SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Just as AMD gets set to ship its long-awaited quad-core “Barcelona” processor for servers and workstations, the chipmaker laid out a roadmap for smaller computer devices that won’t see the light of day till 2009.
At a “Technology Day” here for analysts at its Silicon Valley headquarters,
AMD laid out its product road map ranging from handheld and desktop systems to high-end servers.
“Bobcat” and “Bulldozer” are codenames for computer “cores” AMD is
developing as part of its “Fusion” project. Fusion integrates AMD’s
processor technology with the graphics chips technology it now owns as a
result of last year’s acquisition of ATI.
Bobcat is a very low power consumption technology designed for low-end
devices, including handheld computers, phones and ultra-mobile PCs. AMD also
discussed Bobcat’s potential use in future DTV
televisions that incorporate Internet connectivity, and Web browsers.
AMD chief technology officer Phil Hester said Bobcat is a
system-on-a-chip
many different kinds of devices. “We have a lot of IP (intellectual
property) around it,” said Hester. “We could do an ultramobile PC. There’s
going to be a convergence of access devices.”
In May, Intel discussed “Silverthone”, a SoC also designed for small devices. By 2010, Intel CEO Paul
Otellini said he expects the Silverthorne chip would be one-ninth the size
of current chips and use one-twentieth the power.
He also predicted that new markets for mobile Internet devices, consumer
electronics and ultra low-cost PCs, would be worth $10 billion each by 2011,
and that these would be entirely new markets that don’t exist today.
Analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group said AMD is smart to invest in
the mobile device market and will be helped immensely by technology it
acquired in its acquisition of ATI.
“Small form factors like the iPhone are the big thing. Apple woke the
hell out of the industry and now everyone is focused on it,” Enderle told
internetnews.com.
Enderle said AMD is in a transition to new technology and it’s important
for the company to reveal more of its game plan going forward. “Barcelona
will help AMD stop the market share it’s been losing to Intel on the server
side,” he said. “Intel’s running pretty fast now, AMD can’t catch it from
behind, but with technology like Bobcat it can come at Intel from a
different angle.”
Bulldozer is a next generation core for future AMD-powered small
computers as well as desktops and servers. “Bulldozer is designed to be the
highest performing single and multi-threaded core in the industry,” said
Hester.
At last year’s Technology Day, AMD discussed several forthcoming
technologies, such as Barcelona, including two that weren’t mentioned
today – Raiden and Torrenza. Raiden
is thin client technology; Torrenza
opens up AMD processors to specialized co-processors to enhance performance
(such as a Java co-processor) that could be developed by other companies.
AMD’s VP and chief sales and marketing officer, Henri Richard, told
internetnews.com that both projects were alive and well. “We have
more Torrenza devices than a year ago. We just didn’t want to repeat too
much of what was said last year.”
