"Shanghai" is the codename for the soon to be released quad-core enterprise processors by AMD, under the Quad-Core Opteron brand. It was expected of the company, to come up with these processors around this time of the year, and they have. AMD hasn't officially announced these processors yet, but the processors have made for early listings in some popular online stores. PC Connection and Buy.com have made listings of some of the upcoming SKUs. The Opteron 837x, 838x series are anything but cheap. These are processors that support multi-socket setups up to eight sockets. The Opteron 238x series processors are the dual-socket supportive variant of the same processors.

Whichever way the global economy is headed, 3Q, 2008 hasn't been a bad period for computer hardware industry. The GPU market saw its bumper sale in six years, with both NVIDIA and AMD reaping inflows. Similar trends were also reported with other sections of the industry. The CPU for one, is commodity closely linked to the growth of the industry. 3Q 2008 saw record earnings for Intel as well, as the silicon giant continued its market-share gains into rival AMD, as recorded by market observer iSuppli.

According to iSuppli figures held by Information Week, Intel now holds a massive 80.4% of the CPU market share, which is up 1.7% from Q3 2007. AMD's share on the other hand fell 1.8 percentage points to 12.1% from 13.9% a year ago. Compared to Q2 2008, AMD's market share grew by 0.1%, and Intel's grew by 0.3%. There is a clear influence of smaller CPU vendors that has affected AMD's share. These smaller vendors are finding it increasingly difficult to compete on a global scale amidst the economic crisis.

AMD today announced the appointment of Alberto Bozzo as corporate vice president and general manager of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Reporting to Emilio Ghilardi, AMD chief sales officer, Bozzo will have responsibility for all sales and marketing operations within EMEA. Bozzo starts his new role in January 2009. Bozzo, 44, brings more than 20 years of experience with HP, where he was most recently the vice president of HP's multi-billion dollar go-to-market consumer business unit in EMEA.

"We are pleased to add another seasoned professional to AMD who brings a strong combination of sales, marketing and organizational management experience," said Emilio Ghilardi, AMD senior vice president and chief sales officer. "Alberto's successful consumer and commercial computing record makes him the right person to help AMD execute on its aggressive plans in the strategic EMEA region."

AMD updated the graphics driver hotfix titled, 737-38664: Far Cry 2 and Stalker Clear Sky HotFix. The hotfix aims to address issues with the two game titles and improves performance. Highlights include:

• Performance improvement for the DirectX 9 version of Far Cry 2 on CrossFire installations
• Performance improvement for the DirectX 10 version of Far Cry 2 on single GPU and CrossFire installations
• Improves performance for the DirectX 10 and DirectX 10.1 version of STALKER: Clear Sky on both single and CrossFireX configurations at higher resolutions

This hotfix includes STALKER performance enhancements for the DirectX 10 version of the game. Also be sure to download the STALKER Clear Sky DirectX 10.1 patch, which will provide further performance enhancements (up to 10% at higher resolutions) and image quality enhancements over DirectX 10. AMD strongly recommends you download the game patch and test it in conjunction with this Catalyst hotfix. For more information on the hotfix and downloads, please visit this page.

Windows 7 is Microsoft's next major PC operating system. Early non-retail versions of this OS may have already made it to certain sections of the industry, and this calls for hardware support. AMD is ready with its ATI Catalyst driver suite for Windows 7. The driver itself is titled ATI Catalyst Windows 7 Preview Driver Package. As the name suggests, it is at an experimental/early stage, much like the OS itself. Use of it is not covered by any warranty. It provides support for ATI Radeon HD 2000 series, HD 3000 series, HD 4000 series, derived mobile GPUs, and AMD 7 series chipsets with integrated graphics.

The 32-bit version of the driver can be downloaded from here, and the 64-bit version here.

AMD today announced completion of the sale of its Digital TV (DTV) processor business to Broadcom Corporation. AMD announced a definitive agreement to sell its DTV business on August 25 as part of its strategy to become leaner and more focused, while seeking to create a business model to deliver sustainable profitability and leadership in core x86 computing and graphics businesses.

