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It's Official — AMD Will Retire the ATI Brand
J. Dzhugashvili writes "A little over four years have passed since AMD purchased ATI. In May of last year, AMD took the remains of the Canadian graphics company and melded them into a monolithic products group, which combined processors, graphics, and platforms. Now, AMD is about to take the next step: kill the ATI brand altogether. The company has officially announced the move, saying it plans to label its next generation of graphics cards 'AMD Radeon' and 'AMD FirePro,' with new logos to match. The move has a lot to do with the incoming arrival of products like Ontario and Llano, which will combine AMD processing and graphics in single slabs of silicon."
Good. Getting rid of the PCI-e bus between CPU and GPU is one important step in getting massive parallelism to work well.
Since we hit the 3 GHz barrier, where the speed of light itself becomes a limit, putting the processing elements physically closer is essential to get better performance. Now let's see them put 4 GB or so of fast RAM on the same chip.
Are there any deeper changes to come behind the re-brand? ATi involved in producing open source drivers ans specs for their GPU. Will this name change carry some bad news about the current openness?
Léa Gris
I assume there's going to be an AMD Radeon sticker next to the Intel Inside sticker. I can't wait to sort out the confused people around me thinking there are two physical CPUs, one from each manufacturer, in that computer. In addition to consolidating its brand presence,I suppose they think this will reduce confusion when IMHO it will create more confusion for a while.
..can they retire that too? please?
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
They can give the AMD brand a big boost by associating it directly with the graphics cards - and it will probably mean that people buying an AMD graphics card will be more likely to buy an AMD processor to go with it.
My Journal
AMD is actually a much older brand than ATI.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
In May of last year, AMD took the remains of the Canadian graphics company and melded them into a monolithic products group, which combined processors, graphics, and platforms. Now, AMD is about to take the next step: kill the ATI brand altogether.
Oh, please, J. Dzhugashvili, don't hold back. Tell us how you REALLY feel. What'd the rejected original form of this summary look like?
In May of last year, the poor, innocent Canadian angels of technology, ATI, had their very remains tortured and raped by the evil, evil AMD, cruelly melded into a hideous abomination of a monolithic products group, creating an unholy, soulless combination of processors, graphics, and platforms. Now, the faceless anti-christ forces of AMD plan to take the next step in their plans to destroy all that is good in the world: Slaughter the angelic ATI brand altogether, laughing with sadistic glee as it begs for mercy in a futile appeal to the quickly-evaporating last shreds of AMD's humanity and compassion, ATI having never having harmed a fly in its too-short, sad, sad life.
because it states "The badges you see above will be used for systems with discrete Radeon and FirePro graphics cards. The lower row omits the AMD logo, so PC makers shipping Intel-based systems will be able to avoid the oil-and-water combo of Intel and AMD branding, if they wish."
ATI was the oldest surviving video card brand. :(
FTFY
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
But propagation speed is a signficant fraction of C. (66 to 96 percent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_electricity ) Admittedly you've got a point, they've already gotten past 3GHZ. (I'm just wondering how much faster they can get before signal speed is actually the limiting factor.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Funny how fast intel seemed to have dumped that "Completely annihilated by AMD using less than half of our R&D budget" badge that they were wearing for a couple of years after the Athlon64 was released.
nVidia's drivers suck pretty bad too. The real problem is that the high-end graphics card companies will prioritize "getting a couple of extra FPS in a benchmark" over "not crashing all the goddamn time"
At least the Linux open-source drivers tend to be stable, when a card finally gets supported (a generation late, at least).
For some definitions of the word "surviving"... :-/
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
...AMD's prepping for their integrated CPU/GPU launch. ...
I would image that better Linux drivers might come down the pipeline, though...they'd definitely loose out on a potential market if they completely ignored the issue.
I'd go one step further and say that I think that AMD has an opportunity to highlight their hardware here.
Intel's CPUs and integrated graphics have long had great support in the Linux kernel. Because Intel controls the tech, they can actually provide the correct and full source for the graphics drivers. The problem is that Intel integrated graphics aren't ever anything special.
