VR-World says that stage one results are finished and where shown off this week at SC15. This included a Heterogeneous Compute Compiler (HCC); a headless Linux driver and HSA runtime infrastructure for cluster-class, High Performance Computing (HPC); and the Heterogeneous-compute Interface for Portability (HIP) tool for porting CUDA-based applications to C++ programming.

AMD hopes the tools will drive application performance from machine learning to molecular dynamics, and from oil and gas to visual effects and computer-generated imaging.

Jim Belak, co-lead of the US Department of Energy’s Exascale Co-design Center in Extreme Materials and senior computational materials scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said that AMD’s Heterogeneous-compute Interface for Portability enables performance portability for the HPC community.

“The ability to take code that was written for one architecture and transfer it to another architecture without a negative impact on performance is extremely powerful. The work AMD is doing to produce a high-performance compiler that sits below high-level programming models enables researchers to concentrate on solving problems and publishing groundbreaking research rather than worrying about hardware-specific optimizations.”

The new AMD Boltzmann Initiative suite includes an HCC compiler for C++ development, greatly expanding the field of programmers who can leverage HSA.

The new HCC C++ compiler is a key tool in enabling developers to easily and efficiently apply the hardware resources in heterogeneous systems. The compiler offers more simplified development via single source execution, with both the CPU and GPU code in the same file.

The compiler automates the placement code that executes on both processing elements for maximum execution efficiency.

Source- http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/amd-appears-to-be-pushing-its-boltzmann-plan.html

Over the last few months both have been busy with new releases. Nvidia has its GeForce GTX 950 and GTX 980 Ti, while AMD put its first HBM-powered cards in the Radeon R9 Fury X, Fury and the super-small R9 Nano into the shops.

According to JPR, overall GPU shipments are up quarter-over-quarter – with AMD’s overall GPU shipments up 15.8 per cent. But before AMD fanboys get all excited by a surprise return to form from AMD, JPR said that that NVIDIA “had an exceptionally strong quarter”. Nvidia saw an uptick of 21.3 per cent.

The PC market as a whole increased by 7.5 per cent quarter-over-quarter but decreased 9 per cent year-over-year. Nivida’s discrete GPU shipments were up 26.3 per cent according to JPR, while AMD’s discrete GPUs spiked by 33 per cent.

AMD’s mobile GPU shipments for notebooks increased by 17 per cent, while NVIDIA had 14 per cent.

Kirk Skaugen, GM of Intel’s client computing group told the Intel Global Capital Summit that there are more than a billion PCs that are more than three years old and a third of a billion that are over five years old. People are coming back to the PC and refreshing their systems.

It used to be that people upgraded every two years or so, but in the last five years silicon has got so powerful that no one saw the need. The problem is that they still don’t and Skaugen hopes that two-in-one detachable-screen systems, will be a major growth driver.

Sales of two-in-one systems are up 150 per cent, he claimed, and are leading to people wanting to refresh their PCs up to 18 months earlier than they would have. Mini computers are another growth market.

Without the growth in two-in-ones, the laptop market in the US would have shown 4 per cent negative growth, Skaugen said. However the new forms created a one per cent growth. He thinks the new hardware that such systems are starting to carry, particularly 3D cameras are going to have people rushing back to laptops.

The big loser in all of this is going to be the tablet market. Intel had got the growth in tablets wrong, he said, and is now revising its forecasts.

“18 months ago many people thought that tablet sales were going to cross over PCs in 2014. Now we’re sure they won’t ever. Intel has taken a billion units out of our forecasts in the last year,” he said.

That is just as well because Intel never made a sustainable dent into the tablet market, but it also fulfilled our predictions that the technology never solved any problems. It was still the same toy that Microsoft had been attempting to sell without success for years and they never had a use.

Courtesy- http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/intel-says-pcs-will-make-a-comeback.html

The carrier also announced it is creating a new dedicated network core for IoT connections that can scale far beyond the ability of its existing networks with the intent to reach billions of sensors and devices.

“Continued innovation in smart cities, connected cars and wearables demonstrates that IoT is the future for how we will live and work,” said Mike Lanman, senior vice president of enterprise products at Verizon during an event held at Verizon’s San Francisco Innovation Center. He said Verizon is taking a “holistic approach” to help expand the IoT market from millions of connections to billions. The event was webcast.

Other major wireless carriers, including AT&T, are developing programs to offer a range of services to industries and cities for connecting IoT sensors to wireless networks and then to cloud services for data analysis.

At Verizon, Lanman said the company is working to lower the cost of connecting billions of existing devices that companies have used for years to Verizon’s network. Holding up a new computer chip made by Sequans Communications, an LTE chip maker, he said the chip will provide a “significant reduction in cost…that changes the game.” It will provide 4G LTE connectivity in modules connected to IoT devices to “make the wide-area network more accessible to developers.”

