AMD today announced new AMD Embedded R-Series SOC processors that establish performance leadership across a targeted range of embedded application market requirements for digital signage, retail signage, medical imaging, electronic gaming, media storage and communications and networking. Designed for demanding embedded needs, the processors incorporate the newest AMD 64-bit x86 CPU core ("Excavator"), plus third-generation Graphics Core Next GPU architecture, and state-of-the-art power management for reduced energy consumption. Combined, these AMD innovations and technologies provide industry-leading graphics performance and key embedded features for next-generation designs.

The single-chip system-on-chip (SOC) architecture enables simplified, small form factor board and system designs from AMD customers and a number of third party development platform providers, while providing astounding graphics and multimedia performance, including capability for hardware-accelerated decode of 4K video playback. With a robust suite of peripheral support and interface options, high-end AMD Radeon graphics, designed for the industry's first Heterogeneous Systems Architecture (HSA) 1.0 certification, and support for the latest DDR4 memory, the new AMD R-Series SOC addresses the needs of a wide range of markets and customers.

GIGABYTE finally got around to launching a Radeon R9 Fury graphics card (model: GV-R9FURYWF3OC-4GD). The company's air-cooled R9 Fury is cooled by a triple-fan WindForce 3X cooling solution, similar to the one featured on the company's GeForce GTX 980 Ti offerings. The card appears to be based on a full-length custom-design PCB by GIGABYTE, and doesn't reuse AMD's short reference-design board. This board has standard height, and the cooler features a thicker heatsink, making it a triple-slot solution. A back-plate is included.

GIGABYTE's Radeon R9 Fury WindForce comes with a slight factory-overclock of 1010 MHz core (compared to 1000 MHz reference), while the memory clock stays unchanged, at 500 MHz. The card draws power from a pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Display outputs include one each of dual-link DVI, HDMI 1.4a, and three DisplayPort 1.2a connectors. There's no word on the pricing or availability, but expect GIGABYTE to charge a tiny premium over the SKU's recommended price of $550.

AMD today announced revenue for the third quarter of 2015 of $1.06 billion, operating loss of $158 million, and net loss of $197 million, or $0.25 per share. Non-GAAP operating loss was $97 million and non-GAAP net loss was $136 million, or $0.17 per share. GAAP and non-GAAP results include a $65 million inventory write-down and the impact of this charge to loss per share was $0.08.

"AMD delivered double-digit percentage sequential revenue growth in both of our segments in the third quarter," said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO. "We continue to take targeted actions to improve long-term financial performance, build great products and simplify our business model. The formation of a joint venture of our back-end manufacturing assets is a significant step towards achieving these goals and strengthening our balance sheet."

Phil Rogers, a senior Corporate Fellow with AMD, and one of its longest serving employees, left the company for rival NVIDIA. He was with AMD/ATI for 21 years. Rogers joined AMD in 1994, and was promoted to Corporate Fellow back in 2007. One of his key contributions to the company was seeing the potential in integrating CPU and GPU into one powerful chip, under the Fusion initiative. In his new job at NVIDIA, Rogers will be Chief Software Architect for compute servers. This is a big deal.

NVIDIA is investing a lot of money into cloud computing (as in computing on the cloud), in which people will not only play games rendered on the cloud, but also more serious applications based on deep-learning and AI could be cloud-driven. With the right cloud computing service subscribed, even a tiny personal device like a smartwatch can crunch complex problems. As a chipmaker with high TFLOP/s GPGPU chips, NVIDIA is eyeing itself a big slice of the emerging industry, and wants the best hands on the job. NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has a personal interest in compute servers, and he has entrusted one of its most important jobs to Rogers. This is the second major event of attrition by innovative people at AMD. Recently, CPU architect Jim Keller left AMD after completing a stint at designing its new "Zen" micro-architecture.

AMD released Catalyst 15.10 Beta drivers. These drivers address issues with Star Wars: Battlefront Beta, and comes with quality and performance optimization for Ashes of the Singularity in DirectX 12 mode. It also addresses a rare crash that occurs when maximizing a minimized web-browser window with a YouTube 4K video playback in it. Issues with Cyberlink PowerDVD playback on 3D displays connected via HDMI are also addressed.DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 15.10 Beta for Windows 10/8.1/7 64-bit | Windows 10/8.1/7 32-bit

Apple today updated the entire iMac family, bringing a stunning new Retina 4K display to the 21.5-inch iMac for the first time and the Retina 5K display to every 27-inch iMac. The new Retina displays make photos and videos more immersive and true-to-life thanks to a wider color gamut and spectacular image quality. The updated iMacs also feature more powerful processors and graphics, two Thunderbolt 2 ports and new storage options that make the high-performance Fusion Drive even more affordable.