In connection with the business sale, AMD received approximately $141.5 million in cash, subject to certain escrows and adjustments pursuant to the terms of the definitive asset purchase agreement.

AMD today announced that it is providing its Quad Core AMD Opteron processor for Windows Azure Compute Service, the cloud service operating system which is featured this week at PDC, as well as its selection as a key processor partner for cloud computing solutions by leading global web-based companies such as STRATO and DAUM Communications. Cloud Computing Environments (CCE) provide an opportunity for companies to increase capacity and capabilities without significantly increasing investments in software, personnel or infrastructure. The Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor with AMD Virtualization (AMD-V) technology and Direct Connect Architecture was selected because of its ability to deliver significant performance-per-watt efficiencies, successfully handle heavy peak workloads without sacrificing performance, enable massive cloud scaling and offer a reliable foundation that helps global, web-based CCE better manage the demands of a 24/7 uptime for enterprises large and small.

World economy may be at risk, but industry experts report that the graphics chip market is literally on fire. According to Jon Peddie Research (JPR), AMD's newly released credible video cards in both its desktop and laptop segments, led to the biggest increase in third-quarter shipments in six years. In the third quarter of 2008, more than 111 million GPUs were shipped, the market researcher said. During the same quarter last year, 91 million GPUs shipped, and 94 million units shipped in the previous quarter. That's an annual increase of 22.5 percent and a quarter-to-quarter increase of almost 18 percent, according to JPR. In the overall market AMD saw a good year-to-year growth of 22.8%, while NVIDIA lost 6.4% year-to-year. For desktop GPUs, AMD/ATI is also on the bright side claiming to 20.3%, while NVIDIA slipped to 32.6%, the other 43.9% of the portion are for Intel. On the laptop front, Intel GPU shipments dropped one point to 56.2 percent, while NVIDIA GPU shipments declined to 21.8 percent, and AMD jumped to 20.9 percent, JPR reported. It was about time and AMD desperately needed this good results, congratulations. ATI's graphics cards are temperately rising their share in the fight with rival NVIDIA.

Earlier this week, when evaluating samples of the new Radeon HD 4830 GPU-based graphics card, W1zzard, who also authors the GPU-Z diagnostic utility, had found an anomaly with the stream processor (SP) counts on samples sent by AMD. The GPU could access only 560 out of its 640 SPs available. This affected the card's performance significantly, and TechPowerUp's findings were validated by several other reviewers with similar samples.

AMD on its part quickly followed up the issue with its engineering department, and released a video BIOS update that fixes the issue and makes available all the 640 SPs. AMD will be circulating this BIOS to all its press contacts and add-in-board (AIB) partners, to make sure the issue is isolated and fixed. The updated BIOS file can be downloaded from here. AMD also asserts that the issue isn't hardware related, and that updating the BIOS resolves the issue completely.

The ATI Radeon HD 4830, the newest foot-soldier from the red-camp, is AMD's answer to the GeForce 9800 GT, a gap left by the company, that may have been eating into its profits for months now. As usual, TechPowerUp received its review samples from TUL (PowerColor), AMD's long-standing partner, and AMD itself. We reviewed both of them, as soon as the product became official today. During the course of reviewing them, with the card from AMD in particular, our reviewer, W1zzard noticed an anomaly: the sample from AMD was showing an abnormal stream processor count of 560.

W1zzard also authors the GPU-Z diagnostic utility, and it is his routine chore to program the utility to detect a new GPU. The newest build of GPU-Z detected the card from AMD to have as many as 80 stream processors disabled from the original specifications for the Radeon HD 4830. In his article, W1zzard attempts to explain this anomaly.

AMD today introduced the ATI Radeon HD 4830 graphics card, raising the performance bar for graphics cards priced at less than $150 (USD) and presenting gamers with even more affordable access to award-winning ATI Radeon HD 4800 series performance. Like all ATI Radeon HD 4800 series products, the new offering delivers class-leading game performance1 and superior HD multimedia capabilities, as well support for the latest DirectX 10.1 games soon to be released for the holiday season.

