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AMD reveals Trinity specs, claims to beat Intel on price, multimedia, gaming

Sharif Sakr — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:01:00 EST

Itching for the details of AMD's latest Accelerated Processing Units (APUs)? Then get ready to scratch: Trinity has arrived and, as of today, it's ready to start powering the next generation of low-power ultra-portables, laptops and desktops that, erm, don't run Intel. The new architecture boasts up to double the performance-per-watt of last year's immensely popular Llano APUs, with improved "discrete-class" integrated graphics and without adding to the burden on battery life. How is that possible? By how much will Trinity-equipped devices beat Intel on price? And will it play Crysis: Warhead? Read on to find out.

Gallery: AMD reveals Trinity APU

Continue reading AMD reveals Trinity specs, claims to beat Intel on price, multimedia, gaming

AMD reveals Trinity specs, claims to beat Intel on price, multimedia, gaming originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 May 2012 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Imagination Technologies unveils G6200 and G6400, first two GPUs based on PowerVR Series6

Zachary Lutz — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:54:00 EST

First announced in February of last year, Imagination Technologies has officially announced the licensing availability of its first two GPUs based on the Series6 platform. The PowerVR G6200 and G6400 each promise to bring low power graphics to unprecedented levels and are said to deliver up to 20 times more horsepower than the current generation while also being five times more efficient. In tangible terms, the Series6 GPU cores are capable of exceeding 100 gigaflops and are said to approach the teraflop range. All chipsets based on Series6 are backward compatible with Series5 and fully support OpenGL 3.x, 4.x and ES, along with OpenCL 1.x and DirectX 10. Further, specific models will also support DirectX 11.1 with full WHQL compliance. Poised to shake up the mobile gaming ecosystem, Imagination has already lined up partners that include ST-Ericsson, Texas Instruments, Renesas Electronics and MediaTek. The full PR, complete with all the bragging, can be found after the break.

Continue reading Imagination Technologies unveils G6200 and G6400, first two GPUs based on PowerVR Series6

Imagination Technologies unveils G6200 and G6400, first two GPUs based on PowerVR Series6 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WebCL scores first demos, GPU accelerated apps headed to your browser

Terrence O'Brien — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 15:48:00 EST

Look, WebGL is great and everything but, in the era of general-purpose GPU computing, we know our 3D chips are capable of much more than just pushing pixels. WebCL is a new standard that brings OpenCL processing to the browser, leveraging the power of your graphics card to perform complex computations. Samsung and Nokia have both released prototype plug-ins, with Sammy's running exclusively in Safari on OS X using NVIDIA chips and Nokia focusing on the 32-bit Windows version of Firefox 4 and AMD GPUs. At the moment, the young technology doesn't offer much to the average user, but demos (after the break) show just how much faster OpenCL can be than traditional JavaScript -- more than 10-times quicker on some tests. Let the countdown to Folding@Home the Web App begin -- we're starting a pool now.

Continue reading WebCL scores first demos, GPU accelerated apps headed to your browser

WebCL scores first demos, GPU accelerated apps headed to your browser originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Jul 2011 15:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA announces GeForce GTX 580M and 570M, availability in the Alienware M18x and MSI GT780R (updated: MSI says no)

Dana Wollman — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 09:00:00 EST

We know you're going to be shocked -- shocked! -- to hear this, but NVIDIA's gone and refreshed its high-end line of GeForce GTX cards. The GTX 580M takes the place of the GTX 485M, and NVIDIA's bragging that it's the "fastest notebook GPU ever," capable, we're told, of besting the Radeon HD 6970M's tesselation performance by a factor of six. The new GTX 570M, meanwhile, promises a 20 percent speed boost over the last-generation 470M. Both 40-nanometer cards support DirectX11, OpenCL, PhysX, CUDA, 3D Vision, Verde drivers, Optimus, SLI, and 3DTV Play. As for battery life, NVIDIA's saying that when coupled with its Optimus graphics switching technology, the 580M can last through five hours of Facebook, but last we checked, that's not why y'all are shelling out thousands for beastly gaming rigs. You can find the 580M in the Alienware M17X and M18X (pictured) starting today, though you might have to wait a week or so for them to ship. Meanwhile, ~~the 570M is shipping in the MSI GT780R as you read this, and~~ you'll also find the 580M in a pair of 3D-capable Clevo laptops: the P170HM3 and the SLI-equipped P270WN. Handy chart full 'o technical details after the break.

