To that end, the chipmaker is launching HD3D, an answer to NVidia’s 3D Vision technology that takes an open approach to software and hardware support. AMD already supports 3D in some of its graphics cards, but HD3D is more of a philosophy for how AMD will treat the technology. And for the most part, that philosophy comes down to the kind of glasses you’ll use.

NVidia is firmly backing active shutter glasses — the battery-powered specs that shift between your left and right eyes to create the 3D effect — and the only glasses you can get for 3D Vision are made by NVidia. AMD graphics cards will support all kinds of 3D, including passive polarized and eventually glasses-free displays, and it has no plans to produce its own eyewear. That job will go out to third-parties for consumers to choose on their own.

Suddenly, Oakley’s recent announcement of high-end polarized 3D glasses seems clearer.  At an AMD press event in Los Angeles last week, Oakley Chief Executive Colin Baden showed off the glasses’ high-wrap lenses and three-point fit. With AMD, Oakley will have a bigger market for home use.

Passive 3D requires a different kind of monitor than active shutter, and AMD already pledges to support passive displays from Zalmon Trimon and iZ3D, with more to come. It’s not clear whether AMD will support existing 3D monitors, such as those from Samsung and Acer, but probably not, because they’re intended for use with Nvidia 3D Vision glasses. Most 3D televisions, all of which use active shutter, should work fine using their own proprietary eyewear.

Software makers also professed their love for AMD’s open approach at the recent press event. DDD, for instance, will offer discounts on its TriDef software, which converts 2D games, photos and videos into 3D. Technically, TriDef works with NVidia graphics cards, but with Nvidia pushing its own conversion with 3D Vision, DDD doesn’t have much traction. TriDef supports active and passive 3D, and has already appeared in a couple of AMD 3D laptops.

To tie this whole ordeal together, AMD plans to launch a website at AMD.com/HD3D. It’ll serve as a resource for setting up a home 3D gaming rig, with a list of supported products and the aforementioned discounts from AMD’s partners.

The details on HD3D coincide with the launch of AMD’s Radeon HD 6800 series graphics cards. They’ll be the company’s first to support 3D Blu-ray decoding, and they’re step ahead of NVidia with HDMI 1.4a hardware support for television connections. NVidia’s cards require intermediate 3DTV Play software, as seen Dell’s new XPS laptops.

Laptops, of course, won’t have the same do-it-yourself approach as desktops with AMD graphics cards. Down the line, expect more 3D laptop bundles like the ones we’ve already seen.

MUSE. For several years, HP has been into industrial design that strives to be eye-catching rather than typical-PC bland and generic–especially laptops with unusual textures, finishes, and materials. This HP look has spread to most of the new models, and the company has come up with an acronym to describe it and other design philosophies: MUSE, which stands for Materials, Usability, Sensory Appeal, and Experience. I have to admit that I don’t immediately gravitate to some of the techniques the company is using, like engraving cases with intricate patterns. But I give ‘em credit for being experimental, avoiding beige-box syndrome, and attempting to come with a design aesthetic that’s recognizably HP.

New Envys. Envy started out in 2008 as a single high-end notebook from HP subsidiary Voodoo PC. Then that model went away and a couple of HP-branded Envys showed up–slick machines that clearly aimed at would-be Apple buyers (and which started at $1699–higher than comparable Apple models.) For 2010, HP is starting over again, which two all-new models and prices that start at a not-so-daunting $999.99.

Last year’s Envys looked a bit–no, make that a lot–like MacBook Pros. The new models are still pretty Apple-sesque, as any laptop in a metal case with a screen framed in black, a black backlit keyboard, and a touchpad with integrated buttons would be. Overall, though, they’ve got a more distinct visual personality–in large part because they now sport cases with a texture to them.

Oh, and the new models have built-in optical drives, which gets away a bit from earlier Envys’ emphasis on thin-and-light design. But HP says prospective Envy customers value power over mobility.

Speaking of power-vs.-mobility, the smallest Envy is going away, and the high end of the line is getting bigger. The 2009 Envys came in 13″ and 15″ versions. For 2010, Envys are available in 14.5″ (starting at $999.99) and 17″ (starting at $1399.99) variants. (Last year’s 13″ one has been discontinued, but the 15″ one is still around in its old form for now.) The 14.5″ screen is a new size that looks like a nice compromise if you find 14″ a tad small and 15″ notebooks too big.

The Envy 14 is available with Intel i3, i5, and i7 CPUs and goes on sale on June 27th; the Envy 17 has i5 and i7 ones and will be available May 19th.

