AMD denies reports company is for sale

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is denying reports that executives have taken steps that could lead to the company's sale.

Speculation began to spread Tuesday afternoon after Reuters reported that AMD has hired JPMorgan Chase & Co to explore business options, including a potential sale. According to Reuters, which cited unnamed sources, AMD is not focused on an outright sale of the company but could be looking to offload its patent portfolio.

One of the world's largest chip makers, AMD has been struggling in recent years against competitors like Intel, as well as a PC industry that has been pummeled by the growth in sales of tablets and smartphones.

Just last month, the chip maker announced it was laying off 15% of its workforce.

However, late this afternoon, AMD said it's not looking to sell. "AMD's board and management believe that the strategy the company is currently pursuing to drive long-term growth by leveraging AMD's highly-differentiated technology assets is the right approach to enhance shareholder value," the company said in an email to Computerworld. "AMD is not actively pursuing a sale of the company or significant assets at this time."

Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with ZK Research, said he wouldn't be surprised if AMD was looking into different sale options.

"I think selling off parts of the business would make sense," he said. "Raise some cash and then get laser focused in the higher growth areas.... Sell off some of the dead parts of the business and focus on gaming, mobile, etc. -- the high growth areas. Ditch PCs."

Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin, on Google+ or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed. Her email address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.

See more by Sharon Gaudin on Computerworld.com.

Read more about it industry in Computerworld's IT Industry Topic Center.

AMD to sell ARM-based server chips in 2014

Advanced Micro Devices has announced it will sell ARM-based server processors in 2014, ending its exclusive commitment to the x86 architecture and adding a new dimension to its decades-old battle with Intel.

AMD will license a 64-bit processor design from ARM and combine it with the Freedom Fabric interconnect technology it acquired when it bought SeaMicro earlier this year, AMD said Monday.

The result will be a new line of system-on-chip Opteron processors that AMD said will be ideal for the type of massive, web-scale workloads running in giant data centers like those operated by Facebook and Amazon.

AMD CEO Rory Read called the announcement a "seminal moment" and compared it to AMD's introduction of the first 64-bit x86 processors in 2003. AMD beat Intel to the punch with that move, and it hopes to gain a similar advantage by embracing ARM.

It's not clear yet if ARM-based CPUs will be successful in servers, but one industry analyst said the move by AMD will help. "I really think this raises ARM's server credibility, and the credibility of microservers as a segment," said Patrick Moorhead, president of Moor Insights and Strategy.

Server chips based on the x86 architecture will continue to be the mainstay of AMD's server business, Read said, but he thinks the ARM-based chips will open up new markets for the company. And while AMD is focused initially on servers, he didn't rule out the possibility that it will eventually make ARM processors for client devices such as tablets as well.

AMD hopes to sell the new server chips to vendors such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard, and will also sell them in its own servers under the SeaMicro brand. Today those systems are based on x86 processors.

AMD was joined at the event by representatives from Red Hat, Dell, Facebook and (by video) Amazon, a sign of the interest ARM-based server chips are generating.

The timing of Monday's announcement was a bit awkward, since ARM has yet to unveil the 64-bit processor design that AMD plans to license. It's likely to be a design code-named Atlas that ARM is expected to unveil at its TechCon conference Tuesday, though neither company would confirm that Monday.

The timing was also bad because hurricane Sandy prevented ARM CEO Warren East from flying in from the UK in time to attend the event. He appeared in a video that was hastily shot in the back of a taxi at Heathrow airport, endorsing the partnership with AMD.

ARM-based servers make sense for the new computing requirements created by services such as social networks and online gaming, said Lisa Su, an AMD senior vice president and general manager. Those workloads need a processor that can efficiently handle very large volumes of small transactions.

"The data center is being inundated with massive amounts of data and there has to be a way to do it more efficiently in a smaller space with a lower cost point," she said.

ARM architectures are considered more energy-efficient for some workloads because they were originally designed for mobile phones and consume less power. That has attracted several vendors to the space, including Calxeda, Applied Micro and Marvell, all of whom are developing ARM-based chips for servers.

