Last year AMD was hemorrhaging talent. While we don't have a good indication of the extent of the talent exodus, Qualcomm seemed to benefit quite a bit from the tough times that had fallen on AMD. AMD PR mounted the beginnings of a turnaround with the announcement that Jim Keller, former K8 architect and chip-head at Apple had rejoined the company. Then came John Gustafson and last month, we got word that Raja Koduri rejoined as well - also after a multi-year stint at Apple. Today I just got word from a couple of very accurate and trusted sources that my old friend Sean Pelletier will be joining AMD as well. Sean will abandon his role as Senior Technical Marketing Manager at NVIDIA to...
AMD Releases Opteron 4200 "Valencia" and 6200 "Interlagos" Series
AMD launched Bulldozer about a month ago, but the initial CPUs were only for desktops. As a follow up, AMD has today released the server variants of Bulldozer. There...
22 by Kristian Vättö on 11/14/2011
Intel's 32 in 32 Challenge: SNB-E Giveaways
If you've read our Core i7 3960X Review, you'll know that Intel's Sandy Bridge E platform can be incredibly fast. If you want to own a 3960X system without...
15 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/14/2011
Intel Core i7 3960X (Sandy Bridge E) Review: Keeping the High End Alive
If you look carefully enough, you may notice that things are changing. It first became apparent shortly after the release of Nehalem. Intel bifurcated the performance desktop space by...
188 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/14/2011
AMD's Project Win: A Misunderstanding
Last week AMD announced layoffs that impacted 10% of its workforce. A disproportionate number of those AMDers were apparently from the marketing and PR groups, but even engineering was...
27 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/9/2011
Intel Haswell Info: Single Chip for Ultrabooks, GT3 GPU for Mobile, LGA-1150 for Desktop
VR-Zone spotted a bunch of very interesting slides about Haswell over at Chiphell. The slides and information both look fairly believable so let's get with the analyzing shall we? Haswell...
38 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/9/2011
A Quick Look at MSI's X79 Motherboards
Sandy Bridge E is right around the corner and the amount of Socket-2011 related emails we're getting is going up. The latest is from MSI - we got an...
16 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/7/2011
Some Thoughts on the Impact of AMD's Layoffs on the Future of AMD GPUs
Here's something I'm concerned about. AMD's Carrell Killebrew, part of yesterday's announced layoffs, was a Director of Product Planning for AMD's GPU division. His job, at least as he...
48 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/4/2011
AMD Implements Cost Cutting Workforce Reduction, Carrell Killebrew is Out
I had a feeling I was going to have to write a post like this after I published that Rick Bergman left AMD. Those of you who remember the...
20 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/4/2011
Bulldozer Does It Again: Overclocked to 8.58GHz
Last week, we reported that Andre Yang had managed to overclock AMD's FX-8150 CPU to 8.46GHz, breaking the former record set by AMD. Andre Yang has now been able...
45 by Kristian Vättö on 11/3/2011
Bulldozer Breaks Frequency Record Again: Overclocked to 8.46GHz
Just before the launch of Bulldozer, AMD demonstrated it at 8.43GHz, which was the world record back then. Now an overclocker named Andre Yang has achieved an overclock of...
60 by Kristian Vättö on 10/29/2011
AppliedMicro Announces 64-bit ARM Based X-Gene SoCs
AppliedMicro has released specifications of their upcoming X-Gene SoC (Server-on-a-Chip this time, not System). AppliedMicro X-Gene Specifications Architecture ARMv8 Cores From 2 to up to 128 Frequency Up to 3GHz Process TSMC 40/28nm Power Usage Up to 2W per core Above...
23 by Kristian Vättö on 10/28/2011
Details on Trinity - AMD's Next Gen APU
DonahimHaber has leaked a slide concerning AMD's next generation APU, called Trinity. The slide does not reveal any detailed specifications, it's merely an overview of Trinity. Lets begin with...
44 by Kristian Vättö on 10/25/2011
Intel Releases Core i7-2700K and Cuts the Prices of Three CPUs
Intel has quietly released a new top-of-the-line Sandy Bridge CPU: Core i7-2700K. We reported the i7-2700K "leak" about a month ago, and guessed that i7-2700K will be released around...
35 by Kristian Vättö on 10/24/2011
AMD Working on Bulldozer B3 Stepping
AMD released their highly anticipated Bulldozer CPUs last week (our review). The reception was not very warm, and a common thought was that Bulldozer didn't perform as well as...
60 by Kristian Vättö on 10/20/2011
ARM's Cortex A7: Bringing Cheaper Dual-Core & More Power Efficient High-End Devices
How do you keep increasing performance in a power constrained environment like a smartphone without decreasing battery life? You can design more efficient microarchitectures, but at some point you’ll...
77 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/19/2011
ARM & Cadence Tape Out 20nm Cortex A15 Test Chip
Although we won't see the first ARM Cortex A15 based designs until the second half of next year, and even then only on 28/32nm processes, ARM and design tools...
13 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/18/2011
The Bulldozer Review: AMD FX-8150 Tested
AMD has been trailing Intel in the x86 performance space for years now. Ever since the introduction of the first Core 2 processors in 2006, AMD hasn't been able...
427 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/12/2011
Intel Focuses on Tablets, Winds Down Digital Home Group
Intel's Digital Home Group (DHG) is responsible for the consumer electronics versions of the Atom SoC family. Last year we saw the launch of the Boxee Box and Google...
7 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 10/10/2011
Intel Releases Two Pentium and Two Core i-series CPUs
Intel has updated their product database (ARK) with four new CPUs. Two of these are branded as Pentiums: 967 and B960. The former is a low-power model with only...
13 by Kristian Vättö on 10/5/2011
Rick Bergman Resurfaces...as the CEO of Synaptics
Last week I regrettably posted that AMD's Products Group GP, Rick Bergman, had left the company for unknown reasons. Tonight I got an email from Synaptics telling me that...
4 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/28/2011