Update: An MSI rep has let us know that contrary to earlier reports, the GT780R is not currently available with the 570M graphics card. The company added that it will offer some unspecified laptop with the 570M sometime in the "near" future. It's unclear if that laptop will, in fact, be the GT780R.

Continue reading NVIDIA announces GeForce GTX 580M and 570M, availability in the Alienware M18x and MSI GT780R (updated: MSI says no)

NVIDIA announces GeForce GTX 580M and 570M, availability in the Alienware M18x and MSI GT780R (updated: MSI says no) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Jun 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ARM intros next-gen Mali-T604 embedded GPU, Samsung first to get it (update: video)

Chris Ziegler — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 20:52:00 EST

Promising "visually rich user experiences not previously seen in consumer electronics devices," ARM has introduced its latest embedded GPU architecture, Mali-T604, at its Technology Conference 2010 in California today. Though we're unlikely to see it in devices any time soon, the introduction means that the new design is available to ARM licensees -- and notably, the company points out that partner Samsung will be the first to get hooked up. Considering Sammy competes in the high-end embedded system-on-chip space already with its ARM-based Hummingbird line of cores, adding in the Mali-T604 is probably the next logical step for them. ARM says that it's designed "specifically" with the needs of general purpose GPU computing in mind and includes extensive support both for OpenCL and DirectX, so look for some insane number-crunching capabilities on your next-generation phone, tablet, and set-top box. Follow the break for ARM's press release.

Update: We sat down with ARM's Jem Davies to get some more details about the new Mali, and discovered it's only the first of several potential next-gen GPUs to come as part of the Midgard platform -- while this particular processor is available with up to four shader cores, successors might have more. The T604 itself is no slouch, though, as it can theoretically deliver two to five times the performance of the company's existing Mali 400 GPUs core for core and clock for clock -- which themselves run circles around the PowerVR SGX 540 competition if you take ARM at its word. Davies told us that not only does the Mali-T604 do DirectX, it supports the game-friendly DirectX11 as well as the always-popular OpenGL ES 2.0, and will appear in an system-on-a-chip together with an ARM Cortex-A15 "Eagle" CPU, when both are eventually baked into silicon several years down the road. Of course, in the eyes of marketers the future is always now, so get a look at conceptual uses (hint: augmented reality) for ARM's new Mali right after the break.

Additional reporting by Sean Hollister

Continue reading ARM intros next-gen Mali-T604 embedded GPU, Samsung first to get it (update: video)

ARM intros next-gen Mali-T604 embedded GPU, Samsung first to get it (update: video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Nov 2010 20:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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OpenGL 4.0 arrives, brings more opportunities for general purpose GPU action

Vlad Savov — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:06:00 EST

What's a Game Developers Conference without some sweet new tools for developers to sink their teeth into? Khronos Group, the association behind OpenGL, has today announced the fourth generation of its cross-platform API spec, which takes up the mantle of offering a viable competitor to Microsoft's DirectX 11. The latest release includes two new shader stages for offloading geometry tessellation from the CPU to the GPU, as well as tighter integration with OpenCL to allow the graphics card to take up yet more duties off the typically overworked processor -- both useful additions in light of NVIDIA's newfound love affair with tessellation and supposed leaning toward general purpose GPU design in the Fermi chips coming this month. Lest you don't care that much about desktop gaming, OpenGL ES (Embedded Systems, a mobile offshoot of OpenGL) is the graphics standard on "virtually every shipping smart phone," meaning that whatever ripples start on the desktop front will be landing as waves on your next superphone. If that holds true, we can look forward to more involvement from our graphics chips beyond their usual 3D duties and into spheres we tend to care about -- such as video acceleration. Now you care, don't ya?

