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.

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.

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.

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.

AMD today announced continued leadership in driving OpenCL adoption with availability of the AMD APP SDK 2.7, featuring the first conformant implementation of OpenCL 1.2 and comprehensive support for C++. The new SDK expands the OpenCL application ecosystem by providing developers a powerful, cross-platform solution to unlock the performance of AMD GPUs, APUs, and multi-core CPUs with the added C++ wrapper API and AMD's C++ kernel language for greater efficiency, improved productivity and application robustness.

"AMD continues leading the OpenCL movement, as demonstrated with the release of our latest SDK featuring the industry's first fully-conformant OpenCL 1.2 implementation," said Manju Hegde, corporate vice president, Heterogeneous Applications and Developer Solutions, AMD. "Our latest development tools empower developers to more easily harness the power of heterogeneous computing to help improve the user experience by making it easy to write applications that can take greater advantage of the compute capabilities of AMD's leading CPUs, GPUs and APUs."

AMD today announced its AMD A-Series APUs (Accelerated Processing Units) are winners of the 2012 Best Choice of COMPUTEX TAIPEI award, the second consecutive win for the product family. The award is given by the Taipei Computer Association, a driving force behind the annual event and the leading technology organization in the country. Extensive reviews are conducted by a panel of esteemed government officials, academics, research analysts, editors-in-chief of key media outlets and industry experts to select winning products based on outstanding design and cutting-edge technology in nine product categories.

The second generation AMD A-Series APU combines the company's latest multi-core x86 CPU core architecture and award-winning AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series graphics to provide an increase in performance of up to 29 percent on productivity applications (as compared with the first generation AMD A-Series APUs), an increase of graphics performance up to 56 percent, and deliver up to 12 hours of battery life. Its unique features enable improvements in the areas that matter most to consumers today, including entertainment, gaming and mobility, through a growing ecosystem of APU-accelerated applications.

The Aspire One 725 was designed to skillfully combine a tasteful and stylish look with terrific performance enabling users enjoy a sensational visual experience for superb multimedia - movies, games, photos, videos - wherever they go. This netbook delivers a state-of-the-art user experience and amazing HD visuals anytime, anywhere.

The Aspire One 725 definitely stands out and not only for performance. Available in two color options, Caribbean blue and Volcanic black, it flaunts a gorgeous glossy, glittery cover. The soft matte finish of the palm-rest matches the color of the cover, for a more pleasant look, and prevents fingerprints and palm smudges. Thinner than 1-inch and around only 1.2 kg, it easily fits into any handbag or backpack while providing a comfortable viewing thanks to the 11.6" screen.

AMD today announced a collaboration with Adobe Systems Incorporated to optimize a new set of GPU-accelerated features for Adobe products including the newly announced Adobe Photoshop CS6. Implementing GPU acceleration and incorporating OpenCL optimization improves the end-user experience by dramatically speeding up critical imaging features and generating real-time results when editing with key tools in Adobe Creative Suite 6.

"AMD brings its expertise in GPU and APU compute in the latest release of Adobe Creative Suite," said Winston Hendrickson, vice president products, Creative Media Solutions, Adobe. "This technology integration allows us to provide creative professionals with exciting new creative options and lightning-fast performance."

Sony may have codenamed PlayStation 4 "Orbis" (IPA: /ˈor.bis/), according to a Kotaku report. The next-generation game console is slated for "holiday season, 2013." This information was sourced by Kotaku, from a reliable source with a good track-record of accuracy. Orbis is derived from the Latin word for "circle", or "to circle/orbit". The term "Orbis Vita" or "Orbis Vitae" denotes "the circle of life." The specifications of Orbis known so far, include AMD-made x86-64 CPU, and an AMD-made GPU, built on the Southern Islands (Graphics CoreNext) architecture. In all probability, it could be a unified SoC, a highly scalar Fusion chip.

