AMD finally makes a tablet play with dual-core Hondo chip

Advanced Micro Devices renewed its attempt to make an impact in the tablet market, this time with its new dual-core Z-60 chip which the company introduced on Tuesday.

Beyond tablets, the new dual-core chip, code-named Hondo, could be used in hybrid PC-tablet devices. Many new devices such as HP's Envy X2 have screens that can pop out from a keyboard dock to become tablets.

AMD's Z-60 chip is timed for the launch of Microsoft's Windows 8, which will become available in computers starting on Oct. 26. AMD-based tablets will soon follow, the company said.

A tablet with a Z-60 chip could be expected this month, said Gary Silcott, an AMD spokesman. He didn't name the company that would release the product or an expected price, saying he couldn't speak for the device makers.

Initial Windows 8 tablets and hybrids such as the Envy X2 and Lenovo's ThinkPad Tablet 2 will use Intel's x86 chips and ship at the Windows 8 launch. The ThinkPad Tablet 2 will start at $629, but AMD has said it will compete with Intel-based ultrabooks and tablets on prices.

AMD will also compete with ARM, whose processors will appear in tablets with Microsoft's Windows RT OS. Dell, Asus, Samsung are scheduled to launch tablets with RT, and ARM processors are already used in most tablets with Android and iOS operating systems. Qualcomm, Nvidia and Texas Instruments are making ARM-based chips for Windows RT tablets.

Any win is important to AMD right now, even if they are just PCs and not tablets, said Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research.

"They are positioning Hondo as a solution between ARM and Atom and Core for mid-priced productivity tablets, which is a difficult position. Even if the segment will exist, it is not clear what price band it would occupy," McGregor said.

The Hondo chip will run at a clock speed of 1GHz and draw 4.5 watts of power, according to product slides from AMD. The chip will have 80 integrated Radeon graphics processor cores, which will give tablets high-definition video and gaming capabilities. The Radeon graphics core will support DirectX 11 and have the capability to support fill high-definition 1080p displays. Many tablets today have 1366-by-768 or 1280-by-800-pixel resolution displays.

A Windows 8 tablet with the Z-60 will provide 10 hours of battery life on a single battery charge, eight hours of web continuous browsing, and six hours of 720p video, according to AMD's benchmarks. A tablet will boot up Windows 8 in 25 seconds and resume from sleep in just two seconds. The chip is based on the CPU core code-named Bobcat, which is also used in AMD's low-power C-series and E-series netbook chips.

Intel has made an Atom chip code-named Clover Trail for tablets, which will also offer 10 hours of battery life. AMD said that existing applications will work with its chips. Existing Windows applications will not work with ARM-based tablets with Windows RT, like with Intel's Clover Trail chip.

Hondo's success is important to AMD, which is heavily reliant on the slumping PC market. The Z-60 chip will succeed the earlier dual-core Z-01, which was released in June last year and drew around 6 watts of power. However, the chip was considered a failure as it appeared in only a handful of tablets such as MSI's WindPad.

The lack of a tablet market strategy was one of the reasons that led to the former AMD CEO Dirk Meyer's resignation in early 2011. AMD appointed former Lenovo exec Rory Read as the new CEO in August last year, and he has made the tablet market one of his top priorities. Earlier this year, the company ripped up its old chip roadmap, and introduced a new strategy for tablet, server and PC chips. Hondo is based on the company's old chip roadmap, but the company plans next year to release a new tablet chip code-named Tamesh, which will be based on the faster and more power-efficient Jaguar CPU core.

Hondo is still not on the same playing field as tablets with Intel's Clover Trail or ARM processors, and AMD understands this, McGregor said.

"On the positive side, AMD is still delivering new products. On the negative side, the size of the market is unclear for this product," McGregor said.

Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductors for IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh. Agam's e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com

Android apps coming to an AMD-powered PC near you

A new partnership between virtual Android specialist BlueStacks and microchip maker AMD will see much of the Google Play store's stock of apps made available to Windows users running AMD hardware, the company announced Thursday.

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Users wishing to run Android apps on their AMD-powered Windows PCs -- including those running Windows 8 -- will be able to use the free BlueStacks App Player program to do just that. AMD's AppZone store can also be used with BlueStacks' Cloud Connect system, letting users sync Android apps from their phones or tablets to an AMD device.

"By collaborating with BlueStacks, we are enabling software developers to more easily tap into the full capabilities of AMD's products, and providing millions of consumers with great experiences as they can now run Android apps on AMD-powered devices," Manju Hegde, corporate vice president of heterogeneousapplications and developer solutions, said in a statement.

Android apps run through the AppZone will take advantage of AMD's graphics acceleration technology -- either in the form of a discrete graphics card or the company's integrated accelerated processing units.

AMD is also working to convince OEMs to ship products with the AppZone pre-loaded, offering baked-in Android functionality to its devices.

BlueStacks first rolled out the App Player in 2011, and ported the functionality to OS X this July, giving Mac users the unusual option of running Android software on an Apple product. The company's Cloud Connect sync application has been downloaded more than 100,000 times from the Play store, and the new integration with AMD could see that number increase substantially.

Email Jon Gold at jgold@nww.com and follow him on Twitter at @NWWJonGold.

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BlueStacks store brings Android apps to PCs

Chipmaker AMD takes aim at Intel with BlueStacks player.