OpenGL 4.0 arrives, brings more opportunities for general purpose GPU action originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA launches Fermi next-gen GPGPU architecture, CUDA and OpenCL get even faster

Nilay Patel — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:09:00 EST

NVIDIA had told us it would be accelerating its CUDA program to try and get an advantage over its competitors as OpenCL brings general-purpose GPU computing to the mainstream, and it looks like that effort's paying off -- the company just announced its new Fermi CUDA architecture, which will also serve as the foundation of its next-gen GeForce and Quadro products. The new features are all pretty technical -- the world's first true cache hierarchy in a GPU, anyone? -- but the big takeaway is that CUDA and OpenCl should run even faster on this new silicon, and that's never a bad thing. Hit up the read links for the nitty-gritty, if that's what gets you going.

Read - NVIDIA Fermi site
Read - Hot Hardware analysis
Read - PC Perspective analysis

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

NVIDIA launches Fermi next-gen GPGPU architecture, CUDA and OpenCL get even faster originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Snow Leopard's Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL boost video encoding app by 50 percent

Nilay Patel — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:27:00 EST

It'll take some time before we see the true impact of OpenCL and the newly-open-sourced Grand Central Dispatch on OS X, but we're definitely intrigued by this early report from Christophe Ducommun, developer of MovieGate, who says that shifting his app to use the new tech has increased performance by around 50 percent on the same hardware. Testing on a 2007 2.66GHz quad-core Mac Pro with a GeForce 8800GT, MovieGate MPEG-2 encode speeds went from 104fps under Leopard to 150fps under Snow Leopard, and decoding CPU usage dropped from 165 percent to 70 percent. Now, yes, that's just one app, and most users don't have four cores to play with, but it's still an eye-opening result, and we're definitely hoping it's the start of a trend.

[Via MacRumors]

Filed under: Software

Snow Leopard's Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL boost video encoding app by 50 percent originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Snow Leopard shipping August 28th for $29, order now

Thomas Ricker — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:28:00 EST

Well, it's not September, but we're not going to hold an early launch of its performance-focused Snow Leopard OS against Apple. The Apple store has come back online bearing an order page for OS X version 10.6 in Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Pro... oh wait, it's just $29 as an upgrade from 10.5. August 28th, that's when, now go 'n get it.

While you wait for that order to ship, Apple wants you to know that Snow Leopard's Finder is more responsive, Mail loads messages twice as fast, Time Machine will complete initial backups 80 percent faster, and a 64-bit version of Safari 4 is 50 percent faster than its predecessors. There's even QuickTime X with a redesigned player that lets users view, record, trim and share video. Of course, this release also includes Grand Central Dispatch, a new way for devs to take advantage of multi-core processors as well as OpenCL support to accelerate apps with the help of that idling graphics processor. Oh, and out of the box support for Microsoft Exchange too. All in all, a worthy update, especially for the price.

P.S. Requires Intel-based Mac.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Snow Leopard shipping August 28th for $29, order now originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Havok and AMD show off OpenCL with pretty pretty dresses

Tim Stevens — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 09:46:00 EST

With all the talk about OpenCL and Snow Leopard together and how the spec will allow Apple's upcoming hotness to exploit graphics accelerators, it's easy to lose track of the place where the standard could make its biggest impact: gaming. Yes, OpenGL may have lost favor in that realm in recent years, but OpenCL looks to captivate the hearts and GPUs of gamers everywhere by applying some much-needed standardization to the physics acceleration realm, first shown in public at GDC running on some AMD hardware. Havok is demonstrating its Havok Cloth and Havoc Destruction engines, the former of which is embedded below, and we think you'll agree it's quite impressive. OpenCL allows such acceleration to switch between the GPU and CPU seamlessly and as needed depending on which is more available, hopefully opening the door to physics acceleration that actually affects gameplay and doesn't just exist to make you say, "Whoa."

