Author Archive
Dreaming of Dumplings 2
Posted by Nigel Dessau in 1:04 PM
Loading ...Last year I wrote about how I find that visits to Asia always challenge assumptions – my recent visit to China earlier this month reinforced that feeling.
The main reason for the trip was to participate in the China launch of our VISION Technology from AMD retail merchandising approach. Held in Beijing, it was a great opportunity to extend the idea of VISION ― talking directly to the everyday consumer about daily usage (as opposed to the gadget geeks who want to talk about technology), and in one of the fastest-growing consumer markets in the world.
The China team customized the logo and as you can see they added some Chinese characters and as ever they used the language to help bring deeper meaning to the concept of VISION. Translated (they tell me) the symbols mean “see” and “feel”.
Looks (and sounds) good to me.
Following the launch and some customer meetings, we then headed to Shanghai. This was my first visit to the city and I have to say it’s somewhere that I could live. If Beijing is like Washington, D.C. then Shanghai is more like New York. We had a great dinner downtown in an “ex-pat” area but I was not tempted by the American steakhouse ― there are some things we just do better in Texas, and steak is one of them.
While in Shanghai we visited the Shanghai Supercomputer Center. Not only do they have one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, the Dawning 4000A based on the AMD Opteron™ processor, they have a very excellent museum ― although their “historical” section includes machines I have sold during my career (a sign of age, alas).
4 of the Top 5
Elsewhere in China they are using AMD GPUs to break new records, helping make four out of the top five most powerful supercomputers in the world ones based on AMD technology.
The Tianhe-1, which is the 5th most powerful supercomputer in the world, is a very large cluster of 5120 ATI GPUs based on the RV770 architecture (the processor you will find in the higher-end ATI Radeon™ HD 4000 series of cards). Not only is this is the first petaflop GPU cluster, it is the first to break into the Top Ten list, as well as AMD’s first large-scale deployment employing ATI Stream Technology in technical applications. The system also used Intel-based x86 CPUs – which proves that we design our technology to leverage open and interoperable standards.
For the tech-heads among you, the system should be around 563.1 TFLOPS on Linpack (60% from GPUs) and will have a peak performance of 1.2 PFLOPS (80% from GPUs). The cluster’s primary workload will consist of scientific applications such as oil and gas exploration.
I really think this in an interesting example of how “balanced systems” – by which I mean those which combine CPUs and GPUs – are becoming a mainstream solution. Moreover, additional power comes from adding more GPUs and not CPUs. Something gamers already have learned.
By the way, the name “Tianhe” literally means “galaxy” (actually translates to “river in sky”), which is pretty much where the limit is for this next generation of supercomputers.
Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.
Computers Can Change the World
Posted by Nigel Dessau in 1:47 PM
I’ve always believed that at the heart of technology you can find the power to drive change. And I mean real, tangible, pick-it-up-and-feel-it change.
This year, Supercomputing ’09 (SC09), adopted a noble theme: “Computing for a Changing World.” I agree it’s important to look at the ways computing can help solve the world’s problems. But it’s equally critical to look at how technology itself is changing the world.
Case in point: former Vice President Al Gore is delivering today’s SC09 keynote. It is interesting to note that despite his Nobel prize-winning efforts, only now are we starting to really harness the power of computers to take a proactive approach to environmental change. Thanks to computers, we’re better able to detect crises before they happen, predict patterns more effectively and tackle ever-more daunting mathematical equations.
Of course, these aren’t your everyday computers. These are supercomputers. Supercomputers that can do climate modeling, weather forecasting, supernova research and measure wind patterns and atmospheric turbulence.
Wow.
Supercomputer’s like the Number 1 rated Cray’s XT5 “Jaguar” system have almost 200,000 processing cores, all harnessed to address the most challenging scientific problems on earth. And, when those cores are put to the test they don’t just help answer the questions we’ve had for years, they lend themselves to new questions. They open new doors. They incite change.
Of course AMD can’t claim all of the credit for these modern miracles. Computing ― and change ― on a scale this big includes multiple organizations, corporations and individuals. In fact, AMD is part of the Alliance for Climate Protection’s “Repower America” campaign, which is chaired by Gore. Banding together through technology and old-fashioned grass roots action we can not only react ― we can act.
If you want to get involved, go here.
Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.
