Slashdot Mirror
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
What confusion?
As you said, there are two physical CPUs, one from each manufacturer, in that computer. Where's the confusion?
I can't wait to sort out the confused people around me thinking there are two physical CPUs
I'd imagine that the only people who care to hear about the internals of your computer (if any) will be able to figure it out for themselves.
..can they retire that too? please?
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
No, there are two logos, as seen in the article. One with an "AMD Radeon" logo for discrete cards and one with just "Radeon Graphics" for PC makers building Intel-based systems.
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."
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.
The confusion is that most regular people are only marginally aware of an AMD/Intel distinction, although don't know what it means, and don't know at all ATI or nVidia.
Fixed that for you.
"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
This was a great merg. This merg lead to the first decent Ati drivers being created on the Linux side. If this wouldn't of happened then how much longer would ATI of survived. They basicly said FU to Linux and ignored it. Great Merg.
>it will fool the people they told to never buy ATI.
who would be so irresponsible as to tell someone that?
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
who would be so irresponsible as to tell someone that?
Friends don't let friends buy ATI. I will no longer attempt to help friends with ATI driver problems because usually the answer is "you're fucked" or "become a driver developer" which is the same thing. I can't remember the last time I had an ATI graphics solution with which I've had zero problems, because that has never happened and I have used hardware from almost every generation of ATI graphics chips. Wait, that's no true, there was one combination I had no graphics problems with, Mach32 on NT3.51. But with Mach64 came a driver complex enough to prove that ATI couldn't write drivers, and the rest is history... a painful chapter of history I'd like to burn.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Which manufacturing workers exactly?!
ATI does not have a plant. It's all TMSC and the other one I forgot how's it called.
how long until
ATI graphics cards work just fine with Intel processors. I don't believe there's any move to stop them doing so when they rebrand.
My Journal
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 don't understand. There were two major manufacturers of CPUs and two major manufacturers of GPUs before the merger, exactly the same number as after the merger. Where is your problem exactly?
I personally see problems elsewhere. One example is ebay, the online auction monopoly, being allowed to not only buy paypal, but also disallow any other payment system...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
We went from there being two manufacturers of processors & two manufacturers of usable graphics hardware... to there being two manufacturers of processors & two manufacturers of usable graphics hardware. Not sure what you're thinking there was for the Justice Department to stop.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
anecdote(s) != data
To counter your posts: I've never had a single driver problem or failure with ATI cards, even in Linux (several distributions across several major release revisions). To top it, they have always had superior image quality compared to Nvidia, regardless of the back-and-forth of performance lead.
Well, since Goldman Sachs has now had a successful merger with the federal government, the Bush/Obama plan for Amerika is on schedule and working as expected.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Four companies became three. ATI, Nvidia, Intel, AMD. AMD bought ATI.
Intel has been trying to buy Nvidia for years, saying that they need to merge in order to "compete". Nvidia resists, but it'll happen eventually.
You are welcome on my lawn.
AMD bought ATI. Four companies became three.
The lines between CPU and GPU will blur.
Fewer companies does not mean more competition. Less competition means we get fucked.
If you still need clarification, contact me offline and I'll explain it with charts.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I don't know what you are talking about. I have had just as many Nvidia problems as ATI in the past. Currently, I have no ATI driver problems.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Sure, that's why air fares doubled in many major routes last year. And foreign carriers raised prices even more because of the mergers going on over there.
And maybe you didn't hear now that American wants to buy Southwest so they can "compete" with the new United merger. If Southwest is out of the market, how much do you think fares will go up? The airlines need more regulation. We already have a situation where you can fly coast to coast for $100 but it costs $800 to go 300 miles.
If you've ever done business in a city where you have to fly through Cleveland, say, Akron, you know that when you fly there you get fleeced.
We're down to 3 carriers. The "regional players" (which are not really regional) are getting snapped up.
It's not only the consolidation, which is terrible for the US economy and for consumers, it's also the fact that there are these huge bidding wars where companies use their war chests to pay outrageous sums for failing companies, engaging in corporate pissing contests where the money never sees the rest of the economy, just going from one mattress to another, instead of paying their shareholders dividends.
Further, everytime there's one of these mergers, another few thousand American workers get thrown off the back of the gravy train so the CEO and chairman can get another $100 million in bonuses.
You are welcome on my lawn.
No, it wasn't a merger. It was a hostile takeover of the US government.
And it's been going on for decades. September, 2008 was just the closing party.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I don't know what you are talking about. I have had just as many Nvidia problems as ATI in the past. Currently, I have no ATI driver problems.
You and the sibling poster are in the minority. This would be a nice application for a Slashdot poll which would prove it. Vast numbers of slashdotters have reported ATI problems and nVidia solutions. ATI is constantly going backwards; on my R690M chipset (R2xx graphics) ati driver causes display corruption and r2xx is no longer supported by fglrx. Not long ago this was a currently shipping chipset and yet ATI actually offered no working driver on any OS but Vista. (I am using Windows 7 now and Suspend/Resume is broken, works with VGA driver.) This is just my latest in a long line of pathetic ATI failures, and I should have known better but I figured the graphics would be old enough to work under the ati driver. Nope. ATI is too incompetent to themselves reimplement their old hardware without causing driver problems! If that doesn't tell you what you need to know about ATI, nothing will.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I bought an nVidia 7200 in my laptop and have it explode out of warranty. No way was I going to buy another nVidia.
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
If this wouldn't of happened then how much longer would ATI of survived. They basicly said FU to Linux and ignored it.
Are you seriously implying that ATI's rebound after being bought by AMD was because they started to provide Linux drivers?
I'm not directly implying that, no. However there quality in software production sucked. Even there Windows driver where decent at best. It seems that after AMD came in and bought them out we now have awesome drivers on both the Linux and Windows platform.
Your hardware can be as good as possible but with no drivers or crap driver to run the hardware, whats the point. Bar-none the saving grace for ATI is being bought by AMD, now we have good hardware being ran by good software and not good hardware being slugged out by bad software.
Matrox is older.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Before AMD bought ATI:
- Intel
- AMD
- nVidia
- ATI
If AMD dies, ATI is still there. You have no choice but to buy intel, but you can at least choose between nVidia and ATI.
After AMD bought ATI:
- Intel
- AMD+ATI
- nVidia
If AMD dies, ATI dies too. You have no choice but to buy intel and nVidia.
I'm guessing a lot of slashdot users are too young to be able to remember that in the past years and decades, sometimes AMD was better than Intel, sometimes the other way around. Same thing goes for ATI and nVidia.
Just because one company is better than the other today doesn't mean it'll always be this way. Even Intel can screw things up. See "Pentium 4".
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...
The confusion is that most regular people bla bla bla I want my banana bla bla.
Fixed that for you.
Yes.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
I'm hoping he's not saying that, but I think it IS clear that AMD has done of better job of managing ATI than ATI was doing itself. Improved Linux drivers are merely one tiny part of that.
The reality is, if AMD HAD been blocked from purchasing ATI and no one else did, they likely would have folded and we'd simply have nVidia is the (almost) sole provider of discrete graphics chips.
What really scares me though is that if AMD ever ends up folding, we revert to single supplier situations for both CPU's and GPU's in a single blow.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
* 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.