"The ATI Radeon HD 4830 graphics card is another example of how AMD's scalable design strategy is paying off," said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Graphics Products Group, AMD. "With a single chip we have been able to quickly and efficiently bring to market graphics card designs ranging from below $150 through $549 SEP, with leading performance in every segment. The ATI Radeon HD 4830 continues that great trend, providing tremendous value to gamers for less than $150."

Today, AMD is announcing two new processors to its products line - AMD Phenom X3 8850 Black Edition and AMD Athlon X2 5050e. The Socket AM2+ triple core X3 8850 (TRAY OPN# HD8850WCJ3BGH) works at 2.5GHz, has a TDP of 95W and 2MB of L3 cache. The Phenom X3 8850 is the first triple-core Phenom processor to be part of the company's Black Edition series and as such it has unlocked multiplier for overclocking. The AMD Athlon X2 5050e (TRAY OPN# ADH5050IAA5DO) is a dual-core 45W processor that operates at 2600MHz.
Sooner or later AMD is also expected to commence shipments of two low-power chips - the single-core 1.6GHz Athlon 2650 (TDP 15W), and the dual-core Athlon X2 3250e, running at 1.5GHz and requiring up to 22W. November will also see AMD's "Ultra-Value Client (UVC) Solutions", the chips that will possibly compete with Intel Atom CPUs for netbooks. These are only for the OEM customers, though.

AMD and Celsia Technologies announced today a strategic partnership in which Celsia may become the cooling system manufacturer for ATI's next generation video cards. For now both companies are working on a vapor chamber based cooling solution for high end graphics cards and that's all we have. The cooling module includes Celsia's patented NanoSpreader that "significantly outperforms competing heat pipe based solutions." A NanoSpreader is a patented copper encased two-phase vapor chamber into which pure water is vacuum sealed. The liquid is absorbed by a copper-mesh wick and passed as vapor through a micro-perforated copper sheet where it cools and returns as liquid to the wick. NanoSpreaders are half the weight of solid copper, and yet they perform 14% better than heat pipes.
"Working with AMD, we were able to meet all of the design criteria for a new GPU cooler. Namely, it had to be lighter, perform better and be lower cost than the current heat pipe based design," said Joe Formichelli, Celsia's CEO. "Unlike thermal modules using heat pipes, our two-phase NanoSpreader comes in direct contact with the heat source whereby removing costly, heavy base plates."
As part of AMD's technology development project, Celsia has been invited to present at the 2008 AMD Technical Forum and Exposition tomorrow in Taiwan. Additionally, a short video explaining Celsia's NanoSpreader vapor chamber technology will be shown as part of the conference's opening presentation.

On October 23rd, AMD would release its answer to the GeForce 9800 GT, the Radeon HD 4830 graphics processor. The company has succeded in giving the 9800 GTX/GTX+ some serious competition in the form of the HD 4850 and HD 4850 1GB, and looks to take the attack across all segments. MSI is ready with its HD 4830 512 MB model.

Simplistic as it may look, the card features a strong power circuit in the form of a 4+1 phase power design. The GPU is actively cooled by an aluminum cooler, consisting of radially-projecting aluminum fins cooled by a fan. The memory is air-cooled. The card uses reference speeds of 575/1800 MHz (core/memory). It has been benchmarked using 3DMark Vantage, where under extreme settings, it secured a score of X2372.