Fancier Pavilions. The Pavilion line remains HP’s meat-and-potatoes mainstream line of consumer laptops, available in a bunch of sizes and designs. The new flagship model is the dm4, a 14″ model that starts at $729.99. It feels like a fairly close cousin of the Envys–it has an aluminum case, an i5 CPU, and a one-piece touchpad–in a lighter package (4.4 pounds vs. 5.25 pounds for the 14.5″ Envy). The dm4 and other Pavilions include Dolby Advanced Audio, a technology that does a surprisingly effective  job of simulating surround sound over the built-in speakers and (especially) headphones.

The dm4 goes on sale May 19th.

More AMD. HP has long offered a broader line of computers with AMD CPUs than most major PC companies, but the 2010 line is especially generous. The Envy line is all-Intel, but HP introduced 14 AMD models, including Pavilions and business-oriented ProBooks.

Netbooks. This round of HP introductions doesn’t involve any major netbook-related developments. Actually, the big news involves Mini netbooks that feel even more like fashion toys, such as a “Preppy Pink” model with a customized Windows interface with butterflies that flutter over your desktop.

I asked an HP executive whether the company was seeing demand for netbooks die down. Nope, he said–sales are still excellent and the company is still committed to its Mini lineup.

Touch. I didn’t ask HP about the status of its slate PC (they wouldn’t have told me anything, and come to think about it, rumors of it being dead before arrival hadn’t yet cropped up when I met with the company). But the company did show one touch-enabled Windows 7 model–the Pavilion dv6 is now available with an optional touchscreen. It remains a traditional laptop with a touch option rather than a new type of device. (Unlike convertible systems, it doesn’t have a screen that flips around into tablet orientation.)

I’ve met with several companies that have released standard laptops with touch displays, but I’ve yet to talk to one that seems actively excited by the idea. Including HP–I spoke with an executive who said the touch dv6 exists mostly because a subset of customers is interested.

One final thought: With all these new models, HP’s emphasis on design, and the overhaul of the Envy line, it’s time for me to get to work on an update to my ongoing series of PC-vs.-Mac comparisons…

Here’s Intel’s response to the suit, in which it says it was on the verge of a settlement with the FTC, and that it’s the victim of a rush to judgment.

I don’t know enough about the backstory to have an opinion of the specifics of the FTC’s charges, and I like free markets more than government interference, but this I know: Consumers benefit when there are multiple healthy competitors in a category. If PC manufacturers make technology decisions based primarily on fear of Intel–which is what the FTC claims–it’s not good for anybody except Intel.

The agreement doesn’t end legal action against Intel by government officials, such as the EU’s $1.45 billion fine for abusive business practices (which Intel is appealing) or New York State’s recently-filed lawsuit.

For consumers, the major question about the settlement is pretty simple: Does it increase the likelihood of healthy competition between Intel and AMD, thereby driving greater chip innovation and lower prices so that we get the most PC possible for our money? We’ll see. But it’s fascinating to look at what Intel has agreed to refrain from doing, as reported by Cnet:

• Offering inducements to customers in exchange for their agreement to buy all of their microprocessor needs from Intel, whether on a geographic, market segment, or any other basis

• Offering inducements to customers in exchange for their agreement to limit or delay their purchase of microprocessors from AMD, whether on a geographic, market segment, or any other basis

• Offering inducements to customers in exchange for their agreement to limit their engagement with AMD or their promotion or distribution of products containing AMD microprocessors, whether on a geographic, channel, market segment, or any other basis

• Offering inducements to customers in exchange for their agreement to abstain from or delay their participation in AMD product launches, announcements, advertising, or other promotional activities

• Offering inducements to customers or others to delay or forebear in the development or release of computer systems or platforms containing AMD microprocessors, whether on a geographic, market segment, or any other basis

• Offering inducements to retailers or distributors to limit or delay their purchase or distribution of computer systems or platforms containing AMD microprocessors, whether on a geographic, market segment, or any other basis

• Withholding any benefit or threatening retaliation against anyone for their refusal to enter into a prohibited arrangement such as the ones listed above.

Basically, Intel’s agreeing not to take actions that would shut AMD out of dealing with major PC companies entirely, or hobble it so severely that it might as well be shut out. Sounds good to me. I wanna have the opportunity to choose between PCs based on a variety of processors from multiple companies.

Ultimately, AMD has always fared best when its portfolio of chips has been at its strongest in comparison to Intel’s offerings. Today’s agreement won’t have any immediate effect on its product lineup, of course. But if it increases the chances that a great AMD chip will get a great response from the industry, it would be…great.

Now AMD is making a dramatic bid to simplify branding of its CPUs down to the bare essentials. In fact, rather than emphasizing specific CPUs at all, it will focus on three levels of performance:

PCs with Vision technology are basic machines designed for Web browsing, music listening, and the like. Ones with Vision Premium are potent enough to handle video and audio conversion well, as well as gaming. And Vision Ultimate indicates that a PC is well suited to video recording, audio editing, advanced photo editing, and the like.

