AMD Buys ATI: What to Expect After the Acquisition - One Future Possibility
(Page 3 of 4 )
Okay, I've been doing a fair bit of reading about this deal, and many of the analysts get into deeper technological waters than I'm used to. So please bear with me, while I try to explain AMD's plans for the future now that it has ATI under its roof (or at least what some people think AMD is planning to do).
Let's start with a quote directly from the company's press release about the deal. "AMD aims to move beyond current technological configurations to transform processing technologies, with silicon-specific platforms that integrate microprocessors and graphics processors to address the growing need for general-purpose, media-centric, data-centric and graphic-centric performance." Obviously, the first question is, what the heck are they talking about? If some analysts are to be believed, they're talking about something we haven't seen before - something that Intel reportedly has on its drawing board, and Sun already has on the market.
I'm talking about Niagara. If you're familiar with Beowulf clusters, you'll recognize this chip design as taking the same idea to the CPU level. With a Beowulf cluster, lots of cheap computers work together to produce the kind of computing power and performance that you would expect from a really expensive supercomputer. With Niagara, instead of a big, fast core, Sun came out with a CPU that featured lots of little, stupid cores that, together, could get more done than that single core. At least for certain applications, this meant almost unheard-of speed.
So what are the implications of lots of small stupid cores? Well, one small stupid core can be designed a lot faster than one normal CPU, thanks to issues like design complexity. If you're just repeating this same quick and easy design a bunch of times for your CPU, suddenly your design cycle speeds up, so you can produce more upgraded chips in a shorter amount of time. But wait, there's more: what happens if you integrate GPU functionality into those cores?
That's not an idle question; look at that quote from the AMD press release again. Check out the part about integrating microprocessors and graphics processors. Now consider what Charlie Demerjian, an analyst with The Inquirer (the respected UK publication, not the U.S. one) has to say about it: "if you add in GPU functionality to the cores, not a GPU on the die, but integrated into the x86 pipeline, you have something that can, on a command, eat a GPU for lunch." That's not just good for gamers; that's good for everyone who uses graphics on their computers.
Next: Other Possibilities and Implications >>
More Opinions Articles
More By Terri Wells