AMD today announced Rockwell Collins, a leader in innovative communications and avionics systems for the aerospace and defense industries, has selected the AMD Radeon E2400 embedded graphics processor for inclusion in its highly-intuitive, integrated flight deck solution, Pro Line Fusion. Chosen for its advanced 3D graphics rendering capabilities, the AMD Radeon E2400 helps generate realistic graphical models of the external aircraft environment to help improve awareness of terrain, obstacles and runways in low visibility conditions. With this technology, pilots can now have key information at their fingertips, enabling them to make informed decisions during every phase of flight.

"The rapid and accurate visualization of data and access to information are essential for professionals in the aerospace and defense industries," said Richard Jaenicke, director, Embedded Client Business, AMD. "The AMD Radeon E2400 was specifically designed to meet customers' demand for high-quality graphics with a stable, long-lasting supply, making it ideal for system designers such as Rockwell Collins."

Fusion-io and Tokyo Electron Device today announced the availability of the Fusion ioDrive2 and Fusion ioDrive2 Duo in Japan. The Fusion ioDrive2 products deliver up to 2.4 TB of powerful enterprise flash performance into servers to accelerate applications with an efficient solution that reduces the need to spend valuable energy and resources on legacy storage appliances or ineffective SSDs.

"Given Japan's well-deserved reputation for being one of the most innovative nations in the world, we are very proud to introduce the ioDrive2 with Tokyo Electron Device to help Japanese companies leverage their most important asset - data," said David Flynn, Fusion-io CEO and Chairman. "Whether in online commerce, social media, financial systems, or ensuring safe, on-schedule transportation systems, data is what powers our world today. With the ioDrive2, companies can unlock latent performance in their data centers in order to accelerate their applications while saving on both capital and operational expenses."

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd., a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards is delighted to showcase its forthcoming 7 series motherboard designs supporting 3rd generation Intel Core processors, showcasing a range of features including the new All Digital Engine, GIGABYTE 3D BIOS and GIGABYTE Ultra Durable 4 technology. Join GIGABYTE at CeBIT 2012 in Hall 15, D19 from March 6th through March 10th 2012.

Visitors to CeBIT 2012 can have an exclusive look at motherboards that feature the latest All Digital Engine design for the PWM. Our new All Digital power design allows users greater control over the power delivered to their 3rd generation Intel Core processors that use the LGA 1155 socket. Using entirely digital controllers for the CPU, processor graphics, VTT and system memory, users can enjoy more precise power delivery to the PC's energy sensitive components than previously possible.

In the second quarter of this year, AMD will launch its next-generation accelerated processing unit, codenamed "Trinity", starting with quad-core A10 and A8 parts in the quarter, followed by dual-core A6 and A4 parts in the third-quarter of 2012 (more here). DonanimHaber scored a specifications-sheet that details all the models AMD has in store for this year, also giving us an insight to what constitute each of these model numbers.

An interesting revelation here is that AMD does not have triple-core APUs anywhere in its lineup. The A10 lineup consists of quad-core APUs that come with Radeon HD 7660D graphics, while the A8 lineup also consists of quad-core APUs, but with slower Radeon HD 7560D graphics. The A6 lineup consists of dual-core APUs with Radeon HD 7540D graphics, while the A4 lineup has dual-core APUs with Radeon HD 7480D graphics.

AMD is pushing on with a desktop product lineup that's leveraging its Piledriver CPU and Graphics CoreNext GPU architectures in 2012. Apparently, the company will have a faster product development cycle to catch up with Intel's "Tick-Tock", as revealed in a roadmap slide scored by DonanimHaber. The current product lineup will remain unchanged in the first quarter of 2012. Then in the second quarter, AMD will launch a few more socket AM3+ FX-8000, FX-6000, and FX-4000 series eight, six, and four-core processors; along with the much talked about "Trinity" accelerated processing unit.

The fastest "Trinity" APUs will get a new brand identifier, the A10-5000 series. These APUs will pack next-generation "Piledriver" modular cores and Radeon HD 7600D series graphics. Around this time, AMD will also launch the Brazos 2.0 low-power APU for netbooks, nettops, and embedded computing devices. Brazos 2.0 will get the E2-1000 series branding. The big change is reserved for the third quarter of 2012, when AMD launches the successor of its less-than-lucky AMD FX "Bulldozer" processor family.

