Red Hat Summit 2014 -- AMD today announced another major milestone in the development of its enterprise software ecosystem with the first public demonstration of its second-generation AMD Opteron X-Series APU, codenamed "Berlin," running a Linux environment based on the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is a Red Hat-sponsored, community-driven Linux distribution, providing a familiar, enterprise class operating environment to developers and IT administrators worldwide. This is important to companies looking to transition to x86 APU servers but who are reluctant to introduce new tools and software platforms to their IT environments. This demonstration also represents a significant step forward in expanding the footprint of x86 APU accelerated performance within the data center.

AMD's premiere demonstration of "Berlin" will showcase the world's first Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) featured server APU ahead of its official launch later this year. The demonstration features advancements incorporated in "Project Sumatra" that enable Java applications to take advantage of graphics processing units (GPUs) within AMD server APUs. The combination of Linux and Java on AMD APU platforms provides an ideal platform for server-based multimedia workloads and general purpose GPU compute that will help drive new levels of workload efficiency in the data center. AMD also will demonstrate software-based on OpenCL and OpenGL on "Berlin."

Toshiba's Digital Products Division (DPD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., today announced its completely redesigned line of its all-purpose performance laptops - the ultra-slim 15.6-inch Satellite S55, desktop replacement 17.3-inch Satellite S75 and highly mobile 14-inch Satellite E45. The laptops deliver powerful capabilities in a premium design built to increase productivity and provide an excellent entertainment experience.

"These new laptops are designed to give power users and entertainment enthusiasts the power and versatility to do more with their laptop," said Carl Pinto, vice president of marketing, Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., Digital Products Division. "Full-featured, completely customizable with an all-new stunning design, these laptops provide the ultimate audio and visual experience for movies, games and more."

Toshiba's Digital Products Division (DPD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., today unveiled its new Satellite P55t, featuring one of the world's first 4K Ultra HD display in a laptop and the world's first to earn Technicolor Color Certification. Ideal for visual creative professionals and multimedia enthusiasts, the Satellite P55t is designed to take on the most intensive computing demands and display unprecedented imagery.

"Creative professionals are embracing 4K Ultra HD as it enables a whole new level of media creation that draws viewers in with amazing detail and clarity," said Carl Pinto, vice president of marketing, Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., Digital Products Division. "Until now, media creators have been unable to have this combination of performance and display capabilities in a mobile solution and we applied years of experience and engineering resources to make it a reality."

XFX rolled out its Radeon R9 295X2 Core Edition graphics card. A branding reserved by XFX for "reference design," the R9 295X2 Core Edition is every bit AMD's creation, barring just XFX stickers. It ships in a paperboard box. Codenamed "Vesuvius," the R9 295X2 is a dual-GPU graphics card based on a pair of 28 nm "Hawaii" GPUs, with all 2,816 stream processors, 176 TMUs, and 64 ROPs enabled on each chip; and with two 512-bit wide GDDR5 memory interfaces, holding a total of 8 GB of memory. XFX is expected to sell this card at AMD's MSRP of US $1,499.

Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth, a turn-based strategy game based in the interstellar age, in which you travel to and colonize habitable planets by realpolitik, was announced last weekend, with support for AMD's Mantle API, besides DirectX 11. Mantle should make the game increasingly playable on AMD "Kaveri" APUs with eye-candy cranked up, and at reasonable mainstream resolutions such as 1080p. Mantle reduces the CPU's role in graphics processing, and should benefit APUs. Developer Firaxis announced the game for three PC platforms, Windows, OS X, and Linux (over Steam). Don't add it to your summer bucket-list just yet. It's slated for this fall.A trailer video follows.

Sapphire's Radeon R9 295X2 graphics card is generally available, and ships in the metal suitcase that AMD shipped its reference design card to reviewers in. The only difference? The stylish black artwork is replaced with the usual Sapphire "robotic creature" artwork, and marketing blurbs. The rest of the card sticks to AMD reference design, except a couple of stickers, of course. A dual-GPU "CrossFire on a stick" solution based on two 28 nm "Hawaii" GPUs in the same core configuration as the Radeon R9 290X, the R9 295X2 features a factory-fitted closed-loop cooling solution, and clock speeds of 1018 MHz core, and 5.00 GHz memory. The card is expected to be priced at US $1,499.