An Improved Viewing Experience
Posted by Nigel Dessau in 11:01 PM
(9 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)If you are anything like me, you have likely become more than a little frustrated when trying to watch video on your desktop or notebook. Whether you were trying to stream a show live from Hulu.com, view an on-demand movie or watch direct from DVD, there is a good chance that the vast majority of you have asked yourself, “Why can’t this work better?”
Rejoice!
Today AMD is excited about Adobe’s release of a beta Adobe Flash Player 10.1 browser runtime supporting VISION Technology from AMD, providing truly outstanding video playback quality on Flash-based H.264 video. Adobe and AMD have been working closely together to optimize video playback performance of Flash Player 10.1 by taking advantage of hardware acceleration on Windows-based PCs built with AMD technology supporting ATI Stream technology.
Through the integration of AMD and Adobe’s technologies, you can expect to enjoy improved video playback performance which is designed to extend notebook battery life, and reduce CPU utilization ― meaning that the GPU is doing more of the work, which frees up the CPU for other tasks. In our labs when viewing HD video, we’ve seen CPU usage drop by as much as 30% – and that’s nothing to sneeze at!
As one of the world’s most pervasive multimedia platforms, Adobe Flash is an obvious platform to work with and we are excited to see the fruits of our labor come to you.
Flash Player 10.1 beta is available for users and developers to download now and you can actually see the impact of GPU acceleration here. Make sure you have the latest driver to enjoy the full Flash Player 10.1 experience. Go ahead and take a look and why not let us know your thoughts ― we would love to hear what you think and how you plan on using it.
Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.
PC or Mac, Everyone Can Now Enjoy Great Graphics
Posted by Nigel Dessau in 11:35 AM
There was a fair amount of buzz last month when Apple announced the new iMac computers. Particularly exciting for us is that ATI Radeon™ HD 4670 graphics are powering both the 21.5-inch and 27-inch models. We know how important graphics performance is to the Mac community, and we share that passion.
I’m excited that this gives us the opportunity to provide the feature rich graphics that help push the boundaries of gaming and visual computing to a whole new consumer base ― and one known for being fanatical about good design and top performance. I’m even more excited that we’re delivering on both fronts.
This got me thinking about what graphics mean in consumer computing today ― for gamers, or otherwise ― whether you’re a ‘Mac’ or a ‘PC’. As you know, there’s much discussion and debate about which platform is better, but ultimately most consumers want the same thing when it comes to their computer – a great visual experience, regardless of the platform or operating system.
Whether it’s immersive, interactive gaming like BioShock or basic video editing, consumers, on any platform, are interested more and more in a whole host of activities that require superior graphics. But I’m not suggesting that variety and choice are not important to consumers. In fact, the opposite is true.
I believe the world is big enough for those of us that are PCs and those of us that are Macs. I happen to be both, and I’m not alone in using either platform depending on what I’m doing.
At AMD we are dedicated to delivering the best computing and graphics experience possible, and that means not only producing the hardware to bring visual graphics to life, but also providing consumers with choice and flexibility to fit their lifestyle, wants and needs.
And we are now one step closer to realizing that goal.
Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.
Blog 77 (a time for peace)
Posted by Nigel Dessau in 10:16 AM
In my filing system this is officially known as blog77. Seems a little understated given that AMD and Intel have today signed a historic ‘peace-treaty’. I use the phrase carefully because to some extent that is what it is.
The ‘big news’ is that we are now completing AMD’s transformation from a manufacturing company to a truly fabless design, product, marketing and sales company. Our Asset Smart story has ended; and the ending is a happy one for us, our shareholders, our partners, our customers and consumers everywhere.
What has also happened is that we and Intel have agreed to do is to stop looking backwards and start looking forward. To chart a new path for the relationship between the two companies after having settled all of our outstanding antitrust and patent cross license disputes (see bottom of this blog for specifics). Notably, the agreement requires us both to be open and transparent about what business practices are prohibited. In essence, the settlement agreement – which is available in full – sets forth clear ground rules for an open, competitive microprocessor market that will benefit consumers around the world. Watch for the SEC filing for more details. Paraphrasing President Reagan, there will be ample opportunity for “trust and verification”.
Given the press and analyst meetings I have almost every day. So what does this mean to me and us.
- No more debate about our cross-license agreement with Intel and its possible impact on GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ ability to manufacture our products (or anyone else’s for that matter).
- An end in sight for those who may be understandably confused by the current AMD ‘The Product Company’ and AMD ‘The Consolidated Company’ financial reporting structure.
- No more questions about AMD’s management focus, litigation spend, or long term future as a semiconductor innovation leader.
