AMD today introduced the latest entry to the AMD Embedded G-Series processor family with the AMD Embedded G-T16R Accelerated Processing Unit (APU). The AMD G-T16R is targeted at very low power, small form factor and cost-sensitive embedded designs that require a combination of x86 compatibility and graphics. The optimized design of the AMD Embedded G-T16R sips power, with power consumption of just 2.3 wattsiv on average or 4.5 watts thermal design power (TDP).

Embedded product designers are taking to the industry's green challenge to design a broad range of next-generation applications for the industrial control, point-of-sale, medical appliance and transportation markets. For example, industrial customers can use the APU to help create greener factories based on more power-efficient factory hardware. Additionally, embedded designers can develop applications like point-of-sale order entry stations and tablets, medical bedside terminals and even solar-powered traffic control devices using the AMD G-T16R.

Records are made to be broken, so shatter them with the new and unbelievably fast Club 3D Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. In March, Club 3D introduced the Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition, With a reference engine clock of 1GHz, this represented an engineering milestone for the graphics card industry. With the new Radeon HD 7970 GHz, we are continuing to deliver on this high-performance pedigree.

How is the GHz Edition variant of the Radeon HD 7970 different? The Club 3D HD 7970 GHz Edition embodies the maturity of the 28nm process, and the scalability of the Graphics Core Next architecture. Due to both of these factors, the GHz variant raises the GPU core clockspeed from 925MHz to 1000MHz+. This card also features an extension to AMD Powertune technology called "Boost", which allows the GPU to dynamically adjust both voltage and clockspeed above the reference clock of 1GHz+.

Following the announcement by AMD of the availability of the HD 7970 GHz Edition, the latest product using its highly acclaimed Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture, SAPPHIRE Technology, one of the World's leading manufacturers and a global supplier of graphics cards, is happy to announce that this latest generation of GPUs from AMD will form the basis of several cutting edge new models.

Within the next few weeks, SAPPHIRE will introduce the eagerly awaited TOXIC Edition and Vapor-X models in its HD 7970 family. The TOXIC Edition is a limited edition factory overclocked model - delivering best in class performance and targeted at the enthusiast. The Vapor-X models use SAPPHIRE's exclusive Vapour Chamber cooling technology to deliver optimised performance whilst retaining low noise and cool operation.

Today AMD launched the world's fastest graphics processing unit (GPU), the AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. The AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition uses AMD's innovative Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture to deliver astonishing performance and breathtaking image quality, providing world-class gameplay at the highest resolutions in the most demanding games such as Battlefield 3, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and DiRT Showdown.

"The AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition rounds out our award-winning GCN family, providing world-class gameplay thanks to the industry's fastest single GPU," said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager, GPU Division, AMD. "Gamers have been hungry for our AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series since our launch last December. We have been able to meet that growing demand as we expanded our AMD Radeon HD 7000 offerings and brought the industry's most advanced graphics across a complete family of leading-edge desktop and notebook graphics cards."

LucidLogix (Lucid), GPU virtualization software leader, today announced that Virtu and Virtu MVP GPU virtualization product family is now found in more than 100 Intel and AMD motherboard models, setting the standard for improved integrated and discrete GPU utilization, visual quality, power management and system responsiveness.

"High quality products and great service are what Asus products are all about. Virtu MVP adds that value across our line of motherboards, allowing users to enjoy best of both Intel graphics on one hand and on the other, enjoy discrete graphics with sharpest images and highest frame rates with MVP's Virtual Vsync," said Joe Hsieh, Asus Corporate Vice President & General Manager Motherboard Business Unit & Desktop System Business Unit. "We understand the importance of a responsive immersive gaming experience and with Virtu MVP's HyperFormance, we are able to provide that for the majority of popular PC titles."

AMD announced today that Dr. Suresh Gopalakrishnan, 49, has joined the company as corporate vice president and general manager of its server business, reporting to Dr. Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager, Global Business Units. In this role, Dr. Gopalakrishnan will lead AMD's server business and is responsible for driving the end-to-end business execution of server solutions worldwide. Andrew Feldman will continue in his role as corporate vice president and general manager of AMD's Data Center Server Solutions business, also reporting to Dr. Su.