AMD hopes to distinguish itself with two SeaMicro technologies -- a custom chip that integrates many components from a traditional server board onto one chip, allowing for dense server designs; and its Freedom Fabric, which can connect thousands of servers in a cluster with low latency and at relatively low cost.

"The fabric technology is the secret sauce; this is what will make AMD's server solution different from other vendors," Su said.

Intel has said it won't make ARM-based processors, in part because it doesn't want to pay ARM a royalty on each chip. But it has been working hard to reduce the power consumption of its own server chips and said it is confident of its technology roadmap.

The company is due to release a low-power server chip in the second half of the year code-named Centerton, and will follow that up next year with a part dubbed Avoton.

"We have what is required by customers -- low powered CPUs, support for key server features, and software compatibility to allow use of current workloads and not force any migration," Intel spokesman Radek Walczyk said via email.

That still doesn't give it an equivalent to AMD's Freedom Fabric, however.

"Think of the chip as half the battle," said Moorhead, the industry analyst. "The part of the battle [Intel] hasn't discussed yet is the fabric that makes hundreds or thousands of these parts talk to each other. That's the magic that guys like Calxeda and AMD are bringing to the table."

James Niccolai covers data centers and general technology news for IDG News Service. Follow James on Twitter at @jniccolai. James's e-mail address is james_niccolai@idg.com

IBM moving to replace silicon with carbon nanotubes in computer chips

IBM has hit a milestone in its quest to come up with a successor to silicon computer chips.

The company said Sunday its research into semiconductors based on carbon nanotubes, or CNTs, has yielded a new method to accurately place them on wafers in large numbers. The technology is viewed as one way to keep shrinking chip sizes once current silicon-based technology hits its limit.

IBM said it has developed a way to place over 10,000 transistors made from CNTs on a single chip, two magnitudes higher than previously possible. While still far below the density of commercial silicon-based chips -- current models in desktop computers can have over a billion transistors -- the company hailed it as a breakthrough on the path to using the technology in real-world computing.

The company made the announcement to mark the publication of an article detailing the research in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Intel's latest processors are built using silicon transistors with 22-nanometer technology, and simpler NAND flash storage chips have been demonstrated using "1X" technology somewhere below that, but modern manufacturing is nearing its physical limits. Intel has predicted it will produce chips using sizes in the single digits within the next decade.

The march toward ever-smaller transistors has produced chips that use less power and can run faster, but can also be made at lower cost, as more can be crammed onto a single wafer. The increasing number of transistors on a given amount of silicon was famously predicted by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, who predicted they would double steadily over time.

Carbon nanotubes, tube-shaped carbon molecules, can also be used as transistors in circuits, and at dimensions of less than 10 nanometers. They are smaller and can potentially carry higher currents than silicon, but are difficult to manipulate at large densities.

Unlike traditional chips, in which silicon transistors are etched into circuit patterns, making chips using CNTs involves placing them onto a wafer with high accuracy. Semiconducting CNTs also come mixed with metallic CNTs that can produce faulty circuits, and must be separated before they are used.

IBM said its latest method solves both issues. The company's researchers mix CNTs into liquid solutions that is then used to soak specially prepared substrates, with chemical "trenches" to which the CNTs bond in the correct alignment needed for electrical circuits. The method also eliminates the non-conducting metallic CNTs.

The company said the breakthrough will not yet lead to commercial nano-transistors, but is an important step along the way.

Before they can challenge silicon, however, they must also pass an often-overlooked part of Moore's law - affordability. His law applies to "complexity for minimum component costs," or what consumers are likely to see in the market.

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

With tablet chip, Intel tries to lessen its dependency on PCs

With Intel unveiling a tablet processor this week, analysts say the chip maker may be on track to becoming less dependent on the struggling PC market.

Intel on Thursday took the wraps off a new processor code-named Clover Trail. The Atom Z2760 chip is set to launch when Microsoft ships Windows 8 toward the end of October.