Also, next year Verizon will launch a new IoT core network within its LTE network to provide a “much lower cost” than with Verizon’s existing wired and wireless networks.

“The cost for an IoT module and the cost to connect will both drop dramatically,” Lanman added. “Whether you are connecting your dog or water meters and any other low-payload devices, we’ll handle it through a new IoT core.”

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/consumer-category/verizon-launches-thingspace-for-iot-development.html

Intel plans to invest up to $5.5 billion over the coming years to use its Dalan, China, facility to expand its NAND manufacturing capacity. Initial 3D NAND production is expected to commence in second-half 2016 in Dalan.

Barrons has said that with pricing pressure already present in DRAM, Intel’s move puts Micron in a state of uncertainty.

This is a little odd given that Intel and Micron are chums, but Barron’s Rajvindra Gill said that the move will reduce Chipzilla’s dependence on Micron.

More than half of output is expected to use 3D NAND in the next two to three years and Intel’s focus on the technology reduces its reliance on Micron as a supplier while transforming it into a competitor, Gill said.

Micron be the last one standing when the mergers and acquisitions the industry is seeing and be an industry also ran.

Intel’s focus on the non-volatile memory market could put the pricing and supply/demand environment under pressure.

Micron has already had difficulties setting up 3D NAND versus its peers and now has another significant challenger entering the market, Gill said.

Intel’s move to NAND places a major Micron customer at risk. While Intel noted that its relationship with Micron remains strong and that it will continue to focus on 3D Xpoint, we believe the IM Flash Agreement could be at risk.

With Intel producing more NAND on its own, it could look to lower its reliance on the joint venture.

Intel has a right to sell its portion of the joint venture to Micron. If Intel elects to do so, a closing date would be set within two years. Sales to IM Flash sales to Intel were $101 million in the third quarter, or 8 per cent of trade NAND revenue.
Courtesy-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/is-intel-trying-to-destroy-micron.html

Designed for demanding embedded needs, the processors incorporate the newest AMD 64-bit x86 CPU core (“Excavator”), plus third-generation Graphics Core Next GPU architecture, and better power management for reduced energy consumption.

AMD tells us that combined, these chips provide industry-leading graphics performance and key embedded features for next-generation designs. The SOC architecture enables simplified, small form factor board and system designs from AMD customers and a number of third party development platform providers.

What AMD brings to the party is its graphics and multimedia performance, including capability for hardware-accelerated decode of 4K video playback and support for the latest DDR4 memory.
Jim McGregor, principal analyst, TIRIAS Research said that AMDs push into x86 embedded platforms is paying off with an increasing number of customers and applications.

“There is a need for immersive graphics, high-quality visualization, and parallel computing in an increasing number of embedded applications. Across these fronts, the AMD Embedded R-Series SOC is a very compelling solution.”

Scott Aylor, corporate vice president and general manager, AMD Embedded Solutions said that his outfit’s AMD Embedded R-Series SOC is a strong match for these needs in a variety of industries including digital signage, retail signage, medical imaging, electronic gaming machines, media storage, and communications and networking.

“The platform offers a strong value proposition for this next generation of high-performance, low-power embedded designs.”

The new AMD Embedded R-Series SOCs offer 22 percent improved GPU performance when compared to the 2nd Generation AMD Embedded R-Series APU2 and a 58 percent advantage against the Intel Broadwell Core i7 when running graphics-intensive benchmarks.

AMD released some of the specs for its integrated AMD Radeon graphics including:

Up to eight compute units4 and two rendering blocks

GPU clock speeds up to 800MHz resulting in 819 GFLOPS

•DirectX 12 support

Fully HSA Enabled

The AMD Embedded R-Series SOC was architected with embedded customers in mind and includes features such as industrial temperature support, dual-channel DDR3 or DDR4 support with ECC (Error Correction Code), Secure Boot, and a broad range of processor options.

It has a configurable thermal design power (cTDP) allows designers to adjust the TDPs from 12W to 35W in 1W increments for greater flexibility.

The SOC also has a 35 percent reduced footprint when compared to the 2nd Generation AMD Embedded R-Series APU, making it an excellent choice for small form factor applications.

AMD said that the range is the first embedded processor with dual-channel 64-bit DDR4 or DDR3 with Error-Correction Code (ECC), with speeds up to DDR4-2400 and DDR3-2133, and support for 1.2V DDR4 and 1.5V/1.35V DDR3.

Its dedicated AMD Secure Processor supports secure boot with AMD Hardware Validated Boot (HVB) and initiates trusted boot environment before starting x86 cores
It has a high-performance Integrated FCH featuring PCIe Gen3 USB3.0, SATA3, SD, GPIO, SPI, I2S, I2C, and UART

The AMD Embedded R-Series SOC provides industry-leading ten-year longevity of supply. The processors support Microsoft Windows 7, Windows Embedded 7 and 8 Standard, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and AMD’s all-open Linux driver including Mentor Embedded Linux from Mentor Graphics and their Sourcery CodeBench IDE development tools.