Continue reading Havok and AMD show off OpenCL with pretty pretty dresses

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming, Laptops

Havok and AMD show off OpenCL with pretty pretty dresses originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Mar 2009 09:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA dishes about OpenCL

Nilay Patel — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:03:00 EST

We spent some time on the phone with NVIDIA today in the wake of last night's official release of the OpenCL GPU-processing spec, and we learned some interesting things. NVIDIA thinks OpenCL is going to bring a lot more attention to general-purpose GPU computing, and it's planning on stoking the flames -- not only is it accelerating the CUDA release schedule, it's planning on working with Microsoft on DirectX 11 Compute. Hit the break for some more highlights!

Continue reading NVIDIA dishes about OpenCL

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

NVIDIA dishes about OpenCL originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Dec 2008 20:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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OpenCL 1.0 spec released, GPUs everywhere to get a workout

Nilay Patel — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:51:00 EST

How time flies -- it was just a few weeks ago that the OpenCL spec was finalized and sent out for final legal review, and now it's here and ready to go. Over 20 partner companies (including AMD, NVIDIA, and, somewhat surprisingly, Intel) have signed on to the parallel programming standard originally proposed by Apple as part of Snow Leopard, and the final spec should allow apps to tap into multi-core CPUs, GPUs, DSPs and even variants of the Cell chip for everything from raw number crunching to interfacing with OpenGL. Sounds hot -- now we'll just have to see how Microsoft counters with the GPU acceleration expected to be built into Windows 7.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

OpenCL 1.0 spec released, GPUs everywhere to get a workout originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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OpenCL spec gets finalized, Snow Leopard says "purrrr"

Donald Melanson — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:09:00 EST

It's just taken a relatively short six months, but it looks like the team behind the Open Computing Language (or OpenCL) have already delivered the final spec for the standard, which puts it right on track for inclusion in OS X Snow Leopard. In fact, the team credits Apple with helping them meet the "impossible deadline," with Intel's Tim Mattson saying that Apple's decision to "support it in Snow Leopard was a huge plus to us," even if it forced them to "divorce our families" and left them "almost dead." The standard itself, which allows for greater leveraging of GPUs and other hardware, isn't quite ready to be implemented just yet, however, as it still has to go through the final stage of being vetted by all 20 partner companies for patent issues and whatnot. Once that's done, which will take a "minimum" of 30 days, they'll release the actual spec and begin the usual round demos.

[Via Ars Technica]

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

OpenCL spec gets finalized, Snow Leopard says "purrrr" originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Windows 7 to feature GPU acceleration like Apple's Snow Leopard?

Thomas Ricker — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 06:26:00 EST

A first true glimpse of Windows 7, Microsoft's Vista successor, is T minus 1 day and counting. So far we know very little. Oh sure, it supports multi-touch and takes 1,000 engineers to code but the real details will emerge from Tuesday's kickoff to the PDC 2008 developer conference. As detailed by TG Daily, the PDC track notes dedicate 22 of the 155 tracks to Windows 7 with 2 further dedicated to GPU acceleration under the titles, "Unlocking the GPU with Direct3D," and "Writing Your Application to Shine on Modern Graphics Hardware." Interesting times given Apple's announced OS X Snow Leopard support for OpenCL GPU acceleration in partnership with new best buds, Nvidia, and Intel planning to kill off the GPU entirely. Somebody has to be wrong.

[Thanks, Jeelz]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Windows 7 to feature GPU acceleration like Apple's Snow Leopard? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Oct 2008 06:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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