The chip is designed to boost battery life and performance for Windows 8 tablets.

The unveiling of the new tablet chip is a big step for Intel, which has dominated the PC market but has yet to compete in the burgeoning tablet market where ARM chips dominate. Tablets have been taking a big chunk out of a PC sales and Intel needs to branch out into other lucrative -- and growing -- markets.

"Intel has so far missed out on the smartphone and tablet boom, and these devices are driving a massive amount of chip volume," said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. "Intel needs to have a piece of these high growth and high volume markets in order to remain the dominant player in the chips space over the long haul."

Olds isn't alone in his take on Intel's market position.

On Wednesday, the day before Intel unveiled its new tablet chip, Craig Ellis, an analyst with investment bank Caris & Co., issued a reassessment of Intel, lowering his earnings estimate and stock price target.

Ellis wrote that he made the reassessment because the growing interest in tablets is hurting the PC market and Intel more than he had expected.

Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, said he's not surprised that Intel would be reassessed despite coming out with a tablet chip this week. The company may be working a foot in the door in the tablet market, but it still has to compete with Apple's wildly popular iPad.

Since the iPad, which uses Apple's A5X processor, dominates the tablet market, a smaller percentage of the market remains for Intel's products.

However, by combining Intel's Atom Z2760 chip and Windows 8, more consumers may be lured toward a non-Apple tablet, Moorhead said.

"Clover Trail wasn't ever designed to compete head-on with Apple, but was focused more on a new and growing enterprise tablet market," he added. "With Intel's Clover Trail, enterprise IT would need to be crazy to start deploying iPads."

While it's important for Intel to branch out of the PC market, Moorhead noted that it's too early to declare the demise of laptops and desktops.

"It is vital for Intel to successfully branch out and be successful long term in tablets and phones," he said. "Let's not forget, though, that Intel controls a PC market that isn't going to evaporate overnight, and they power the cloud that drives all those mobile devices. Growth is currently being impacted by people buying a phone or tablet instead of a new PC, but until those devices can replace the PC, people still need them."

Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin, on Google+ or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed. Her email address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.

See more by Sharon Gaudin on Computerworld.com.

Read more about processors in Computerworld's Processors Topic Center.

Meet Clover Trail, Intel's chip for mid-range Windows 8 tablets and hybrids

If you're looking for a single computing device that marries the easy-breezy touch control of a tablet with the meat-and-potatoes productivity of a laptop, look no further than Intel's new Clover Trail CPU platform. That was the lofty messaging Intel shared at a press event Thursday held in the Museum of Modern Art.

Clover Trail, of course, was discussed at the Intel Developer Forum earlier this month, but today marks the next-gen Atom platform's official coming out party. The stage act was thin on technical details and heavy on marketing spin and finger food, but if nothing else, PCWorld got to play with no fewer than eight Windows 8 hybrid devices running the new Intel Atom Z2760 processor, which runs up to 1.8GHz.

The Clover Trail chip is targeted at low-power-consumption Windows 8 devices that can double as both tablets and laptops. This hardware won't pack the performance punch of hybrids and full-on Ultrabooks running Core-class silicon, but the devices may be just what consumers and business people need for common productivity applications like Office.

"New low-power technology gives us the computing power, the flexibility, to be in both parts of Windows, and to put it in really cool, sexy devices," said Fredrik Hamberger, HP's Director of Consumer Product Marketing, at the event.

As with earlier iterations of the Atom processor platform, Clover Trail's major focus is on low power consumption, a key ingredient for any mobile device that needs to boast long battery life. A few features have been added to Clover Tail to improve application performance, but overall the CPU represents only an incremental advance over the previous generation Atom platform.

Clock speeds have increased while power usage has actually decreased. Also of note: The new CPU still uses a non-Intel PowerVR graphics processor, the SGX 544MP2. Intel tapped PowerVR for its Medfield SoC, which was targeted for smart phones thanks to the GPU's efficiency and rendering performance. Earlier Atom procesors in netbooks used limited versions of Intel graphics, and Intel will be using its own graphics core in future Atom SoCs.