Beyond the fancy stickers, there are two simple ideas here: AMD is emphasizing media applications (which makes sense, since video and audio-related performance is the main reason to worry about what chip you get at all) and is giving consumers the classic choice between good, better, and best. (However, it plans to introduce Vision Black, a sort of “bester” designation aimed at gamers and enthusiasts, early next year.)

Intel, meanwhile, is trying to simplify performance comparisons, too–but its menu of choices is broader and more complicated, and it’s not always easy to figure out how everything relates. Which brings up an issue with Vision that’s out of AMD’s control: The most important CPU comparisons are those you make between processors from competing companies, and it isn’t obvious how the three Vision options map to Intel’s chip family.

I’m sure that serious tech enthusiasts will squawk that AMD is dumbing things down too much (and the company does say that it’ll use more traditional, meaty technical facts to market its chips and technology for that crowd). But when I think about how I buy PCs these days, the Vision distinctions would probably do the trick. There was a time when I dithered over whether I needed a CPU with a math coprocessor, and got excited over stuff like MMX extensions. Today, I mostly want a general idea of whether the processor will be potent enough for the tasks I’m likely to throw at it. And once I’ve plunked down my money for a computer, I tend to forget what’s inside.

How much time do you spend thinking about CPUs these days?

Got nominations for other companies you'd like answers from? Let me know--I'm lining up subjects for future installments.]

Fernando Garcia asks:

I have always asked the following question. Why is it that AMD will not step up advertising? A good 70% of the consumer public,still does not know what AMD is. I used to work for Best Buy and on the average day, one out of eight persons I would speak to knew what AMD was. Whenever I asked a customer  about processors automatically they would say Intel.

Pat answers:

Simply taking out more advertising does not guarantee a product’s success. I think the best way to answer that is AMD chooses to focus differently. We first focus on making our customers and their channel partners successful by investing in them, not leveraging off their brandsby sandwiching them between AMD logos. We want to invest in our customers’ success. For those people who are specifically focused on the “processor,” we have very high awareness and market directly to end user groups. These include but are not limited to enthusiasts, gamers, DIYers, Fortune 1000 and government decision makers, etc.

Ron Harris asks:

Does or will AMD offer a chipset for the competition’s Core i7 processors?

Pat answers:

We offer ATI Radeon HD GPUs for the Core i7 but not chipsets.

Justin Abrantes asks:

Why did AMD decided to manufacture quad cores under the name of Athlon? The same way with dual-core Phenoms–will that be more confusing for non-AMD users?

Pat answers:

We did this to simplify, not confuse. AMD Phenom processors generally have more features than AMD Athlon processors. So generally, Phenom>Athlon. X2, X3, and X4 just indicate the CPU core count.

Bill Pytlovany asks:

What’s the status of the new GlobalFoundries’ chip fab plant planned to be built in upstate (Malta) NY?

Pat answers:

I have an inquiry into GF folks, but in the meantime here are the most recent details. Our understanding is that GP plans to break ground this summer on a new 4.2B plant in Malta, NY, with production scheduled for 2012.  It’s too early to specify exactly what products will be manufactured there but we understand it will be a mix of AMD and non-AMD products.  Of course, since AMD and GF are separate companies, we recommend you contact GF directly for further information.

Toby Hudon asks:

Where’s the 4770X2? Any chance of a sub-9″ board for one to fit in those cramped HTPC cases?

Pat answers:

A dual ASIC board utilizing the ATI Radeon HD 4770 chip is a great concept idea. This would be up to our partners to bring to market. I would suggest a single GPU solution for an HTPC to help minimize heat and power and maximize performance per watt.

Toby also asks:

Where’s OpenCL? Nvidia has some kind of super secret beta developer club you can try and beg your way into, but AMD is silent even though they were showing demos on CPUs and Havok on GPUs at shows already. When can we get a compiler and libraries?

Pat answers:

AMD has been and continues to be a leader in adopting and supporting open standards, OpenCL is a very important open standard that we are heavily invested in and expect to have more details available publically shortly

Cliff Forster asks:

AMD has recently reported a gain in market share. To what would you mostly attribute this positive upswing? Social Media strategy paying off? Perhaps the Intel EU press was very damaging to big blue? Recognition of the true dollar for dollar value position in a weak economy? Specific innovations that have improved AMD’s product offering? If you had to pick something specific that is propelling the increase in share, what would you say it is, and how do you continue to ride this positive trend?

Pat answers:

We are in a quiet period and cannot specifically comment on market share, unfortunately. But we can restate that we believe AMD platforms offer maximum value at every price point.

JustCallMeBen asks:

What’s going to happen to Hybrid-CrossFireX? As a gamer caring about the environment (AND my energy bill), I would very much like to use a high-end card like the HD4890 in combination with an Intrgrated Graphics Processor. This way the discrete chip is only used for games while the IGP does the typical desktop usage, thus saving power. Regrettably Hybrid-CrossFireX is currently only available for a limited number of HD3xxx chips. Are there plans to renew the technology?

