There is still no support for DDR3 which was not unexpected. Look for DDR3 support when AMD goes to a 45nm process which should be at the end of this year.

The X4 9350e and X4 9150e at 65 Watts TDP are less power hungry than the X4 9950BE at 140 Watts TDP. On the technical side, the new CPUs are essentially identical, with the major differences being their rated clock speeds and associated power ratings.

HotHardware.com has already done a little overclocking with the 9950BE on a Gigabyte 790FX-chipset based motherboard. By changing the multiplier and increasing the CPU voltage to 1.45v, they were able to take it to 3.1GHz using nothing but a stock AMD cooler. They thought that higher frequencies were possible, but couldn't keep the system stable beyond 3.1GHz on stock cooling. Not too bad.

But is it good enough? AMD always competed in performance per dollar on CPUs until they snatched the performance crown temporarily on the Athlon 64 CPUs. Since Intel took that crown back many have been hoping that AMD would release something to seriously challenge Intel’s dominance. But AMD just hasn’t been able to deliver, and Intel is not letting them go back to competing on price point as they have pushed down the prices of their venerable Q6600 to around $199. It seems AMD doesn’t have a hope to beat Intel in performance with the Phenom on the current core. Many of AMD’s engineers are moving on to the 45nm Deneb desktop and Shanghai server processors. We can hope for something next year, which will help spur the competition on for another big jump in processing technology.

(Image Credit: HotHardware.com)