In the service of improved power management, Clover Trail adds a pair of new power states that Intel calls S0i1 and S0i3. S0i1 is similar to the S0iX power state built into the higher performance Haswell processor. S0i1 is an "active" sleep state that takes over when a user stops interacting with his PC, but hasn't actually put the machine to sleep. In S0i1, the PC can resume almost instantaneously, giving users the impression that the system is active even while it was in a sleep state.

S0i3 is a connected standby state. In this state, the system can still wake up in milliseconds, but power consumption in this state is measured in microwatts (millionths of a watt.) The two new sleep states translates into longer battery life. Intel estimates standby battery life for a typical Z2720 tablet to be up to three weeks.

Clover Trail is also a dual-core architecture, and supports Intel's Hyper-Threading technology, so it can support four simultaneous threads. The new CPU will also include hardware video decoding, which will enable full HD video to run while consuming minimal power. As with Medfield, the SoC that Intel is using in a few smartphone designs, Clover Trail is built on Intel's older 32nm manufacturing process.

As far as new information announced at Thursday's shindig, there wasn't a lot. The event was more of a PR stunt and hardware showcase than a technical briefing. That said, we did learn that Clover Trail supports cameras up to 8 megapixels, includes hardware assisted AES encryption for improved security, and offers a burst mode for when short periods of higher performance are needed, similar to the Turbo Boost used by Intel's Core CPU line.

ASUS already has much experience with docking tablets thanks to its Android line, and now the company will attempt to repeat its tricks in the Windows 8 world with the 11.6-inch VivoTab.

At the event, we played with some of the Clover Trail-based tablets and convertible laptops. They seem much more responsive than the previous generation of Atom-based netbooks, but until we have actual products in the lab for serious testing, it's hard to say just how well they'll perform for users in the field.

The Windows 8 user interface scrolls smoothly, and even desktop applications seem snappy and responsive. The one 3D game demonstrated at the Thursday event seemed a little jerky and slow, but the fact that a 3D-accelerated desktop action game ran at all was impressive. When it comes to raw benchmarking, performance is likely to be better than first-generation netbooks, with their single-core CPUs. On the other hand, odd feature limitations still exist for the Clover Trail platform, such as lack of USB 3.0 support and maximum memory support of only 2GB.

Intel has expended considerable engineering effort on the CPU's package design so that extremely thin Clover Trail systems can be built while still maintaining adequate heat dissipation. To wit: Intel's Clover Trail reference device is a 10-inch slate that's 8.7mm thin and weighs a little more than 1.25 pounds. Intel estimates that custom designs under a pound and less than 8.5mm are possible.

In many ways, Clover Trail is an evolutionary step in the development of Intel systems-on-chips, or SOCs. The next generation of Atom, code named Bay Trail, will be built using the latest 22nm process and will finally bring quad-core CPUs to Intel's SOC line. Bay Trail will also include Intel's own integrated graphics core.

Clover Trail tablets pitched as workplace-friendly

PC makers say their Windows tablets are business-friendly, but one analyst said it's still consumers that drive the market

Some of the tablet makers at a launch event for Intel's "Clover Trail" processor emphasized the business smarts of their products as a way to distinguish them from Apple's market-leading iPad.

Dell, Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard, Acer and other vendors are all banking on the new version of Intel's Atom chip, officially called the Z2760, coupled with Microsoft's Windows 8 OS, to give them a fighting chance in a market dominated by Apple.

Intel invited PC makers to show off their Clover Trail Windows 8 tablets at a launch event Thursday in San Francisco. The new Atom is a dual-core processor that runs at up to 1.8GHz and offers a "full PC experience," according to Erik Reid, general manager of Intel's mobile client platforms group.

Clover Trail tablets will play up to 10 hours of video on a single charge and last up to three weeks in standby mode, he said. Some models will be only 8.5 millimeters thick, he said, a hair's breadth thinner than the iPad.

Taking on Apple will be tough, but emphasizing how Windows tablets fit well in an office environment is the best hope for PC makers, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64.