It will be interesting to see if AMD can make up the ground it has lost on PCs and higher ticket items. Most of the company still appears to be in a holding pattern until Zen arrives.

Courtesy-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/will-amds-newest-soc-save-the-company.html

The outfit has been going through hell lately. Last month AMD ace CPU architect Jim Keller stepped away from the company after completing his work on Zen.

Rogers was one of AMD’s high-ranking technology and engineering corporate fellows, and been responsible for helping to develop the software ecosystem behind AMD’s heterogeneous computing products and the Heterogeneous System Architecture.

He was a public figure for AMD and active on the software development and evangelism side, frequently presenting the latest HSA tech and announcements for AMD at keynotes and conferences.

While he is not the only person working on the software side of HSA at AMD, Rogers’ role in its development is important. Rogers was a major contributor to the HSA Foundation, helping to initially found it in 2012. He served as the Foundation’s president until he left AMD.

It seems his defection was kept secret, and took place sometime this quarter and did not manage to leak.

According to his LinkedIn profile Phil Rogers is now Nvidia’s “Chief Software Architect – Compute Server” which is similar to what he was doing over at AMD. Nvidia is not a member of the HSA Foundation, but they are currently gearing up for the launch of the Pascal GPU family, which has some features that overlap well with Phil Rogers’ expertise.

Pascal’s NVLink CPU & GPU interconnect would allow tightly coupled heterogonous computing similar to what AMD has been working on. It makes a fair bit of sense for Nvidia to bring over a heterogeneous compute specialist makes a great deal of sense.

Rogers’ departure from AMD will have to be mentioned on the earnings call on the 15th. AMD’s Gregory Stoner will probably replace him. Stoner is AMD’s current Senior Director of Compute Solutions Technology and long-time Vice President of the HSA Foundation.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/is-amd-losing-top-scientist-to-nvidia.html

According to EETimes Paul Boudre, who claimed that SOI is already being used by Apple and Intel even though neither company is broadcasting it. SOI appears to be on track to major market penetration even while the rest of the industry is talking FinFETs.

GlobalFoundries general manager Rutger Wijburg told the SEMICON Europa 2015 that his outfit’s 22-nanometer “22FDX” SOI platform delivers FinFET-like performance but at a much lower power point and at a cost comparable to 28-nanometer planar technologies.

The 300-millimeter $250 million FD-SOI foundry here in the “Silicon Saxony” area of Germany, builds on 20 years of GlobalFoundries’ investments in Europe’s largest semiconductor fabs.

GlobalFoundries said it will extend Moore’s Law by using fully-deleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) transistors on wafers bought from Soitec.

Many had thought that if GloFlo’s FD-SOI gamble paid off then it would be a while before FinFET would have a serious rival. But Boudre’s claims suggests that SOI is already being used.

Customers like Intel and OEMs supplying fully-deleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) RF transistors to Apple proves that SOI and Soitec are past the cusp of the growth curve, destined to ramp up exponentially.

The problem for Soitec is no one is really talking about it. Chipzilla is committed to the FinFET, because it is higher performance than FD-SOI, even though it is higher power too.
Boudre said that it was supplying SOI wafers to Intel for other applications that don’t require high-performance. For instance, our wafers are very good for their silicon photonics projects.

Apple is already using SOI for several radio frequency (RF) chips in their front-ends, because they use 20-times less power. The iPhone is still using gallium arsenide (GaAs) for its power amplifier (PA) because it needs the high-power device for good connections, but for other RF front-end chips, and in fact for all the chips that they want to keep “always on,” the lower power consumption of FD-SOI is pushing the smartphone makers to Soitec, Boudre said.

SOI wafers cost three-times as much as bulk silicon but the cost per die is less because of the simplified processing steps including fewer masks.

Normally GPS chips run on 0.8 volts and consume over 20 milliamps, so they must be turned off most of the time. But when they are made with SOI wafers, they can run on 0.4 volts and consume only 1 milliamp. The mobile device to leave them on all the time and new and more accurate location sensing and new kinds of location-based applications can be developed.

What is amusing then is that Intel’s reason for going with FinFETs was that SOI wafers were too expensive but it did find a use for it.

GlobalFoundries’ Saxony fab will offer four varieties of its 22FDX process.

FDX-ulp for the mainstream and low-cost smartphone market. This will use body-biasing to beat FinFETs on power, but equal them in performance.

FDX-uhp for networking applications using analogue integration to match FinFETs while minimizing energy consumption

FDX-ull for ultra-low power required by wearables and Internet of Things applications. This will have a 1 picoamp per micron leakage

DDX-rfa for radio frequency (RF) analogue applications delivering 50 percent lower power and reduced system costs for LTE-A cellular transceivers, high-order multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) WiFi combo chips and millimeter wave radar.

Courtesy-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/ibm-and-intel-going-goflo-soi.html