MSI, world leader in motherboards, debuts its first AMD AM1 Socketed Kabini Mini-ITX motherboard, the MSI AM1I. With Kabini being sold separately, the MSI AM1I is fully upgradable and gives the user flexibility when looking for a ultra-low power dual or quad core solution. With MSI AM1I's rich feature set and support for the powerful power efficient Kabini APU, packed with high performance DirectX 11.2-support, it is the ideal motherboard to use in a compact desktop, HTPC or other multimedia solutions.

Kabini is the first x86 quad-core System on a Chip solution for mainstream use with improved performance per watt and best-in-class graphics. Now being sold separately, instead of soldered to a motherboard, the AM1 platform offers a complete, customizable package together with the MSI AM1I motherboard.

AMD today announced global availability of its new AM1 platform featuring quad-core and dual-core variants of the AMD APU codenamed "Kabini" into the component channel for system builders. The AM1 platform, branded with the AMD Athlon and AMD Sempron APU brands, will deliver award-winning Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture and "Jaguar" CPU cores on motherboards from the leading manufacturers. AMD Athlon 5150/5350 and AMD Sempron 2650/3850 APUs provide consumers a balanced computing experience on a socketed upgradable platform.

"AMD consistently builds on its industry leading technology by continuing to offer a diversified product stack which is proven today with the availability of the AM1 platform with 'socketed' AMD Sempron and AMD Athlon APUs designed for the mainstream market," said Bernd Lienhard, corporate vice president and general manager, Client Business Unit, AMD. "With quad-core performance and AMD Radeon graphics the AM1 platform is an affordable solution that provides great flexibility due to an infrastructure built to deliver a multitude of options to our end users and system builders."

A renowned brand of graphics card maker - VTX3D, today announced a dual GPU (Hawaii) graphics card, the VTX3D R9 295X2. The new model uses a conventional air cooler and incorporates liquid cooling system, and it is fitted with the most high-end specification, giving users the ability to play all current and upcoming PC titles and delivering extreme performance to all users.

VTX3D R9 295X2 is based on the best high-end specification, containing two AMD Radeon R9 series GPUs on board along with 4GB of memory per GPU. The memory runs at 1250MHz (5.0Gbps) on a dual 512-bit memory bus, and the frequency of both GPUs is up to 1018MHz, providing higher clock speeds and faster performance in users' favorite games.

AMD announced its flagship graphics card for this generation, the dual-GPU Radeon R9 295X2. Based on a pair of fully-loaded "Hawaii" GPUs, the same ones that drive the R9 290X, the card features a premium built with an air+liquid hybrid cooling solution. Each of the card's two chips feature 2,816 GCN2 stream processors, 176 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and 512-bit wide GDDR5 memory interfaces, holding 4 GB of memory. The total memory amount on the card is hence 8 GB. It uses a PLX PEX8747 PCIe gen 3.0 x48 bridge chip to marshal data between the two GPUs, and the rest of the system. The best part, it draws power from just two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. AMD is asking US $1,499 for the R9 295X2, which is half that of NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce GTX TITAN-Z. It should be available for purchase on April 21.

MSI rolled out a new mid-range, socket FM2+ motherboard in the ATX form-factor, the A88X-G41 PC Mate. As its name suggests, it's based on the A88X FCH chipset by AMD. Drawing power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS connectors, the board uses a 5-phase VRM to condition power for the FM2+ socket, which is wired to two DDR3 DIMM slots, that support up to 32 GB of dual-channel DDR3-1866 MHz memory; and a single PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot. The second x16 slot is electrical PCI-Express 2.0 x4, and wired to the FCH.

Storage connectivity on the A88X-G41 PC Mate includes just six SATA 6 Gb/s ports, even as the A88X FCH offers eight. The board offers a total of four USB 3.0 ports, two on the rear panel, two by header. Also on offer are ten USB 2.0 ports, four on the rear panel, six by headers. There's quite some legacy connectivity on offer, such as LPT and COM, by headers. Display outputs include a dual-link DVI, D-Sub, and HDMI 1.4a. 6-channel HD audio, and gigabit Ethernet make for the rest of it. The A88X-G41 PC Mate is driven by AMI UEFI BIOS. Expect this board to be priced around the $100 mark.