"I don't know if it's going to be successful, but it's their best shot at success," he said.

Because the tablets run Windows on x86 processors they will be able to drop easily into a Windows 7 environment, working with PC technologies like Active Directory, Domain Join and Group Policy, Reid said.

"This is very easy to manage and deploy, it goes right into a Windows 7 environment," said Lenovo's Tom Butler, describing the company's Thinkpad Tablet 2.

They'll also run a broad range of productivity applications, such as Office and Quicken. Intel showed a sales application it developed with SAP that had a Metro-like interface, and a medical application doctors can use to look up patient records and view x-rays.

Dell went furthest in positioning its tablets for business. It will offer its Latitude 10 with an optional finger-print scanner and smart card reader built into the back, for security authentication, and its tablets also have a removable battery, for "shift workers" who need to swap out a battery before they can get back to a power supply.

The company will offer tablets for "multiple budgets and industries," and applications for vertical industries such as health care will be certified for its tablet at the outset, said Bill Gordon, Dell executive director for end user computing. "We also have a docking station that turns this product into a desktop," he said.

Indeed, nearly all the devices shown Thursday could snap into a full-sized keyboard. Some had a separate battery in the keyboard. "Most of the time, when you unplug this tablet piece by itself it will be fully charged," because it's been in a dock all day, said Hewlett-Packard's Fredrik Hamberger, who showed HP's Envy X2.

The X2 uses magnets to make snapping the screen back into the dock a one-handed operation.

Bret Berg of Samsung's mobility group said he expects users to have its Series 5 tablet docked during the day when they're creating content, then undocked at home when they're watching video or listening to music.

All the vendors played up the consumer appeal of their tablets as well, but there was an underlying theme that x86 and Windows are a better fit for the workplace than iOS.

"It's about having a product that can transition seamlessly between the consumer and the enterprise," Reid said.

Industry analyst Rob Enderle said it's true that IT departments would rather deal with Windows than iOS tablets. But it's not IT departments that are driving the tablet market forward, he said, it's consumers who buy them for themselves or request them at work.

For that reason, Enderle said, PC makers still need to win over consumers in order to challenge Apple.

James Niccolai covers data centers and general technology news for IDG News Service. Follow James on Twitter at @jniccolai. James's e-mail address is james_niccolai@idg.com

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.

Intel hopes for tablet breakthrough with Clover Trail, Windows 8

After months of heralding its Clover Trail processor for Windows 8 tablets, Intel on Thursday unveiled the chip that it believes is its ticket to success in the ARM-dominated market.

Tablets with Clover Trail, aka the Atom Z2760 chip, will become available around the end of October when Microsoft ships Windows 8, Intel officials said. The chip will facilitate long battery life for Windows 8 tablets and full HD video.

While Intel dominates the PC market, it faces a tough road in the mobile battle with ARM, whose processors ship in most smartphones and tablets including Apple's iPad. Intel has high hopes for Windows 8, and has worked with Microsoft to take advantage of OS features to provide fast performance and long battery life in tablets.

Microsoft will release Windows 8 for Intel-based tablets and Windows RT for ARM-based tablets. Intel has said Windows 8 devices will have the advantage of supporting existing Windows applications and drivers, and users will be able to install existing Windows 7 programs and attach peripherals like printers and cameras. That could be an issue with Windows RT tablets, which may prove more popular with users who don't need that ability. But Windows RT devices may have advantages in price and battery life.

Intel has a better chance to succeed in the tablet market with the touch-based Windows 8, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research. Clover Trail's predecessors were used in tablets running Windows 7, which was a desktop and not a mobile OS.

Intel's primary goal with Clover Trail is to reduce power consumption in its tablet chips so it can catch up with ARM, whose processors were originally designed for smartphones and are considered more power efficient.

Clover Trail is faster and more power efficient than the previous Atom tablet chip, code-named Oak Trail, which appeared in just a handful of Windows 7 tablets starting in 2011. Clover Trail is made using an advanced, 32-nanometer manufacturing process, which made the chip smaller in size while reducing power leakage.