Pat answers:

AMD has led the market with innovative features like ATI Hybrid CrossFireX technology. Again, we’re in quiet period and can’t comment on specific plans, but innovating platform level features remains an AMD priority.

Mark Davis asks:

In the last 2 years I believe Intel has adopted a ‘Tick-Tock’ engineering schedule, in one time frame putting out a new product, then in another a refresh and then back to a new product. What kind of engineering schedule does AMD follow? And are we most likely to see a new micro-architecture for Bulldozer?

Pat answers:

AMD and Intel have similar engineering schedules; it’s natural given the competitive environment. AMD is near fully ramped on 45nm process, roughly around the same time as Intel got fully ramped. So it is a misconception to think Intel is years ahead of AMD in terms of manufacturing technologies. Our technology partner GlobalFoundries has indicated that it will shortly breaking ground on a state-of-the-art 20nm fab facility in New York State. When this facility is finished some time in 2012, it is expected to be the most technologically advanced manufacturing facility in the world.

Mark also asks:

Why does it seem like ATI’s game developer relations are so lackluster compared to Nvidia’s? For example on most game boxes I see n Nvidia The Way It’s Meant to Be Played ad versus an AMD ad. Are there any plans to change this?

Pat answers:

Let’s avoid confusing Developer Relations with marketing. TWIMTBP is a marketing/co-marketing program that negotiates game asset usage and NV logo placement; AMD has a program like this as well but it has not as big a focus for AMD as TWIMTBP seems to be for Nvidia. Check out Battleforge for example. As for Dev Relations, this is an engineering relationship between the dev and our engineers to optimize new games to help achieve the best customer experience. We are highly invested in this program with a very wide breadth of game and application developers.

Stilgar asks:

I would like to know what processors AMD is working on that are not targeted at desktops/laptops? Do they have a response for the Atom? What about cell phone CPUs/GPUs?

Pat answers:

We are constantly analyzing new potential markets. For example, along with our technology partner HP, AMD helped create the “Ultrathin” mobile market with the introduction of the HP Pavilion dv2. We have no plans to specifically target the mobile phone market. Our roadmaps target server, notebook and desktop platforms are available in myriad form factors. And of course, the top two selling game consoles in the world are powered by AMD graphics processors, so the console market is important to AMD.

Wayne Smith asks:

Recently I had to replace my processor (Athlon dual core 64 5200+) which was rated at 2.6-GHhz with 1024MB L2 cache. The replacement processor (same 5200+) is rated at 2.7-GHz with 512 L2 Cache. Is there any difference in performance between the two processors?

Pat answers:

The AMD Athlon X2 5200 processor comes with 2MB total cache (1MB per core) or 1MB total cache (512KB per core). There is no meaningful performance difference.

George asks:

I am a longtime AMD fan and I have not bought a computer if it did not have an AMD CPU in it. Of course now I build my own still using AMD and I just was thinking that when you went from single core to dual-core and also again from 32-bit to 64-bit, that the experts thought that the performance might nearly double but that was never the case. It seems to me that you come out with CPUs that have the bare minimum number of pins to support the technology while Intel seems to be a hundred or more pin counts ahead of you. With that said, how does the pin count affect the efficiency of the CPU? And have you considered significantly adding the number of pins, since you did not when you converted from single core to multi-core?

Pat answers:

Pincount is related to the system architecture the processor supports. With AMD processors, the evolution from single channel memory support with Socket 754 to dual channel 939 support was the major pincount increment, Subsequently, the migration from DDR to DDR2 and now DDR3 are associated with changes in pin assignments as our processors feature an integrated memory controller. These are the main drivers of changes in pin count and socket configuration over time. Pin count does not have a direct bearing on CPU frequency, but AMD continues to refine our socket and our architecture to deliver optimal performance.

]]> http://technologizer.com/2009/07/07/your-questions-amds-answers/feed/ 2 patrickmoorhead Technologizer;s Q&A http://technologizer.com/2009/06/09/last-call-got-any-questions-for-amd/ http://technologizer.com/2009/06/09/last-call-got-any-questions-for-amd/#comments Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:14:57 +0000 Harry McCracken http://technologizer.com/?p=12993 ]]> Technologizer is launching a series in which we’ll let readers pose questions to tech companies, and AMD was nice enough to volunteer to be the first organization to field your queries. Got any questions about the company, its products, the chip industry, or tech in general? Ask away in comments on this post by the end of day on Wednesday. Then look for AMD’s answers soon.

]]> http://technologizer.com/2009/06/09/last-call-got-any-questions-for-amd/feed/ 7 Harry McCracken AMD Logo