"Today's data center operators and enterprises need to reduce cost and power consumption while increasing performance, and AMD has been working hard to meet these needs with our AMD Opteron processor family and SeaMicro fabric technology," said Dr. Su. "Under Suresh's leadership, we will accelerate our disruptive server strategy by leveraging our broad IP portfolio to deliver superior products designed to offer the world's best performance-per-dollar and power efficiency."

According to AMD senior VP and CTO Mark Papermaster, the company will adopt the 28 nanometer bulk CMOS silicon fabrication process for its chips in 2013. The bulk process is used to manufacture high-volume and less-complex products, such as motherboard chipset, entry-level APUs, etc. The company already takes advantage of TSMC 28 nm High-Performance process for highly-complex chip designs, such as its Southern Islands GPU family, and will continue using it for its next-generation "Sea Islands" GPUs. In related news, DigiTimes learned through sources that AMD's Sea Islands GPUs have entered tape-out stage, and are on course for a late-2012 volume manufacturing, and early-2013 launch schedule.

AMD today announced its continued leadership in high performance computing (HPC) with 24 of the top 100 supercomputers in the 39th TOP500 list, announced today, while making significant strides in maturing its HPC ecosystem through the addition of several key components that enable end users to continue to benefit from best-in-class price/performance for today's demanding applications.

AMD has continued to work closely with its technology partners to significantly mature its HPC ecosystem, resulting in several new developments including LS-DYNA simulation software optimized for the AMD Opteron 6200 Series processors from Livermore Software Technology Corporation (LSTC), the addition of programming options for AMD graphics processor unit (GPU) technology from CAPS, and the announcement by Mellanox Technologies of its Connect-IB products that will deliver FDR 56 Gb/s InfiniBand speeds to AMD's solution portfolios.

A little earlier, Samsung refreshed its Series 5 line of performance notebooks with Intel Core "Ivy Bridge" processors. It created a new branch, powered by AMD "Trinity" accelerated processing units (APUs), which pack up to four x86-64 cores, Radeon HD 7600M series graphics, and dual-channel DDR3 IMCs. Samsung currently has two models that are Trinity-powered, the Series 5 13.3-inch (NP535U3C-A01US), which is driven by AMD A6-4455M quad-core APU (2.10 GHz); and the Series 5 14-inch (NP535U4C-A01US), driven by AMD A10-4655M quad-core APU (2.80 GHz). Both models come with 4 or 8 GB dual-channel DDR3 memory and 500 or 750 GB HDD standard, with other features being identical to those of its Ivy Bridge cousins. The 13.3-inch A6 model starts at $699, while the 14-inch A10 model starts at $849.

As cloud computing becomes a more mature sector of the IT industry, most enterprises have already regarded this technology as a key point in the building of future information architectures to meet the needs of massive data processing. To better address the high demands for cloud computing, Apacer, a leading memory module manufacturer, has announced an industry-leading and enterprise-level 16GB bulk storage DDR3-1600 high-speed server memory module.

It uses both internal and external voltage reference (Vref.) circuits, allowing the storage system to directly use external Vref. with high efficiency while eliminating signal noise. It helps to facilitate continuous massive data processing and helps to optimize the cloud computing and storage performance in those environments, giving a more stable server storage experience.

HP unveiled a new variant of its Pavilion dv6 15.6-inch notebook driven by AMD A8-4500M quad-core APU (model: dv6-7010us). The A8-4500M packs four x86-64 cores clocked at 1.90~2.80 GHz, 4 MB total cache, and Radeon HD 7640G integrated graphics. The APU is backed by 6 GB of dual-channel DDR3 memory. A 750 GB hard drive and DVD SuperMulti drive handle storage. The 15.6-inch screen packs 1366 x 768 pixels resolution. Connectivity includes gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WLAN, and Bluetooth. Most other features are identical to the Intel-driven dv6t-7000. Sweetening the deal is the price. While the Core i7-3610QM driven dv6t-7000 starts at US $899, the AMD A8-4500M driven dv6-7010us starts at $699.