AMD today launched the AMD FirePro W9100 professional graphics card designed for the next generation of 4K workstations accelerated by OpenCL (Open Computing Language). With cutting-edge graphics, up to 2.62 TFLOPS double precision of industry leading GPU compute power and ultra-high resolution (4K) multi-display capabilities, video, design and engineering professionals can work at a whole new level of detail, speed, responsiveness and creativity.

With an industry first 16 GB of ultra-fast GDDR5 memory, workstation users can multi-task efficiently across up to six 4K displays, load massive assemblies and data sets to manipulate them, or edit, color-correct and layer in multiple effects to 4K video projects, all in real-time. Powered by AMD's latest Graphics Core Next architecture, AMD FirePro W9100 gives creative professionals supercomputing-class performance from a single GPU.

Here's the first picture of an AMD add-in board (AIB) branded Radeon R9 295X2 dual-GPU graphics card, ASUS in this case. The card ships in a huge cubical box, although we're not sure if that paperboard box hides a metal suitcase inside. ASUS did away with the perforated metal grille over the central fan on the card, and plastered a couple of stickers, although the rest of the card sticks to AMD's reference board design. According to leading Turkish tech publication DonanimHaber, AMD is planning to price the Radeon R9 295X2 at US $1,499. According to older reports, the R9 295X2 is a dual-GPU CrossFire-on-a-stick graphics card, featuring two 28 nm "Hawaii" GPUs, with all 2,816 stream processors, 176 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and 512-bit wide memory interfaces enabled on each chip, and 4 GB of memory per GPU system, totaling the amount to 8 GB.

ECS unveiled its first socket FM2+ motherboard based on AMD's new A58 FCH entry-level chipset, the A58F2P-M4. This narrow micro-ATX motherboard draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 4-pin CPU connectors, and uses a 3+1 phase VRM to condition power for the APU, which is wired to two DDR3 DIMM slots, and a PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot. The only other expansion slot is a PCIe 3.0 x1. Connectivity is fairly basic, with four SATA 3 Gb/s ports, D-Sub and HDMI display outputs, 6-channel HD audio, and gigabit Ethernet. Expect this to go under $50.

AMD today announced its ongoing collaboration with Adobe has yielded numerous performance optimizations for new creative functions and workflow enhancements that will be available soon to video professionals using Adobe Creative Cloud. This latest wave of features includes high performance debayering for RED camera R3D media files, enhanced performance for new masking features, a new time-saving master clip capability and other tools.

Today's announcement builds on the already impressive additions the companies have made available in recent months, which began with OpenCL support through the Adobe Mercury Playback Engine to speed up Adobe Premiere Pro CC workflows. AMD App Acceleration via the open standard OpenCL API brings the massive parallel compute power of AMD A-Series APUs, AMD Radeon graphics, and AMD FirePro professional graphics to bear on the sophisticated capabilities within Adobe Premiere Pro CC, Adobe SpeedGrade CC, and Adobe Media Encoder CC. That performance also scales with AMD dual-GPU configurations, including dual AMD FirePro GPUs for the latest generation Apple Mac Pro systems.

XFX launched no less than five graphics cards based on AMD's new entry-level Radeon R5 230, four based on a low-profile, single-slot PCB, and one on a full-height PCB. All five cards are fan-less (silent), and feature chunky aluminium heatsinks to cool the GPU. All cards stick to the same clock speeds of 625 MHz. Among the low profile cards are the R5-230A-ZLH2 (1 GB DDR3 memory, HDMI, DVI, D-Sub); R5-230A-CLHV (2 GB DDR3 memory, HDMI, DVI, D-Sub); R5-230A-CLHR (same card with AMD freebies); and R5-230A-CLH2. The full height card, the R5-230A-CNH2 uses the added PCB area to just hold a bigger heatsink, and spread components out better. Based on the "Caicos" silicon, the R5 230 features 160 stream processors, and supports DirectX 11.