Without making much noise ASUS has made available, in Germany at least, a new, Fusion-flavored (or should we say heterogeneous-heavy?) Eee PC, the 10.1-inch R051BX. Available in black (but coming soon in white), this netbook weights 1.17 kg, and has an LED-backlit (1024 x 600) display, an AMD C-50 (dual x86 cores @ 1.0 GHz, Radeon HD 6250 graphics) APU, 1 GB of RAM, a 320 GB hard drive, and a 2,200 mAh battery.

The Eee PC R051BX has Windows 7 Starter pre-installed and costs 259 Euro.

Swiss company Arctic (formerly Arctic Cooling), has used the brand name "Fusion" on its PSU products well before AMD's so-called "Fusion" APU family came to be. Arctic was smart enough to register its trademark, and is now piling up ammo to take AMD to court over alleged trademark infringement. Arctic acquired the brand name "Fusion" from Boot Up International Ltd., and its Fusion trademark is valid in Europe. Still a sizable market for AMD.

The interesting part is, AMD doesn't use "Fusion" as a brand name anywhere, except maybe its company slogan "The future is fusion", where "fusion" is used as a verb (fusion of various computing technologies to give a homogenous computing experience), and the company internally referring to its APU architecture as "Fusion", on the outside though, AMD brands its APUs under its Vision processor family, with no "Fusion" branding anywhere, except the company slogan.

Introduced last summer at the Fusion11 Developer Summit, AMD's Fusion System Architecture (FSA) has now been renamed to Heterogeneous Systems Architecture (HSA). According to AMD corporate fellow Phil Rogers, the new name is (more) 'representative of the entire, technical community that is leading the way in this very important area of technology and programming development.'

Naming change aside, AMD's solution remains the same and promotes the use of CPU and GPU cores in a unified way, so as to deliver high application performance and low power consumption.

AMD today announced the first AMD Fusion Center of Innovation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, designed to focus on the innovative developer environment and software performance advancements enabled by heterogeneous computing. The center will fund, mentor and promote new commercial enterprises emerging from the vast intellectual property and research expertise in the University of Illinois community.

The University has been a hotbed of new start-ups since the creation of the first widespread web browser - Mosaic - developed by Marc Andreessen in 1992. Through access to AMD Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) technology and platforms, the AMD Fusion Center of Innovation will help bridge access to new AMD heterogeneous computing technology with the innovative spirit stimulated and nurtured on campus.

AMD's next-generation accelerated processing unit (APU), codenamed "Trinity", was demonstrated at CES. Trinity will make up AMD's 2012 A-Series APU lineup, and will be designed for mainstream-thru-performance notebooks, and mainstream desktops (different standards for different form-factors). Pictured below is what its notebook-specific BGA package looks like. The package has an exposed rectangular die, with a stabilizer frame around it (like with GPUs). Notebooks' cooling assembly heat pipes make direct contact with the die. Trinity packs two Piledriver modules (an evolution of Bulldozer), and DirectX 11.1 AMD Radeon HD 7000M graphics (notebook APU) or HD 7000D (desktop APU).

Shown to the CES crowd was a mind-boggling demo. The public were first shown what appeared to be an ATX desktop connected to two monitors, one monitor running a DIRT 3 DirectX 11 game demo at high-quality settings, and another screeen revealing the APU to be running GPU-accelerated video transcoding. No discrete graphics was used, it's just the embedded HD 7000 at play/work. If that alone didn't raise a few eyebrows, the AMD representative removed the lid of the ATX desktop case to which those two monitors were connected, to reveal a 14-inch laptop inside doing all the work. And there's more - the laptop's main screen wasn't idle, it was running a high-definition video playback. Whatever synthetic benchmarks end up telling about Trinity, its real world performance does impress!You have got to watch the video after the break!

Toshiba's Digital Products Division (DPD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., today announced Optimized for NVIDIA GeForce 3D support for the groundbreaking Qosmio F755 3D, enabling users to experience glasses-free 3D gaming1 for the first time ever on a laptop. The update is currently available for download via Toshiba's Service Station utility.