If AMD is seriously working on integrating their graphics cards and processors -- perhaps even onto the same die -- then they have an opportunity to provide a much more powerful, integrated hardware platform with fully-open drivers. Intel can't compete with that kind of setup, especially as NVidea appears to have an aversion to opening the source to their graphics card drivers.
coding is life
I think ATI was a more reputable brand than AMD that has to carry Defeated-by-Intel badge for years.
I think that ATI is one of the least reputable brands in PC hardware, every single ATI 3d accelerator I've ever owned has caused me some kind of problem. Retiring the ATI brand won't fool any geeks but it will fool the people they told to never buy ATI.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is hardly their worst offense, but how did the Bush Justice Department ever let AMD buy ATI to begin with? Are we really OK when there are only two major manufacturers of processors and graphics hardware?
I guess the answer is "for the same reason they're about to let United Airlines and Continental Airlines merge".
Don't they realize that every time one of these mergers happens, the end result is that Goldman Sachs makes a ton of cash, a handful of execs make a ton of cash, and a whole lot of manufacturing workers are thrown off the back of the train? Then they act like they don't understand why there are market "inefficiencies" and manufacturing is fleeing the US (and Canada). And ultimately consumers suffer, too.
Oh, and yes, the Justice Department does have jurisdiction when a US company buys a Canadian company (or vice versa).
You are welcome on my lawn.
My laptop with a GeForce 310M does it just fine. Pushes out 1080p, too.
Intel has been running a smaller 32nm process/die size in order to beat AMD in performance and only a few of those 32nm chips designs have achieved price/performance parity while the rest are grossly below the curve.
AMD is about to put its own 32nm process into production chips, so at the very least the very top end will not be Intel-only land anymore. The only question is whether or not AMD's new chips will continue the long standing trend of spanking Intel on the price/performance metric ("defeated-by-intel" indeed... shut up fanboy)
"His name was James Damore."
It's interesting that the Radeon brand, or series at least, has outlived it's creator. Who will be there to give away Radeon to it's new life partner?
Something old (AMD), Something new (Radeon), Something borrowed (x86 architecture), Something blue (Intel?)
moox. for a new generation.
I bought an nVidia 7200 in my laptop and have it explode out of warranty. No way was I going to buy another nVidia.
Considering there aren't fiber optics inside the silicon, the speed of light shouldn't be relative. It's the speed of electricity, which is much different/slower than the speed of light. Unless I'm missing something? Please correct this if I'm wrong.
Proverbs 21:19 It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and an angry woman.
AMD was founded 16 years before ATI and was producing branded processors before ATI existed.
Without the red ATI logo, will they continue to use red as the brand color of their graphics products? Or, will people now be choosing between AMD green and Nvidia green? It may sound superficial (because, by definition, it is), but rival groups always seem to have different colors. It makes for a nice mental distinction when looking at their products. My only guess is that it will probably look like the "AMD Vision" logo or might even be an extension of that branding.
With all the driver trouble, I was beginning to think ATI stood for Always Trapping IRQLs
Am I the only one who misses the Voodoo cards?
Matrox is older.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
me, none of the people in my community, noone i have made buy ati cards had any problem with their drivers. this includes all activities ranging from playing crysis by dx10 hacking it on an xp machine to watching movies.
excuse me, but your 'obscure rare driver problem on an obscure rare operating system' doesnt interest the world. such problems will always be there.
Read radical news here
you are in the minority. i have been playing all the games that came out in the last 2 years with ati cards, even using newly released drivers, and i didnt have any kind of problems with anything from crysis to mass effect 2 or obscure random games. and says 'actually offered no working driver on any os but vista' ...
you are either shitting us, or a nvidia shill. both are pretty annoying.