"With each generation the product becomes a better fit," McCarron said. "They are doing everything they can."

Device makers have already shown off upcoming tablets with the Clover Trail chip. Lenovo announced the ThinkPad Tablet 2, while Hewlett-Packard announced the Envy X2, a PC with a detachable keyboard that turns into a tablet. Asus and Samsung have also announced Windows 8 tablets with Clover Trail. A prominent name missing is Microsoft, which has announced a Surface tablet model based on Intel's faster but more power hungry Core processors and also a model with Windows RT.

Device makers have indicated the starting prices of Clover Trail could be around US$500 or higher, which is more than the iPad.

The Atom Z2760 is a dual-core processor that runs at 1.8GHz and has 1MB of L2 cache. Depending on the configuration, tablets with the Z2760 can include NFC and LTE capabilities, Intel said. Some of the image processing features were drawn from the Atom chip for smartphones code-named Medfield, which is now in handsets from companies including Lenovo, Motorola, Orange, Megafon, ZTE and Lava International.

Intel is open to making Clover Trail variants for device makers, said Steve Smith [CQ], director of tablets at Intel. The initial Clover Trail chips will be tuned to Windows 8, though the company wants to tune the Linux OS to take advantage of power-saving and graphics features on the chip. The company also offers Medfield for tablets, with those devices supporting Google's Android.

Clover Trail will be succeeded next year by a tablet chip made using a 22-nanometer process, and by a 14-nanometer tablet chip in 2014.

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

AMD's new desktop chips make overclocking affordable

AMD's new A10 and A8 chips that can be overclocked are priced between $100 and $150, lower than Intel's competitive offerings

Advanced Micro Devices' latest A-series quad-core desktop processors balance the need for speed with price -- they run at up to 4.2GHz, but can be overclocked to 6.5GHz with liquid nitrogen cooling, the company said.

The company is offering two quad-core chips, the A10-5800K and the A8-5600K, that can be unlocked. The processors are faster and cheaper than competitive Intel chips, said AMD desktop products manager Adam Kozak during a conference call to discuss the new chips.

The new chips will allow manufacturers to build cheaper desktops with features such as overclocking and upgradability not usually available in processors in the US$100 to $150 price range, Kozak said. Intel's unlockable processors start at $216, according to a Sept. 2 price list.

Chip makers in the past decade have reverted to adding more cores instead of cranking up clock speed to balance system performance and power consumption. But Intel and AMD are still consistently trying to claim the performance crown by offering chips that can be overclocked. AMD last year broke a processor speed world record by clocking a high-end FX-series chip to 8.429GHz in a system cooled by tanks of liquid helium, and the feat was noted by Guinness World Records.

AMD is targeting budget desktops and Kozak said the chips are available with integrated graphics processors or can be paired with external graphics processors. The chips can be unlocked to crank up CPU and graphics processor clock speeds, which is especially handy for enthusiasts seeking improved application and graphics performance.

The chips are based on the Piledriver microarchitecture, which is also used in the latest laptop processors code-named Trinity released by AMD starting in the middle of this year. AMD's internal benchmarks revealed the new chips provide 25 percent to 37 percent overall faster system performance than the older desktop chips code-named Llano, which were released last year.

The unlockable chips have 4MB of cache, consume 100 watts of power and are identifiable by the K moniker. The A10-5800K has a maximum CPU clock speed of 4.2GHz and 384 graphics cores with 800MHz GPU clock speed. The A8-5600K has a maximum clock speed of 3.9GHz and 256 graphics cores with 760MHz GPU clock speed.

The new products announced also include chips that cannot be unlocked. The quad-core A10-5700 runs at up to 4GHz and the A8-5500 runs at a clock speed of up to 3.7GHz. The chips draw 65 watts of power and have 4MB cache.

AMD did not provide an exact price for the chips, but said they will be in the range of about $120 in units of 1,000. The chip will be available starting Oct. 2 through component channels worldwide.

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