AMD's add-in board (AIB) partners are ready with graphics cards based on the company's newest GPU, the ATI Radeon HD 4830. Sapphire, on its part, is ready with a card based on its own PCB/cooler design. The company has already released a Radeon HD 4850 based card on the PCB and cooler. Identical pin layout of the GPU (RV770LE) and memory wiring, makes this possible. Features are listed below:

• ATI RV770 LE graphics processor, made on 55nm silicon process(by TSMC)
• 256-bit GDDR3 memory bus
• 575 MHz GPU core, 1800 MHz (900 MHz actual) memory
• 512 MB memory
• 640 Stream Processors, DirectX 10.1
• Supports ATI Crossfire X
• Supports UVD 2.0 hardware video acceleration

Odd enough, AMD has just issued a hotfix for the yet to be released PC game title Far Cry 2. The patch is meant to be used for the Radeon X1000, HD 2000, HD 3000 and HD 4000 series cards to improve the performance of Far Cry 2 in DirectX 9 and DirectX 10. Both single and CrossFire compatible systems will benefit from it. The hotfix download package includes both the Display Driver and Catalyst Control Center. The hotfix can be downloaded by clicking on this link here. After all this might be a smart move for AMD/ATI. The official launch date for Far Cry 2 is October 24th, and the game will launch simultaneously on the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Now ATI owners will be prepared and hopefully won't have problems running the game when it is released.

This story won't inform you about any sort of new hardware, but will only remind you that everything we like today is made by human hands and when some of these people dies we should give him the deserved respect. Yesterday, at the age of 79 died Ed Turney, one of the eight founders of semiconductor-industry giant Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). The cause of his departure from this world is brain cancer. Turney was born March 26, 1929, in Brooklyn, N.Y. Known as "Fast Eddie," Turney's initial assignments at the fledgling AMD involved buying equipment and overseeing construction of the company's first chip factory. At the same time, as director of sales, Turney was charged with building a sales organization, including developing a network of electronic distributors - a vital step in enabling the company to compete with established companies such as Intel, Fairchild, National Semiconductor, Texas Instruments, Motorola and other companies that no longer exist. In late 1974 Turney left AMD, going on to work at various small semiconductor manufacturing and distribution companies. He later became a consultant to firms trying to get started or funded. Ed Turney will be buried in St. Theresa's Court next to his mother, Rose.

AMD today reported third quarter 2008 revenue from continuing operations of $1.776 billion, including process technology license revenue of $191 million. Third quarter 2008 revenue increased 32 percent compared to the second quarter of 2008 and 14 percent compared to the third quarter of 2007.
In the third quarter of 2008, AMD reported a net loss of $67 million, or $0.11 per share. For continuing operations, third quarter 2008 income was $41 million, or $0.07 per share, including the process technology license revenue of $191 million, or $0.31 a share. Third quarter 2008 operating income was $131 million. Loss from discontinued operations was $108 million, or $0.18 a share.

Read the complete earnings release here.

Industry sources reveal that AMD would be branding its Kuma dual-core processor as Athlon X2 7000 series. These processors are aimed to compete with Intel's Core 2 Duo E7000 series processors. Kuma continues to use the 65nm SOI fabrication process. The core sports 512 KB L2 cache per core, and a shared 2 MB L3 cache. Surprisingly, despite having sub-3.00 GHz clock speeds, the processors have rated TDP of 95W.

These processors use a broader 3600 MT/s HyperTransport interface, and feature DDR2 memory controllers that support the PC2-8500 (1066 MHz) standard. As for the models, the Athlon X2 7550 has a clock speed of 2.50 GHz, and an FSB multiplier of 12.5x. The Athlon X2 7750 comes with the clock speed of 2.70 GHz, and a FSB multiplier of 13.5x. Both processors are expected to be out by Q1 2009.

Reports suggest that the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) could receive manufacturing contracts by AMD, and long-time customer NVIDIA, for graphics processors based on the newest 40nm silicon fabrication process. The two giants in the visual computing industry, are expected to skip the 45nm process altogether. This is seen as a move to cut down manufacturing costs, and use the most feasible manufacturing technologies. Miniaturizing circuitry at that scale would allow them to build even more complex silicon machinery, with much higher transistor counts, while maintaining size constraints.