Read radical news here
random obscure driver issue on random obscure linux distro #123415 working on random device setup #3121646, unfortunately, doesnt interest the world. as much as i support open source and linux, unfortunately, it doesnt. it is reality, and noone has the right to brand any kind of device or manufacturer failure, just because they werent able to get their rare setup working. and linux graphics, is a rare setup. whether we like it or not, the graphics, multimedia related dominance is with ms osses.
you cannot blame any company for not taking the extra budget to make some minority obscure platform users happy. unfortunately capitalism doesnt work that way. either you make your platform dominant, or, you shut up.
Read radical news here
The name AMD always meant "second rate to Intel" to myself and every one else I know,
unfortunately yes, as intel was bribing computer manufacturers worldwide. they got fined for it in the end in asia, usa, however.
Read radical news here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER7
IBM settled around 4.25 Ghz now. Their original promise (which seems to be very expensive) is around 5+ Ghz speeds.
Don't get me wrong, that is a high end/enterprise UNIX server chip, I don't say Apple should be shipping POWER7 now.
If they just... took consumer desktop&portable CPU business serious...
ATI the oldest surviving brand? What about Matrox? From Wikipedia:
"Matrox's first graphics card product was the ALT-256 for S-100 bus computers, released in 1978."
Matrox is (as ATI was) a Canadian company founded in 1976, but it never went public (still privately held). ATI was founded in 1985. But, unlike ATI, Matrox is still around, and still a surviving company, as well as a brand.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
My nVidia GT240 offers this feature. Note that this is the mid-range card from nVidia's previous generation, so I'm going to say you're wrong.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Just put an ATI-branded Radeon 5870 in a new rig last week.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
I just fixed a verb tense, I didn't make the claim.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Not only that, but they value getting it shipped, vs getting the driver right.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
The lines between CPU and GPU will blur.
But with the GPU on the CPU die, does this mean the gap between an "Office and Facebook" PC and a gaming PC will narrow or widen?
random obscure driver issue on random obscure linux distro #123415 working on random device setup #3121646, unfortunately, doesnt interest the world.
So if I use a non-obscure desktop Linux distro such as Ubuntu, how do I choose non-random devices to get it to work?
tel has been running a smaller 32nm process/die size in order to beat AMD in performance
Afaict all of intels desktop quad core chips are still on 45nm and are still beating the hell out of AMDs chips in indivdual core performance..
The AMD 6 core may be interesting for some niches but for desktop use performance in single threaded tasks is still very important.
Interestingly when intel stepped down the process size it didn't impact thier performance per core much it just let them cram an extra couple of cores in the same thermal envolope.
only a few of those 32nm chips designs have achieved price/performance parity while the rest are grossly below the curve.
So what?
Intel can charge a little more for equivalent chips because they have better band recognition. They can charge a shitload for thier best chips because those chips have no real competition (the only other way to get a PC with that kind of performance is to go dual socket and that can get expensive fast plus dual socket boxes tend to be noisy).
What matters for AMDs future is how much profit they (and globalfoundries) can make on each chip and whether that profit is sufficiant to fund continuing development and keep their performance in the same ballpark as intel. Having to sell their best processors at a third of the price intel sells their best processors for isn't exactly going to be good for the bottom line.
AMD is about to put its own 32nm process into production chips, so at the very least the very top end will not be Intel-only land anymore.
IMO that really depends if AMD can push up single threaded performace (either by raising clockspeeds or by improving instructions per clock) as part of that transition or not. If not they will continue to lose badly on desktop tests.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
* My [Nvidia/ATI] anecdote trumps your [Nvidia/ATI] anecdote. You are stupid for buying their products.
* [Nvidia/ATI] has terrible drivers. You are stupid for buying their products.
* [Nvidia/ATI] produced hardware with a design flaw 25 generations ago. I will never buy their hardware again.
* Based on my comprehensive study of one graphics card, here is my 100% accurate assessment of the failure rate of every graphics card [Nvidia/ATI] produces. I will never buy their hardware again.
* Here's an opinion I formed more than ten years ago. Presumably it's still relevant because technology moves so incredibly slowly. You are stupid for buying [Nvidia/ATI]'s products.