I could go on, but you get the point.
So many of the “yes, but …” questions we face all the time just met with a burial at deep sea. What we are left with is competition based on strategy, design, marketing, sales and execution.
A level playing field; a fair fight. That’s all we ever wanted. That’s what we fought for. That’s our future.
A future, by the way, which is all about Fusion.
Business Practices Provisions Prohibit Intel From:
- 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 (Section 2.1.1.a)
- 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 (Section 2.1.1.b)
- 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 (Section 2.1.2a-b)
- 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 (Section 2.1.2.b)
- 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 (Section 2.2.2 and 2.1.2)
- 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 (Section 2.2.1)
- Withholding any benefit or threatening retaliation against anyone for their refusal to enter into a prohibited arrangement such as the ones listed above.
The Next Generation of AMD
Posted by Nigel Dessau in 11:48 AM
Would you like to learn more about our next-generation product and platform roadmap? Or see how our future CPU cores and APUs will impact the industry?
For those of you who do, tomorrow, November 11 you can watch as we discuss what the industry can expect from AMD at our annual Financial Analyst Day. Whether you are a confirmed AMD follower or someone who is new to us, this is the event to watch to learn about all things AMD and what we’re doing (and plan to do) to deliver innovation to the market.
I’ll be discussing what markets we plan to put our efforts toward in 2010, and previewing some upcoming marketing campaigns, while Rick Bergman will take a deep dive into our product and platform roadmaps, Emilio Ghilardi will review our customer momentum, and Chekib Akrout will share details about our future technology roadmap ― including plans for our next-generation CPU cores and APU development strategy. You will also hear from our new Chief Financial Officer, Thomas Seifert, and our CEO Dirk Meyer.
You can watch the Webcast starting at 8:30 a.m. PT. As always, please let me know what you think.
Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.
A New World Order
Posted by Nigel Dessau in 12:16 PM
There is a “waterfall” theory that has a well known application to car design but that is also misapplied to the PC industry. In the car world, features that first appear in high-end cars eventually become standard. You used to pay a significant amount for a CD player while now they are standard for most models; the high end cars have moved onto MP3 or satellite players.
Unfortunately, the same basic assumption about the “waterfall” effect has plagued the PC world.
For years, the conventional wisdom has been to load high-end features in the business PC, with everyday consumers eventually benefitting from those features when they became “commoditized”. You’ll recall the conversations along the lines of, “No one buys an Apple computer because you can’t run the same software on them that you run at work.” Other than for high-end gamers, the convention wisdom has been that consumers need only low- powered, low-end machines.
Clearly, the world has changed.
Video, music, pictures and other “blobs” (binary large objects) have changed the requirements for consumer PCs. Today everyday users expect superior graphics, powerful hard-drives, more memory and sometimes even faster processors than many business users. Running primarily Microsoft Office, Excel and Internet Explorer, on the other hand, has rendered business users the ones needing only lower-capability machines.
Yet, the typical business user’s workload requirement is in stark contrast to the amount that businesses generally pay for the machines their employees use. I am willing to bet that if you are reading this at work, the PC you are using costs as much as double the average PC in your local retailer ― and is likely significantly less powerful. IT departments tell you that they pay for other things like maintenance and warranties, software and support, all things you might not get on your store bought PC. And business PCs can sometimes be loaded with features that IT buys for insurance but are never used.
Many business users don’t like their work PCs because they are heavy and don’t compete with more compelling looking consumer PCs. You have to give Apple credit for a massive rethinking of PC industrial design. The PC is now a mainstream fashion and status statement (with some exceptions of course). Dell has colorful tops; HP offers sharp design.
But this is an evolving landscape. The expectations for and cost of retail PCs is going to change the way businesses think. At a Gartner conference last month I learned the name for this phenomenon: “consumerization”.
To quote a recent report from Gartner*: “The consumerization of IT focuses on how enterprises will be affected by and can take advantage of new technologies and models that originate and develop in the consumer space, rather than in the enterprise IT sector.”
Over the next few years we will likely see more and more effects from consumerization that will go beyond design to the software, networking and all other elements of our experience. Personally, I travel with an HP DV2 and would like to move to the new HP DM3. It’s great for work, and it plays music, video and other blobs.
I think I may have already been consumerized.
Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.