AMD Senior Vice President and General Manager, Global Business Units, Lisa Su has been named a winner in the EE Times and EDN 2014 UBM Tech ACE Awards in the Executive of the Year category. The awards program honors the people and companies behind the technologies and products that are changing the world of electronics.

The winners were announced at an awards ceremony Tuesday, April 1, at The Fairmont San Jose, during EE Live! "I am flattered and honored to be selected for the UBM 'Executive of the Year' award. When I look at the list of this year's nominees and past winners, it is a who's who of the industry's leaders," said Su. "AMD is in the middle of an important and comprehensive transformation, but it is very much a team effort. On behalf of the entire AMD team, we very much appreciate the recognition for the work."

AMD launched a new entry-level GPU for those who need a bare-essentials graphics card for their desktop, which so happens to lack integrated graphics (think Intel HEDT platform). Called the Radeon R5 230, the chip is based on the "Caicos" silicon, and features 160 stream processors, 8 TMUs, and 4 ROPs. It supports DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.3. Its core is clocked at 625 MHz. It features a 64-bit wide DDR3 memory interface, holding 1 GB of memory, clocked at 1066 MHz. Pictured below is the first AIB-branded R5 230 card for the retail channel, Gigabyte's R523D3-1GL, with a single-slot, half-height built, and a tiny fan-heatsink keeping its GPU cool. AMD could price the card around the $50 mark.

Here are some of the key slides from AMD's press-deck (presentation) for reviewers, for the Radeon R9 295X2 dual-GPU graphics card, ahead of its April 8 launch. The slides confirm specifications that surfaced earlier this week, which describe the card as bearing the codename "Vesuvius," having two 28 nm "Hawaii" GPUs, and all 2,816 stream processors on the chips being enabled, next to 176 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and 512-bit wide GDDR5 memory interfaces. Two such chips are wired to a PLX PEX8747 PCI-Express 3.0 x48 bridge chip. There's a total of 8 GB of memory on board, 4 GB per GPU. Lastly, clock speeds are revealed. The GPUs are clocked as high as 1018 MHz, and memory at 5.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective). The total memory bandwidth of the card is hence 640 GB/s.

The Radeon R9 295X2 indeed looks like the card which was pictured earlier this week, by members of the ChipHell tech community. It features an air+liquid hybrid cooling solution, much like the ROG ARES II by ASUS. The cooling solution is co-developed by AMD and Asetek. It features a couple of pump-blocks cooling the GPUs, which are plumbed with a common coolant channel running through a single 120 mm radiator+reservoir unit. A 120 mm fan is included. A centrally located fan on the card ventilates heatsinks that cool the VRM, memory, and the PCIe bridge chip.

AMD today announced that it amended its Wafer Supply Agreement (WSA) with GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc. for 2014. Under the terms of the amendment, AMD and GLOBALFOUNDRIES agreed on purchase commitments for 2014 and established fixed pricing and other terms of the WSA which apply to products AMD will purchase from GLOBALFOUNDRIES.

Under this amendment AMD expects to pay GLOBALFOUNDRIES approximately $1.2 billion in 2014. These purchases contemplate AMD's current PC market expectations and the manufacturing of certain Graphics Processor Units (GPUs) and semi-custom game console products at GLOBALFOUNDRIES in 2014. The 2014 amendment does not impact AMD's 2014 financial goals including gross margin.

AMD today announced a multi-year agreement with Mentor Graphics Corporation to expand availability of open-source embedded Linux development for heterogeneous and multi-core processors from AMD. Dedicated to providing embedded developers with a more manageable and focused open source framework, the agreement will provide embedded developers with more supported processor options, robust development tools, and greater speed in open platform development.

As a Yocto Project compatible product, Mentor Embedded Linux will now bring standardized features and tools, and ensure quick access to the latest Board Support Packages (BSPs) for AMD 64-bit x86 architecture beginning with the upcoming AMD Embedded G-Series system-on-a-chip (SoC) (codenamed: "Steppe Eagle") and AMD Embedded R-Series APU/CPU (codenamed: "Bald Eagle").