PC users cringed at the news that the Windows 8 app store has just 2,000 apps ready to go, but fear not: The free AMD AppZone store is today bringing 500,000 Android apps to PCs.

Software developer BlueStacks and partner AMD are touting the AMD AppZone store as the biggest collection of PC-compatible Android apps, which range from games and news to productivity tools and antivirus software. About 50 of the apps are free to download.

BlueStacks last year put out their Android x86 app player and attracted investment from AMD. The two took BlueStacks' original player, which was designed for Intel PCs, and expanded its use to AMD-powered PCs.

AMD produces accelerated processing units for PC and gaming console manufacturers. Competing aggressively with Intel, today AMD also announced its new Trinity APU, which ships Oct. 2. The company said it plans to partner with PC OEMs to preload AppZone and selected apps onto new PCs going forward. Intel also has its own app store, AppUp. AMD claims its store has more apps than AppUp and the Windows 8 store.

In a statement, BlueStacks CEO Rosen Sharma said the company is gearing up for the launch of Windows 8, which will bring a touch-screen, app-friendly interface to many PCs, by bringing a wide selection of Android apps to the PC market.

"App stores and apps represent a multi-billion dollar opportunity," Sharma said. "BlueStacks-powered business models are ready to disrupt the PC industry by leveraging the unprecedented growth in the mobile ecosystem."

For now, apps can be controlled using mouses and keyboards. Android smartphone users can transfer their mobile apps to their PCs using BlueStacks' Cloud Connect app.

AMD announces Trinity APUs: superb graphics, improved CPU

AMD is launching a new generation of A-series accelerated processing units, which include improved Piledriver CPU cores.

Intel's been getting all the attention on the CPU front lately with the announcement of its upcoming Haswell CPU, but AMD is trying to crash the party with the launch of its new APU (accelerated processing unit) code-named Trinity. Officially announced Thursday, the Trinity APU combines current-generation Radeon 7000-style graphics technology with up to four CPU cores built around AMD's latest Piledriver CPU cores.

AMD's proposition for its APU line is that graphics are becoming increasingly important across a wide range of applications, not just gaming. The company calls out applications such as Winzip 16.5, Arcsoft Total Media Theater, Internet Explorer 9 and 10, VLC (both encoding and decoding) and GIMP (a free graphics editing tool) as examples of applications that perform substantially better on AMD APUs than equivalently priced Intel CPUs.

And on the gaming side, APUs have traditionally perform considerably better than Intel counterparts with integrated graphics processors.

The new A10 represents AMD's flagship APU. It's positioned against Intel's Core i3 3220. The A10-5800K offers four x86 cores running AMD's Turbo Core 3.0 boost technology, which boosts maximum clock frequency as high as 4.2GHz, though the normal operating clock rate remains at 3.8GHz.

Trinity's built-in AMD Radeon HD 7660D GPU includes 384 graphics cores (which AMD calls stream processors) running at 800MHz. It's worth noting that this number of stream cores gives the 7660D higher potential performance than AMD's entry-level discrete GPUs, such as the Radeon HD 7450, which only have 160 graphics cores. Given the emphasis on graphics, it's no surprise that the GPU takes up over half the Trinity die space.

Trinity's aggressive pricing suggests that its CPU performance may not compare well with even lower-end Intel quad-core CPUs, such as the Core i5 3450. On the other hand, the built-in Radeon HD 7660D graphics core should offer substantially better gaming and GPU compute performance than the Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics core built into the higher-end Intel CPUs. On the desktop side, most Intel dual-core CPUs ship with the lower-end Intel HD 2500 GPU, whose 3D performance is pretty anemic.

On the other hand, the new APUs are fairly power hungry, and are focused on desktop performance. The highest end A10 APU consumes 100W (thermal design power), considerably more than its targeted competition. (Intel's Core i3 3220 requires just 55W.) AMD introduced lower power APUs for laptops in May, 2012, which include processors with power consumption ranging from 17W to 35W. AMD still lacks a very low-power APU suitable for tablets and similar mobile devices. The new APUs are built using 32nm process technology, which translates into larger chip sizes and higher voltages than the 22nm process used to build Intel's Ivy Bridge CPUs.

The APUs also include full support for 16 PCI Express 2.0 lanes, which lets users install discrete graphics cards running at full bandwidth. The integrated GPU will run in concert with a discrete AMD Radeon HD 6670 graphics card using AMD's CrossFire X performance, which should nearly double graphics performance. For roughly $80, the system would offer graphics performance approaching AMD's midrange Radeon HD 7850 discrete graphics card in many applications. When adding a high-end graphics card, the internal graphics core is disabled.

As with AMD's discrete graphics cards, the new APUs support AMD's Eyefinity monitor technology. Motherboards with the right mix of display connectors can drive up to three displays.

In addition to the new APUs, AMD is introducing a new platform, socket FM2. The new APUs will require new motherboards using socket FM2 and the A85X chipset.

The combination of A85X includes most connectivity technologies essential for modern PCs, including USB 3.0, additional PCI Express lanes, audio and SATA, though motherboard makers will need to build in networking capability using discrete chips, since the A85X doesn't have built in support for Ethernet or WiFi.

The new Trinity based APUs and motherboards based on FM2 will start shipping on October 2nd. The impact of AMD's Trinity APU on AMD's bottom line is uncertain. While Trinity's graphics performance is impressive, the CPU cores still haven't caught up with Intel, and the power requirements are pretty steep relative to the competition.