Apple today also introduced a new lineup of wireless accessories including the all-new Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse 2 and Magic Trackpad 2. The Magic devices have been redesigned to feel more comfortable than ever, and feature rechargeable batteries that completely eliminate the need for disposable batteries. The new Magic Trackpad 2 also brings Apple's revolutionary Force Touch interface to the desktop, adding a new dimension to the iMac experience.

In this episode of TechPowerUp News, we talk about the spectacular Surface Book, one of the most talked about products launched at the unexpectedly awesome Surface launch event; plus get our take on the brand new Oculus VR-ready gaming desktops co-designed by AMD and Dell.

Shuttle Computer Group, Inc., one of the world's leading designers of small form factor (SFF) computers, today announced its XPC Nano line of barebone computers, including the NC01UBING, a fully configured system with Windows Bing 8.1 pre-installed, designed specifically for commercial applications.

"If you're looking for a small form factor computer with a big heart to drive digital signage, kiosks or other playback functions, look no further," said Marty Lash, director sales and marketing, Shuttle Computer Group. "These small, sophisticated beauties fit everywhere, and our new pre-configured NC01UBING comes with 2GB RAM, 32GB SSD and Windows Bing 8.1 at an ESP of $299. It's a killer product."

The new line of Nano SFF computers boast low price points and an elegant palm-sized, 0.5 liter, stylish design in black with gold trim. Available with Intel's Ultra Low-Power CPU, embedded processor choices include Celeron, and Core U3/U5/U7. Product numbers are NC01U, NC01U3, NC01U5, NC01U7 determined by processor and graphics capabilities. They also come with unique features like RS232C, an SD card reader, optional NVIDIA, and AMD docking stations for superior graphics.

AMD's "Excavator" module could fetch big power dividends for the company, with the top of the line Pro A12 "Carrizo" APU for mobile platforms offering TDP as low as 12W (normal usage), going up to 35W (maximum stress). AMD allows users to set the TDP for their processors. Built on the existing 28 nm process, these chips offer TDPs as low as the ones offered by Intel, built on 22 nm and even 14 nm nodes.

This is made possible because "Excavator" features heavily compacted registers and decode engines, and AMD spent a lot of R&D kicking out redundant or useless components from the silicon. The recently launched A-Series Pro "Carrizo" APUs feature two "Excavator" modules (four CPU cores), a GPU with eight GCN 1.2 compute units (512 stream processors), 2 MB of total cache, dual-channel DDR3-2133 integrated memory controllers.

AMD today announced a collaboration with Oculus and Dell to equip Oculus Ready PCs with AMD Radeon GPUs, starting at $999 USD. The powerful PCs are designed to deliver stunning gaming performance and enable spectacular VR experiences for consumers around the world by leveraging AMD VR leadership with LiquidVR and Graphics Core Next architecture.

"It's an exciting time to be at the heart of all things Virtual Reality," said Roy Taylor, corporate vice president, Alliances and Content, AMD. "I'm confident that with Dell and Alienware, we can enable a wide audience of PC users with extraordinary VR capabilities powered by AMD Radeon GPUs."

AMD's dual-GPU graphics card based on a pair of "Fiji" GPUs could be named the Radeon R9 Gemini, after the Greek-Roman mythological figures and twins Castor and Pollux, sometimes referred to as the "Gemini twins." This is consistent with AMD naming its single-GPU flagship product based on this chip after Furies. The term "Gemini" as associated by AMD to describe this product first came to light when an engineering sample making its way through India was parsed through the country's overly transparent customs, where its shipping manifest read "FIJIGEMINI." The same description also mentions that the sample had its cooling solution installed, so it can be assumed that the prototype AMD CEO Lisa Su held up at the company's "Fiji" silicon unveil event has matured into a mass-producible product.

AMD "Zen" CPU micro-architecture has a design focus on significantly increasing per-core performance, particularly per-core number-crunching performance, according to a 3DCenter.org report. It sees a near doubling of the number of decoder, ALU, and floating-point units per-core, compared to its predecessor. In essence, the a Zen core is AMD's idea of "what if a Steamroller module of two cores was just one big core, and supported SMT instead."

In the micro-architectures following "Bulldozer," which debuted with the company's first FX-series socket AM3+ processors, and running up to "Excavator," which will debut with the company's "Carrizo" APUs, AMD's approach to CPU cores involved modules, which packed two physical cores, with a combination of dedicated and shared resources between them. It was intended to take Intel's Core 2 idea of combining two cores into an indivisible unit further.