At the AMD Fusion Developer Summit (AFDS) 2012, the host unveiled its next flagship professional graphics card, the FirePro W9000. What makes the card particularly interesting is that it is dual-GPU, packing two Tahiti-derived GPUs, the same chips that go into making Radeon HD 7900 series. The FirePro W9000, is what many believe to be a professional variant of the Radeon HD 7990 "New Zealand" dual-GPU graphics card, which is facing delays for reasons unknown (actually, here's a possible reason).

The W9000 packs a total of 6 GB of GDDR5 memory, up to 264.8 million pixels/s; 4 TFLOPs single-precision and 1 TFLOPs double-precision floating-point performance. The card design does away with lateral-flow cooler, and uses a triple-fan heatsink assembly that packs three 90 mm low-speed (low-noise) fans. A surprise here, is that the card draws power from [just] two 8-pin PCIe power connectors (it's probably using two low-voltage Tahiti chips). It's an established fact that FirePro products are merely variations of Radeon products with possibly higher build quality, and an expanded software feature-set.

We've known since May, the existence of a new high-end single-GPU graphics card SKU in the works, at AMD. Called the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, the SKU is being designed to regain AMD's competitiveness against NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680. We're hearing a few additional details about the SKU. To begin with, AMD has worked with TSMC to refine the chip design. The Tahiti XT2 will be able to facilitate significantly higher clock speeds, at significantly lower voltages, than the current breed of Tahiti XT chips.

Tahiti XT2, or Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, will ship with a core clock speed of 1100 MHz, 175 MHz faster than the HD 7970. The GPU core voltage of Tahiti XT2 will be lower, at 1.020V, compared to 1.175V of the Tahiti XT. It's unlikely that AMD will tinker with memory clock speed, since Tahiti already has a 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, which gives it 264 GB/s memory bandwidth at 1375 MHz (5.50 GHz effective). According to the source, the new SKU enters mass-production next week. So best case, it should reach markets by late-June or early-July.

Noctua's booth at last week's Computex Taipei not only hosted world's first public demonstration of a PC fan with integrated Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) but also gave a stage to upcoming Noctua products such as the new A-series fans, third generation NF-S12 fan and 37mm low profile CPU coolers. In addition to these upcoming products, Noctua also gave an exclusive insight on some of its current development projects for its D-, U-, C- and L-series heatsinks.

Firstly, Noctua has displayed its completely new A-series fans that feature a novel aerodynamic design measure called Flow Acceleration Channels to reduce boundary layer separation as well as Noctua's AAO (Advanced Acoustic Optimisation) frames. The new A-series fans are scheduled for launch in September/October and will come in square 140mm, round 140mm, slim 92mm plus 60 and 40mm sizes.

An increasing number of high-end graphics cards and motherboards are relying on PCI-Express bridge chips to expand the PCI-Express lane budgets, no thanks to the puny number of PCI-Express lanes today's mainstream computing platforms come with. Following the transition to PCI-Express Gen 3.0, with Intel's new platforms (Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge-E HEDT), there is a demand for Gen 3.0-compliant PCIe switching hardware, especially x48 bridge chips (which take in a PCI-Express x16 link, giving out two x16 links or four x8 links). Such chips are used on high-end motherboards to expand the number of PCIe slots, and on dual-GPU graphics cards.

It appears like NVIDIA does not have a PCIe Gen 3.0-compliant bridge chip of its own, and so the only company with one, is PLX Technology, with its PEX8747. The chip has been used on a variety of high-end motherboards, and NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 690 dual-GPU graphics card. PLX reportedly saw high demand, which resulted in several companies bagging initial allocations of the chip, leaving others out to dry, with the part being listed as out-of-stock by its maker. Newer clients of the chip will have to wait until PLX undertakes the next big production cycle, to get their allocations of the chip.