*source: Gartner, Inc. “Key Issues for the Consumerization of IT, 2009″, February 3, 2009
Celebrating Windows 7
Posted by Nigel Dessau in 11:09 AM
Today you can find me as a guest on Microsoft’s Windows blog. We are excited to join Microsoft in celebrating the release of Windows 7 operating system! As always, your comments are vital to the discussion so please let me know what you think about today’s blog. Enjoy.
Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.
Stream On
Posted by Nigel Dessau in 1:22 PM
I need your help to save the world from boredom and proprietary standards. Together we can prevent a future where we have to wait for media-intensive applications to finish processing. Don’t make me wait endlessly for a video to transcode from one format to another, or twiddle my thumbs waiting for the search function to find that picture of my favorite niece. OK, enough marketing ….
The AMD engineering team has posted our ATI Stream SDK v2.0 for OpenCL 1.0. Now you can have the ability to tap into the full processing performance available from multi-core CPUs and GPUs at the same time, using an industry standard language. Write it once, use the OpenCL compiler of choice from the different hardware vendors, and you are now running your app across different platforms. (Notice we’re not stuck on the single vendor, GPU or CPU-only path favored by others in our industry.)
I’m not the only one who sees the potential of open standards in this arena. Many of our technology partners do as well. Listen to David McAllister, director of open source and standards at Adobe:
“Adobe is a strong believer in industry standards; they allow developers to focus on innovation instead of platform support,” said David McAllister, director Open Source and Standards, Adobe. “The ATI Stream SDK with OpenCL is a solid implementation of a strong standard.”
And Corel:
“Corel plans to integrate OpenCL into our digital media products and we believe it will offer significant benefits to Corel, our customers and partners,” said Jeremy Liang, senior vice president of Digital Media Development, Corel. “With this new open standard, AMD will be providing drivers to take advantage of the latest CPU and GPU features which we anticipate will improve the overall performance of our digital media applications running on AMD platforms, while simultaneously reducing our development efforts in this area.”
As an industry insider, it’s obvious that the GPU (working together with the CPU) is the next frontier to help dramatically increase the performance of PC and server platforms, especially for some of the most popular applications. The YouTube and iPhone generation have made distribution and consumption of high definition media pervasive. Everyone’s a producer and consumer of moving and still images, distributing their content to their spheres of influence worldwide over the Internet, and over the home network. With OpenCL, now we have an industry standard to accelerate those applications and make them easier and faster to use.
Don’t take my word for it; you can see HP and AMD’s director of ATI Stream technology, Patti Harrell, talk more about how OpenCL influences this trend here.
My colleague, Simon Solotko, has an excellent companion blog that gives another perspective on the relationship between, OpenCL, AMD’s traditional support for industry standards, and the new ATI Stream SDK v 2.0.
So, please help us all. Take up the challenge and do something great with OpenCL. Grab the ATI Stream SDK v2.0 and leverage the power of AMD CPUs and GPUs working together to accelerate your vision.
Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.
All the Great Things are Simple
Posted by Nigel Dessau in 11:31 AM
If you’ve read my blog even a half dozen times, then no doubt you’ve heard me espouse on the three tenets of AMD’s corporate Fusion message. (I am the branding guy at AMD after all.) Fusion is about what differentiates AMD. It’s about how we:
· Integrate technology to do new things
· Collaborate intimately with our customers and business partners to help solve their problems
· Impact the market
I want to dissect that second bullet about customer and business partner intimacy. A lot of companies say they embrace it, but what does it really mean? I actually like the Wikipedia definition of customer intimacy and about how it creates a virtuous circle: the better the supplier knows the customer’s objectives and difficulties, the better able the supplier is to provide a customized solution. The more adapted the supplier’s product or service is, the happier the customer will be, and the stronger the bond is between the two parties.
AMD’s latest bonding effort comes in the form of the AMD Fusion Partner Program, launched today. At its core, the new program is about simplification. We are making it simpler to be one of AMD’s channel partners. We are simplifying channel partners groups and benefits. We are making it easier for our partners to offer AMD-on-AMD-on-AMD systems. The specifics of the new program are outlined by David Kenyon here in AMD’s worldwide channel blog.
By making it simpler for our channel partners to do business with us, we’re hoping to create closer, more effective business relationships with them. We want to work with our channel partners to better understand their customers’ needs. And by creating this level of closeness and simplifying the way we do business, we’re enabling our channel partners to form closer bonds with their customers.
Because around AMD, you won’t ever hear the phrase “Don’t take it personally – It’s just business.” For us, when it comes to our customers and our channel partners, business is personal.
Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.