AMD released a quick follow-up to its recent Catalyst 15.9 Beta drivers, to address a major video memory leak bug that caused the company to pull 15.9 Beta from its download servers. The new Catalyst 15.9.1 Beta drivers address that issue, and carry over the feature-set from 15.9 Beta, including optimization for Star Wars Battlefront Beta, and Fable Legends. It also addresses a bug that caused DirectX Diagnostics (DXDIAG) to not display Direct3D feature-level 12_0 from correctly displaying for Radeon GPUs that support DirectX 12, on Windows 10. Grab the driver from the links below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 15.9.1 Beta for Windows 10/8.1/7 64-bit | Windows 10/8.1/7 32-bit

Samsung Electronics America, Inc., a leader in digital media and technology, today announced the SE370, the world's first monitor with an integrated wireless charging function for compatible mobile devices. The monitor, available in a 23.6-inch version, aims to declutter work areas by eliminating unnecessary cables for charging mobile devices.

"As a leader in both mobile devices and display technology, Samsung has combined our knowledge of consumer behavior and needs in these areas to create the SE370 wireless charging monitor," said Dave Das, Senior Vice President at Samsung Electronics America, Inc. "With consumers increasingly relying on mobile devices, we are proud to offer them the ability to declutter their workspace and use mobile devices simultaneously. As an industry-first, this monitor transforms the way users see and utilize their workspace, enabling them to work in a smarter and more efficient manner."

AMD today introduced its most powerful line of AMD PRO A-Series mobile and desktop processors (formerly codenamed "Carrizo PRO" and "Godavari PRO") to deliver exceptional value and performance for today's challenging workloads. The new line of AMD PRO A-Series processors offer enhanced performance, reliability and opportunity to business users and IT decision makers and are designed for the future with Microsoft Windows 10. With its AMD PRO mobile processors, AMD powers some of the first-to-market Windows 10-enabled commercial notebook systems for those looking to upgrade.

"The innovative architecture of new AMD PRO processors delivers compelling performance to stay ahead of the evolving demands of business today," said Jim Anderson, senior vice president and general manager, computing and graphics, AMD. "Going PRO with AMD means unmatched dependability with platform stability, processor longevity and an opportunity for richer system configurations. AMD gives its customers choice and affordability to meet specific business needs, without compromising the ability to manage and maintain a secure, stable, and reliable environment."

AMD today announced multiple new discrete AMD Embedded Radeon graphics options suitable for multiple form factors. The suite of products is specifically designed to advance the visual and parallel processing capabilities of embedded applications. The graphics cards represent continued AMD commitment to embedded market innovation, providing engineers with more choices to achieve their design goals, from leading performance to energy efficiency.

The new offerings cover a broad range of needs, from 192 GFLOPS to 3 TFLOPS of single precision performance, and from 20 to less than 95 watts of thermal design power. The products are offered as a Multi-Chip Module (MCM), Mobile PCI Express Module (MXM) and PCIe options, with AMD offering the only MCM solutions. All of these products offer extended support and longevity. The new discrete graphics cards offer the right balance of performance, power and graphics memory size, to meet the needs of most customers.

"The demand for rich, vibrant graphics in embedded systems is greater than ever before, and that demand is growing," said Scott Aylor, corporate vice president and general manager, AMD Embedded Solutions. "Our latest additions to the embedded product lineup help designers build mesmerizing user experiences with 4K multi-screen installations and 3-D and interactive displays. In addition, the powerful capabilities of our GPUs can address the toughest parallel compute challenges."

AMD released its latest Catalyst software update. Version 15.9 Beta brings you game optimizations for Star Wars Battlefront Beta, and Fable Legends. It also resolves an issue where DirectX 12 (feature level 12_0) support was not being reported by DXDIAG on supported Radeon graphics cards; a Dragon Age: Inquisition related bug in Mantle API mode; and frame-stutter in Assassin's Creed Unity, in CrossFire mode. Some issues related to BenQ's 144 Hz FreeSync monitors were also fixed.DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 15.9 Beta for Windows 10/8.1/7 32-bit | Windows 10/8.1/7 64-bit

GlobalFoundries' move to leapfrog several silicon fab steps to get straight to 14 nanometer (nm) is on the verge of paying off, with the company taping out its 14 nm LPP (low-power plus) FinFET node, and claiming good yields on its test/QA chips. This takes the node one step closer to accepting orders for manufacturing of extremely complex chips, such as CPUs and GPUs.

AMD is expected to remain the company's biggest client, with plans to build its next-generation "Zen" processor on this node. The company's "Arctic Islands" graphics chips are also rumored to be built on the 14 nm node, although which foundry will handle its mass production remains unclear. A big chunk of AMD's R&D budget is allocated to getting the "Zen" architecture right, with key stages of its development being handled by Jim Keller, the brains behind some of AMD's most commercially successful CPU cores.

Arctic announces the i32/A32 semi-passive coolers. The Freezer i32/A32 is the first semi passive Arctic cooler. The smaller and lighter successor of the Freezer i30/A30 is the perfect gadget for PC enthusiasts looking for an ultra-quiet but efficient solution for the CPU cooling. It is the first ARCTIC cooler which comes with the new fan controller developed in Germany.