Prolimatech, the master of cooling is going a step further after the success of the Prolimatech Megahalems by presenting another revolution in CPU cooling with the limited edition Prolimatech Black Series Genesis. Besides the immaculate quality - which is present across their entire product line-up - the Black Genesis sets new standards in cooling capability and cool looks.

Prolimatech continues the trend set by the Megahalems and Super Mega by utilising two separate towers, but instead of placing them next to each other, they have been rearranged for maximum performance. The large array of cooling fins can hold up to three 120 or 140 mm fans, two of which can be installed right out of the box with the included mounting materials. Besides keeping the CPU cool, the construction allows for direct air flow across critical areas like the memory and power phases of the system.

AMD today announced it will integrate a new security solution into its future products to meet the increasing need to provide consumers and businesses with secure access to their content and worry-free online transactions. Through a strategic technology partnership with ARM, AMD will integrate the established ARM TrustZone technology into future Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) via a system-on-a-chip (SoC) design methodology. This industry-first collaboration will help accelerate broader ecosystem support by aligning x86 hardware with the world's most broadly-adopted mobile security ecosystem.

By adopting the industry-standard approach to security that TrustZone technology embodies, AMD and ARM will provide a consistent approach to security spanning billions of Internet-connected mobile devices, tablets, PCs and servers − whether they are powered by ARM processor-based solutions or AMD x86 APUs. AMD plans to provide development platforms that have TrustZone security features on select APUs in 2013, expanding further across its product portfolio in 2014. In a presentation this week at the AMD Fusion Developer Summit 2012 (AFDS), AMD Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer Mike Wolfe described AMD's vision to advance computing security by enhancing AMD's existing security technologies. This is expected to include developing a platform security processor using an ARM CortexTM-A5 CPU that features TrustZone technology, to monitor and help protect against malicious access to sensitive data and operations at the hardware level.

AMD today announced immediate availability of the AMD FirePro W600 professional graphics card, the company's first professional graphics card to leverage AMD's Graphics Core Next architecture and 28nm production technology, for use in high-resolution, content-rich, multi-screen display wall environments. With this launch, AMD is addressing a growing need for large, dynamic screens that are easily updated with new content.

"Whether we are checking flight times at the airport or watching the latest ads on massive screens in city squares, digital signage has quickly become an important and ubiquitous part of our lives," said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager of AMD Graphics. "To enable these displays, the digital signage industry demands technology that can be regularly refreshed with new, feature-rich content. With the launch of the AMD FirePro W600 professional graphics card, AMD is helping advance the digital display wall industry by providing suppliers and developers with impressive display density, performance and exceptional value."

S3 Graphics' future hung in the balance since June 2011, when its parent company VIA Technologies announced sale of its stake in it. Since then, it's been a word on the wires, that smartphone maker HTC has been in the fray to buy it out, since it is facing IP turbulence with Apple. HTC and Apple used S3 Graphics (September 2011) and AMD (November 2011), respectively, as proxies in their patent infringement battles. It emerged out of the patent spat, that S3 Graphics holds a handy bouquet of graphics IP, and HTC announced that it is now back on track to acquire it.

Smartphone giant HTC backed S3 Graphics' claims to certain graphics-related patents in the patent infringement case against Apple. "We think S3's patent portfolio is valid and strong, and we have decided to complete the purchase of S3 after cautious assessment," HTC's general counsel Grace Lei said, at an annual shareholders' general meeting. S3 Graphics currently owns about 270 patents, some of which are licensed to Sony Corp., Nintendo Co. and Microsoft Corp., Lei added.

Today at the AMD Fusion Developer Summit (AFDS), global technology leaders came together to announce the formation of the Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) Foundation. The HSA Foundation is a non-profit consortium established to define and promote an open, standards-based approach to heterogeneous computing that will provide a common hardware specification and broad support ecosystem to make it easier for software developers to deliver innovative applications that can take greater advantage of today's modern processors.