Afaict all of intels desktop quad core chips are still on 45nm and are still beating the hell out of AMDs chips in indivdual core performance..
Umm, no.
..but you can get more clocks for the same price from AMD, so much so that (for instance) the $166 3.4ghz Phenom II x4 965 performs about as well as a the $269 2.83ghz Core2 x4 Q9550 .. thats more than $100 cheaper for the same basic performance with the same number of cores.
The i3's, i5's, and i7's are 32nm. All those 45nm Core2 products do not compete with latest Phenom II's performance based on the only metric I know of to compare them by (which is price.)
Which metric other that price do you suggest to compare performance numbers?
A lot of people like to throw around that clock-for-clock, Intel's Core2 is better than AMD's Phenom II, and they are right..
Yes AMD's 6 cores are "interesting", but its a red herring. On equal 4-core comparisons, AMD still handily beats Intel on performance per dollar.. the only metric I know of to compare performance numbers against.
"His name was James Damore."
Ah, but this is why Intel has so many CPU variations.
They have a couple nearly price/performance competitive chips because they *do* compete on actual performance/dollar numbers to a larger degree than you suggest, while all those other craptastic ripoffs are sold to the brand-idol segment.
If Intel could trump AMD on price/performance in even one price segment.. they would.. but they apparently can't. I would suggest that the current crop of chips that are nearly competitive in price/performance are already being sold at a loss.
"His name was James Damore."
Sample of one? http://hplies.com/ http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&docname=c01087277 http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2377 http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1215037160521.html http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/Direct2Dell/b/direct2dell/archive/2008/09/12/nvidia-gpu-update-limited-warranty-enhancement-details.aspx
The i3's, i5's, and i7's are 32nm
Do you have a source for that claim?
All the sources i've seen say the quad core i series chips are 45nm while the dual and six core i series chips are 32nm. Afaict the only 32nm "quad core" PC processors are some xeons that are based on a six or eight core design with some cores disabled.
AMD still handily beats Intel on performance per dollar.. the only metric I know of to compare performance numbers against.
You keep saying this as if you think it's a victory for AMD. Selling equivalent products cheaper than the Intel is only a victory if AMD can actually make them cheaper than Intel. I see no evidence that this is the case.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I remember when ATI.com went to Artificial Turds Inc, a company who sold a fake turd carefully placed atop astroturf, and shipped to anyone. That was way cooler than the current ATI.com.
Ahh, memories. So long ATI.
640YB ought to be enough for anybody.
"Dzhugashvili" was Josef Stalin's birth name.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
There are 2 manufacturers of processors and graphics hardware because either no one else wants to enter the business or those who have attempted to do so have failed (ie. Transmeta).
Barriers to entry are definitional of a market that isn't perfectly competitive. Transmeta tried to run the blockade; most potential players would just avoid it entirely.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
No offence, but if it's out of warranty, you can hardly complain about it...
That's a bit unfair (but probably accurate).
CPU's have been around longer than discrete GPU's.
Its not quite apples and oranges, but along those same lines.
If anything I would say the consumer marketing has been more pronounced in the graphics industry between ATI and nVIDIA not to mention having a more equal market share. The fight between AMD and Intel is for the hearts and minds of manufactures more than actual consumers, and Intel owns something like 80% of the market.
So if your trying to decide which of your branding is more well known, I am not sure it is as simple as that. In this case however it may just be as simple in that AMD is the parent company so that is what it is gonna be called at the end of the day.
No offense but if the average life of the components are severely shorter than normal, customers shouldn't be expected to put up with junk that renders their $1000 computer useless. And no offense but manufactures shouldn't be trying to hide such defects.
"the average life of the components are severely shorter than normal" surely means "the component failed within its warranty". I don't see a problem with failures outside of warranty, they should be expected. If you want something that should last for a long time, get something that's "guaranteed" to last a long time. If something fails its guarantee, then the producer already has to pay for that mistake.