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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
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'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.
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."
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".
I bought an nVidia 7200 in my laptop and have it explode out of warranty. No way was I going to buy another nVidia.
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.
The confusion is that most regular people bla bla bla I want my banana bla bla.
Fixed that for you.