AMD, ARM, Imagination Technologies, MediaTek Inc., and Texas Instruments (TI) are the initial founding members of the HSA Foundation. The companies will work together to drive a single architecture specification and simplify the programming model to help software developers take greater advantage of the capabilities found in modern central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs), and unlock the performance and power efficiency of the parallel computing engines found in heterogeneous processors.

Apart from a few Radeon HD 7970 "X2" dual-GPU graphics cards, and a few non-reference design HD 7970, we didn't hear much about new Radeon SKUs, at Computex. AMD or its partners never even talked about the Radeon HD 7990. It appears now, that the company is working on three new SKUs that will likely replace existing ones, in a bid to replenish the competitiveness of its "Southern Islands" GPU family. The three new SKUs include the Radeon HD 7990, of which we've been hearing for a greater part of this year; the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, which we knew was taking shape for some time now; and the new Radeon HD 7930.

Launch of the Radeon HD 7990 has been facing quite a few delays. We can't imagine technical hurdles with regard to board design, but the performance yield, and performance-per-Watt figures the SKU will have to produce, to ever make it to the market. The HD 7990 has the tough task of performing within an acceptable range of the GeForce GTX 690, on both these fronts.

To further capitalize on the opportunity for Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) in embedded applications and form factors, AMD today announced the formation of a new Embedded Solutions Group and appointed Arun Iyengar as its corporate vice president and general manager. The AMD Embedded Solutions Group will operate as a separate business within AMD's Global Business Units under AMD Senior Vice President Lisa Su.

"AMD APUs have been extremely well received by embedded system designers who require more graphic-intensive displays and compute power, while continuing to increase our engagement with ecosystem partners to deliver a complete solution," said Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager, AMD Global Business Units. "Arun's appointment and dedicated focus on expanding our differentiated embedded offerings will help ensure we are seizing the opportunity to expand in this rapidly growing market."

Biostar is ready with a trio of socket FM2 motherboards, based on AMD's new A85 FCH chipset, the higher-end Hi-Fi A85X, mid-range Hi-Fi A85W, and value Hi-Fi A85S. Biostar implemented some of its latest innovations on the two. To begin with, the thee feature Hi-Fi amplifiers for the analog channels of the onboard audio. Another innovative feature with the two is a bank of capacitors that make the board electrostatic discharge proof up to 15,000V. Find the furriest carpet to assemble your rig on.

The audio solution combines a high SNR CODEC (probably ALC898) with an OPAMP circuitry that uses sound card grade electrolytic capacitors. The entire audio portion of the motherboard, including the rear panel jack cluster and front-panel headers, have a ground PCB layer of their own, that is isolated from the ground layer of the rest of the board. This ensures there's no ground layer interference from other high-current components on the board, a problem common with onboard audio solutions.

AMD announced today that Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer Mike Wolfe is the inaugural 2012 honoree of the Transformational CIO Award, which recognizes leading-edge CIOs. Wolfe was recognized by The Enterprise CIO Forum for his pioneering approach to the strategic use of IT to transform AMD's business by reducing costs, increasing efficiency and bolstering productivity.

Wolfe, who has overseen a significant and successful consolidation of AMD's worldwide data centers, uses AMD technology for the company's engineering development and support infrastructure, including managing cloud computing solutions running on more than 123,000 AMD Opteron processor cores.

What you might pass away for a bare entry-level graphics card at first glance, could end up being Sapphire's new Radeon HD 7750 single-slot low-profile graphics card. The design is a beneficiary of 28 nm "Cape Verde" silicon, which is found to have good-enough temperatures on its reference-design board. The card is ideal for mini-ITX systems. It relies entirely on the PCI-Express slot for power, and uses a 2+1+1 phase VRM, which utilizes high-grade driver-MOSFETs on its GPU phases.

The card sticks to AMD reference clock speeds of 800 MHz core, with 1125 MHz (4.50 GHz effective) memory. It packs 1 GB of GDDR5 memory over a 128-bit wide memory interface. The GPU packs 512 Graphics CoreNext stream processors. Display outputs include one each of dual-link DVI, mini-DisplayPort, and mini-HDMI. Adapters converting them to standard-size connectors, and a low-profile bracket will come included.