Jason Sidabras

AMD today announced the new AMD 690 series chipset. This was one chip that I forgot about in my Perfect Computer post from last time. Not sure why. Integrating the GPU with the CPU is a very interesting step.

So as most of you know, back in the day there used to be no floating point/math processor in the x86 architecture. Strangely enough the early designs of the 286 had very poor performance with math processing so an additional feature was to add a math co-processor to the mix. Eventually the demand of the co-processor and cost to make a separate card wasn’t worth it so they integrated it into the chip. Now a typical everyday Pentium 4 chip out crunches the old workstations/servers by a considerable margin. And today the demand for an addition math processor is dead. Except for the niche market of Clear Speed’s math co-processor, which will run you $14k. But if you need to improve your LINPACK stats about a gigaflop per watt, this is the way to go. (I forgot to mention last time that I would probably add one of these math co-processors on there… for good measure)

So we shoot to recently, where the trend of putting the memory controller, larger cache memory, ethernet controllers and the like onto the die is steadily increasing. Most of these components could have been considered a “co-processor” at one time.

Jump to today. What does integrating the GPU mean for you? Well my opinion is it means a few things: cheaper graphics cards from nVidia (an Intel partnership?), more efficient ATI GPU cores and as a side thought perhaps more powerful AMD number crunching cores. Because what is a GPU but a very good specialized math co-processor (check out the link to program your gpu).

The 690 chipset is compatible with AMD’s desktop processor lineup and offers several high-end features, including integrated DVI (digital visual interface) and HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) outputs for high-definition video. The chipset also includes hardware decoding for MPEG2, the video compression technology used with DVDs — which means less CPU power is required when playing DVDs on a computer.

Pretty impressive stuff. Especially for gamers and home theater users. The home theater users market is growing. Especially the DIYers. By integrating the GPU you can make smaller micro-atx motherboards with as much home theater punch as the current desktops.

In addition, laptop market should be opened up a bit but only if they can keep the chips from being a portable oven. I wonder if anyone has used the Peltier–Seebeck effect to keep your battery charged. (patent pending if they haven’t!)

Open Source should rejoice

I said it, and here is why: AMD (and somewhat Intel) has been VERY good to the open source community by opening up the majority of the specs for their chipsets. Because if they don’t, reverse engineered kernel hacks for a CPU are not pretty. If you lose the OS market, you start to lose the server market. As it currently stands nVidia has a backwards compatible nv driver for X.org but it doesn’t support accelerated graphics. You have to install a binary blob, which is a complete shame. My understanding is the current ATI support is better but not perfect.

Now enter ATI and AMD. If AMD is smart they will give full documentation for their chipsets. Now it is infinitely harder for another manufacturer to come around and build an ATI clone since it is so integrated into the chipset. No longer is there a real excuse for IP rights. Not only that but if ATI has full acceleration support on X.org guess who will have to act fast: nVidia. So some opening of the documentation should occur in both camps.

The opening up of the hardware specs should further solidify the home theater and linux market. The server market has no real use for an integrated powerful GPU, but it does have a use for continuing lower power consumption and some number crunching.

Wrap up

I think this chip combination has potential to put AMD into the market of cheap home theater boxes and maxed out gamer boxen. If AMD plays their cards right and continues to lower power consumption while increasing the clock speed, bus speed, number crunching and GPU power they have a chance of locking down a market that Intel isn’t thinking about. In addition by fully supporting the GPU and giving the proper documentation they can further lock down those markets by earning the respect of the OS community.

It seems the number crunching component of the AMD chip might already be seeing the fruits of the merger with an estimated 42% higher floating point average over the Intel 53xx series. These are big numbers that will keep AMD in the game.

In my opinion nVidia has always had the edge to ATI in GPU power and in standards compliance (OpenGL). If AMD could pick up the slack where the old ATI failed I would seriously consider their product for my workstation at work.

What do you guys think of the merger?

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