Here it is, folks! The first pictures of what you get inside the steel briefcase AMD ships the Radeon R9 295X2 in. AMD got over the stonewall of having to cool two 250W GPUs with a single two-slot cooling solution, by making it an air+liquid hybrid. The cooler appears to have been designed by any of the major water-cooling OEMs (such as Asetek, Akasa, etc.), and most likely consists of a pair of pump-blocks plumbed to a single 120 x 120 mm radiator, over a single coolant loop. The coolant channel, we imagine, could be identical to that of the ROG ARES 2 by ASUS. There's also a 90 mm fan, but that probably cools heatsinks covering the memory, VRM, and PCIe bridge. The card draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, which as you'll soon find out, are running at off-specs.

The Radeon R9 295X2, codenamed "Vesuvius," runs a pair of 28 nm "Hawaii" chips, routed to a PLX PEX8747 PCIe bridge. Each of the two have all 2,816 stream processors enabled, totaling the count to 5,632. The two also have 352 TMUs, and 128 ROPs between them. The entire 512-bit memory bus width is enabled, and each GPU is wired to 4 GB of memory totaling 8 GB on the card. Clock speeds remain a mystery, and probably hold the key to a lot of things, such as power draw and cooling. Lastly, there's the price. AMD could price the R9 295X2 at US $1,499, half that of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX TITAN-Z. In that price difference, heck, even for $500, you could probably buy yourself a full-coverage water block, and a full-fledged loop, complete with a meaty 3 x 120 mm radiator.

More details of AMD's upcoming dual-GPU graphics cards based on the "Hawaii" silicon emerged, in the run up to its April 8 launch. That's right, AMD plans to launch the card exactly one week from now. The card will bear the name Radeon R9 295X2, after all. The $3,000 pricing set by NVIDIA for its GTX TITAN-Z graphics card will be taken advantage of AMD, which will splurge on stuff such as a metal briefcase to ship the card in (with two combi-locks no less!), possibly high-quality (expensive) cooler shroud materials, and more. The card will be cooled by an air+liquid hybrid cooling solution, much like the ASUS ROG ARES 2. A factory-fitted (AIO) liquid cooling loop will handle the two 250W GPUs, while a fan-heatsink will cool the memory, VRM, and PCIe bridge chip. AMD will not chase down the ludicrous 12 GB memory amount of GTX TITAN-Z despite its wider memory bus, and will instead equip it with 8 GB (4 GB per GPU). And lastly, the card will have a total of five display outputs, including four mini-DP and one dual-link DVI-D (digital-only).

Over the past couple of weeks, AMD is guerrilla marketing its next flagship graphics card, the Radeon R9 295X2 on Twitter, under the hash-tag #2betterthan1. The first couple of pictures posted over the weeks were, well, typical AMD, showing us abstract everyday objects to drive home something meaningful. The latest one gives us more to chew on. It shows the outline of a rectangular object with a circle in the middle, and rivets lining its edges, something which we most identify with full-coverage water blocks. Could the R9 295X2 be a liquid-cooled product? We'll have to wait and see. Meanwhile, NVIDIA torpedoed AMD's plans by launching the GeForce GTX TITAN-Z earlier this month. The downer? A $3,000 price-tag. Even if AMD falls short of performance by a few percentage points, it could make NVIDIA look bad, by giving it a much lower price.

Today AMD announced the official launch of the new AMD Partner Program, aimed to strengthen and reward its global channel partners. The program is based on three cornerstones: Aspire, Motivate, Design - AMD. The AMD Partner Program provides well-defined and transparent criteria through a tiered program offering a broad range of attributes including: financial, access, marketing, referral/recognition, technical, and material benefits. An enhanced AMD Partner Portal provides up-to-date information to partners through secure web access, with content tailored to help channel partners grow and prosper with AMD's broad, industry-leading technology portfolio.

The AMD Partner Program recognizes distributors, system builders, retailers and etailers as Elite, Premier, Provisional Premier, and Select partners, based on criteria outlined within the program. As channel partners ascend to a higher tier, they are eligible to receive an increased level of benefits. The new "Hero Builder" badge is a supplemental designation awarded to influential and dedicated system builders that are ultra-AMD enthusiasts. Depending on the channel partner's tiered status, Hero Builders will receive additional program benefits, as well as exclusive early access to select AMD technology.