AMD on its part would have to use the services of TSMC, since the foundry company's fab in Dresden is only capable of 45nm SOI fabrication process, and that it would take as long as 2010, by the time the expected 32nm process is ready at the New York fab. The next star-entry for AMD would be the ATI RV870, and as for NVIDIA, it would continue development of monolithic high-end GPUs with GT216, a successor to the G200 GPU. Meanwhile, the companies could continue aggressive competition, with projections of up to 20% price-cuts by Christmas 2008 shopping season. Their 40nm GPU designs could be ready by the end of this year, and 40nm GPUs could be supplied by June, 2009.

The United States Department of Justice had issued notices to both NVIDIA corporation and AMD for their alleged involvement in malpractices with fixing prices in the graphics processor market, and inducing staged competition. Both companies were to be penalized if the antitrust investigations found the charges to be true. In its most recent press release, AMD states that the Dept. of Justice closed its investigation into these charges, and that no action would be taken against the company, in this regard. Press release follows:

On October 10, 2008, the U.S. Department of Justice informed AMD [NYSE: AMD] and ATI Technologies that it has closed its investigation into ATI Technologies' pricing and marketing practices in the sale of graphics processing units ("GPUs"). On December 1, 2006, AMD announced that ATI had received a subpoena from the U.S. Department of Justice.

AMD spokesman reassured today that the deal between AMD and Advanced Technology Investment Company won't violate any of the patent agreements AMD made with its main competitor Intel. Let me remind you that earlier that day Intel said it would review its processor licensing agreement with AMD, especially the agreement which allows AMD to use Intel's x86 chip instruction set, to ensure the ATIC deal does not violate any patent agreements. Phil Hughes, an AMD spokesman, wrote in an e-mail today:
"We are completely confident the structure of this transaction takes into account our cross-license agreements,"
"Rest assured - we plan to continue respecting Intel's intellectual property rights, just as we expect them to respect ours."
Financial analyst Hans Mosesmann even believes that the dispute between the two giants may become a weapon for Intel to solve some of its problems in court. If Intel manages to find something is wrong with this deal it can use it against Advanced Micro Deviced and make AMD drop the long-standing anti-trust suits against the company. Continue reading the full story here.

Here's an interesting story I found today. It's short, but I'm sure it won't end just like that and there'll be a lot more to discuss later.

Intel Corp. said on Tuesday it has "serious questions" about a deal announced by Advanced Micro Devices to spin off its manufacturing business and focus on chip design, and is ready to defend its patents. Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said that AMD and Intel have a patent cross-licensing agreement under which AMD pays royalties to Intel. "Intel has serious questions about this transaction as it relates to the license and will vigorously protect Intel's intellectual property rights," Mulloy said of AMD's announcement. Mulloy said Intel has asked AMD to make the agreement public but he said it would not, so he was not at liberty to discuss the matter in detail.

AMD and the Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) of Abu Dhabi today announced the creation of a U.S.-headquartered, leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing company to address growing demand for independent, leading-edge foundry production capabilities. The new global company, to be temporarily called "The Foundry Company", will serve this need by combining advanced process technology, industry-leading manufacturing facilities and aggressive plans to expand its global capacity footprint. At the same time, the Mubadala Development Company will increase its current investment in AMD to 19.3 percent on a fully diluted basis. AMD will contribute to The Foundry Company its manufacturing facilities, including two fabrication facilities in Dresden, Germany, as well as related assets and intellectual property rights.

AMD conducted a presentation at CEATEC Japan, where the company took a sneak-peak at how the role of GPUs would become critical to the PC of tomorrow. This of course revolved around the company's newly adopted "The Future is Fusion" slogan, integrating all of AMD's technological expertise into object and function oriented solutions for the PC industry.

Among the numerous slides that formed part of the presentation, one such slide, shows some very interesting points on what the year 2009 looks like, from AMD's perspective. It shows a lot of things slated for much later to make it to the industry. To begin with, the DirectX 11 API and Windows 7 (Vienna) operating system could make it to the industry in 2009. However, there's no mention of them being "released" as such, or if they could just be working prototypes, such as alpha releases for use by select parts of the industry for mutual technology development.