After reading and reporting on the financial results of AMD and Intel, and reading Nvidia’s cautionary letter to its shareholders, I have been struck by the resiliency and dynamism of these companies. AMD and Intel are in their fifties, and Nvidia is 25. That may not be as old as say General Electric, Konica, or Bayer but those staid … Read more
The gadget show of the year showcased new tech in all categories: from health care to TVs, cars, and robots. The darlings of the past, like 3D printing and VR, didn’t get quite the same play but cars and their entertainment systems are always there as are new TVs and PCs. The CES Innovation awards are a little like third-grade … Read more
When Quake, a first-person shooter video game, developed by id Software and published by GT Interactive came out in 1996, it was a breakthrough, transformative, disruptive milestone in PC gaming and has been a legend and foundational example ever since. Quake II release one year later had improved graphics and game mechanics and was an all-time hit—21 years ago. Run, … Read more
The second half of Lisa Su’s CES keynote moved us onto what should be safer ground for AMD: their GPUs have had their ups and downs of course, but have always given Nvidia tough competition, to the point where it has never been possible to see them as an also-ran. That being said, the big reveal at this event was … Read more
Parallels’ best-known product Parallels Desktop, which enables Windows products to run on the Mac. (Source: Parallels) Just before Christmas 2018, Corel Corporation had announced plans to acquire Parallels, creating a surprise package for many industry observers. The tech commenting community seems to fall into two categories: those people familiar with Coreland those familiar with Parallel because many of the comments were … Read more
AMD’s Adrenalin 2019 Edition has delivered some of the biggest and most unique features we’ve seen so far from the company. The heart of the new software package is a tuned driver that the company claims gives up to a 15% average performance gain since the launch of Adrenalin Edition software in November 2018. The Game Advisor, AMD’s game tuning … Read more
If Las Vegas placed odds on what news AMD would break in San Francisco at its Next Horizon, the heavy favorites would have been clear: the official announcements of both Zen 2 processor technology and the first 7 nm device based on Zen 2, an abundantly-core’d Epyc CPU for server and workstation applications. Both have been on corporate roadmaps and … Read more
The PC GPU market decreased year-to-year by 2.2%, sequentially GPU shipments increased 10.6%
To celebrate how great the Polaris GPU has been for AMD they are offering a new shrink version with a fantastic deal — a collection of new games. Since it was first announced in 2015, the 14nm “tick” of the Polaris GPU was built in GlobalFoundries’ fab. AMD launched the 14nm RX580 in April 2017 for $229 (8 GB GDDR5). … Read more
Polaris tick-tock plus a game library
AMD reported its quarterly results for calendar Q3 2018, revenues and operating income were up year-over-year as well as its graphics and compute groups revenue and profits. We delivered our fifth straight quarter of year-over-year revenue and net income growth driven largely by the accelerated adoption of our Ryzen, EPYC and datacenter graphics products, said Lisa Su. “Client and server processor … Read more
With the run up in AIB process due to the crypto-currency mining gold rush, and then the introduction of Nvidia’s Founder-edition RTC2080 Ti, at $1,200, several people have commented about the cost of AIB, and where will it end. Indeed, these prices are ridiculous. Especially when you compare them to the prices of AIBs a few years ago. So we … Read more