Arctic cooler are well-known for optimum cooling performance at a low noise level. By semi passive performance the Freezer i32/A32 provides again a special feature. A sophisticated fan controller enables that the CPU is completely passively cooled during typical Windows operation. The F12 PWM fan only start up at a higher temperature (from 40% PWM).

EK Water Blocks, Ljubljana based premium computer liquid cooling gear manufacturer, is excited to launch the true single-slot liquid cooling solution for AMD Radeon reference design R9 Nano graphics card. EK-FC R9 Nano directly cools the GPU, HBM as well as VRM (voltage regulation module) as water flows directly over these critical areas, thus allowing the graphics card and it's VRM to remain stable under high overclocks.

EK-FC R9 Nano water block features EK unique central inlet split-flow cooling engine design for best possible cooling performance. Such system also works flawlessly with the reversed water flow without adversely affecting the cooling performance. Moreover, such design offers great hydraulic performance, allowing this product to be used in liquid cooling systems using weaker water pumps. Unlike the original cooling solution with a single 90mm fan that comes with AMD Radeon R9 Nano and takes up two slots, EK-FC R9 Nano water block will transform the R9 Nano into a stunningly beautiful single-slot graphics card! EK encloses a single-slot I/O bracket which replaces the original two-slot in order to make installation of mutliple graphics cards easier.

In addition to the first liquid-cooled Radeon R9 Fury, XFX is ready with an air-cooled card designed to sell at the price AMD intended for this SKU. XFX' air-cooled Radeon R9 Fury graphics card features a triple-slot, triple-fan cooling solution that's very similar (probably identical) in design to the Tri-X cooler used by Sapphire. Underneath it, is an AMD reference-design "Fiji" PCB, seating the 3,584 SP R9 Fury ASIC. The card could offer 0 dBA (silent) idle, and stick to AMD reference clock speeds of 1000 MHz core, and 500 MHz memory. It could sell at AMD's baseline price for the R9 Fury, at $550.

Jim Keller, one of the lead architects of AMD's x86 CPU architectures, has left the company. He held the post of Chief Architect of Microprocessor Cores at AMD. With his association, AMD's launched some of its most successful CPU architectures, such as the original K7 (Athlon, Athlon XP, Duron); the very first 64-bit x86 architecture, and K8 (Athlon64). Keller then left AMD to join Apple, in its development of the A4 and A5 SoCs, before rejoining AMD in 2012 to begin work on the "Zen" architecture.

Keller's departure doesn't throw "Zen" in jeopardy. "Jim helped establish a strong leadership team that is well positioned for success as we enter the completion phase of the "Zen" core and associated system IP and SoCs," said AMD in a statement. "Zen" remains on-track for sampling in 2016, and its "first full year of revenue" in 2017, which would indicate a market launch some time in 2016. AMD CTO Mark Papermaster will take over as additional charge of Keller's position.

Results of an AMD carbon footprint analysis of its 6th Generation A-Series Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), codenamed "Carrizo," show that using the new processor can result in a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to the previous generation APU. The study results are based on the widely accepted Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP) established by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), and were announced today during an AMD sponsored media panel on energy efficient information technology. Research shows that 60 percent of Fortune 100 companies have established public targets for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.

"Creating low-power, energy efficient products is a key element of our business strategy, and in turn, we are working alongside our customers to reduce the environmental footprint of technology while relentlessly improving performance," said Mark Papermaster, senior vice president and chief technology officer, AMD. "The results from the carbon footprint study for the latest AMD APU demonstrate our commitment to continued energy efficiency gains, sustainability, and lower operating costs for consumers and enterprises."

NVIDIA's next-generation GPUs, based on the company's "Pascal" architecture, will be reportedly built on the 16 nanometer FinFET node at TSMC, and not the previously reported 14 nm FinFET node at Samsung. Talks of foundry partnership between NVIDIA and Samsung didn't succeed, and the GPU maker decided to revert to TSMC. The "Pascal" family of GPUs will see NVIDIA adopt HBM2 (high-bandwidth memory 2), with stacked DRAM chips sitting alongside the GPU die, on a multi-chip module, similar to AMD's pioneering "Fiji" GPU. Rival AMD, on the other hand, could build its next-generation GCNxt GPUs on 14 nm FinFET process being refined by GlobalFoundries.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is poised to be among the first AAA game releases to take advantage of DirectX 12 out of the box, according to AMD. The game will get a few AMD-exclusive features, including TressFX 3.0 Hair (realistic hair and foliage rendering). The game will include a benchmark tool, letting enthusiasts and hardware reviewers integrate it into their benches. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will be one of the big AAA game releases in 2016.