"We have been working closely with NVIDIA to bring 3D gaming capabilities to the Qosmio F755, a killer feature that has yet to be realized in the PC industry," said Carl Pinto, vice president of product development, Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., Digital Products Division. "Now gamers can experience hundreds of PC games in stunning 3D without the burden of wearing 3D glasses. This update brings a new level of play to 3D PC gaming."

Lenovo today announced its new portfolio of small-to-medium business (SMB) laptops loaded with serious business technology and personal lifestyle computing features. The portfolio includes the premium ThinkPad Edge S Series to the mainstream ThinkPad Edge E Series to entry-level laptops in the essential Lenovo B Series, available in select markets. The chic ThinkPad Edge S430 laptop comprises high style and genuine substance with performance technologies and innovations like the latest Intel Core processors and Thunderbolt technology. The ThinkPad Edge 11, 13, 14 and 15-inch laptops include new useful technologies like Lenovo Solution Center to solve common IT tasks, while simultaneously addressing users' entertainment needs with rich visual and deluxe audio features.

Facing a two-front competition from other netbook manufacturers and the ARM tablet industry, ASUS, one of the pioneers of the netbook form-factor, is readying a new line of fashionable-looking netbooks under the EeePC Flare series. Press pictures of these netbooks got leaked to the web by Notebook Italia, which reveal EeePC Flare series to be a colorful bunch of machines that are so designed to look curvy and fashionable, breaking the "compact" design mold of today's netbooks. They will be shows at the upcoming CES event, next week.

EeePC Flare will be available in two sizes, 12-inch and 10-inch. Among these, the 12-inch 1225B will be driven by AMD Fusion platform (likely E450), while the 1225C will be driven by Intel's new "Cedar Trail" Atom platform (N2600 or N2800). The 10-incher 1025 will stick to Cedar Trail. ASUS will pack these netbooks with features such as 500 GB of storage, LED backlit 720p displays, chiclet keyboards, etc.

December thru January looks to be a busy time for AMD. Along with a few new graphics products, AMD will launch new CPUs and APUs. The company has chosen December 26 to launch its A8-3870K and A6-3670K Black Edition "Llano" accelerated processing units (APUs) in the FM1 package, which feature unlocked base clock multipliers for the processor component, making overclocking a breeze. In two of its presentation slides to distributors, it unveiled the swanky new box art of these unlocked APUs.

These chips pack four x86-64 cores based on the "Stars" K10.5 architecture with 1 MB dedicated L2 cache per core, dual-channel DDR3-1866 MHz integrated memory controller, PCI-Express 2.0 root complex, and a "discrete-class" graphics processor that packs 400 VLIW5 stream processors, DirectX 11 support, and the ability to pair with similarly specc'd discrete GPUs. The A8-3870K Black Edition features x86 core clock speed of 3.00 GHz, and Radeon HD 6550D graphics that features all 400 of those stream processors, with 600 MHz GPU clock speed. The A6-3670K Black Edition, on the other hand, has its x86 component clocked at 2.70 GHz, it features Radeon HD 6530D graphics that has 320 out of the 400 stream processors enabled, and a GPU clock of 433 MHz.

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that AMD Fusion '12 will be held June 11-14, 2012 in Bellevue, Washington. The company's annual developer summit will return to the Meydenbauer Center and the Hyatt Regency in Bellevue.

This event will build on the success of AMD Fusion '11, where more than 700 leaders from industry, academia, and government converged on the forefront of heterogeneous computing. The summit offers an engaging opportunity to learn more about next-generation software development and AMD Fusion System Architecture (FSA), Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) technology, central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) processor technologies, and programming methods using industry-standard application programming interfaces (APIs) such as OpenCL, OpenGL, Microsoft DirectCompute and C++ AMP.

Lenovo announced today the ThinkPad X130e laptop, specially ruggedized for education and with the features needed to help students in grades K-12 and their schools get the most out of their PC technology. Equipped with the advanced technology expected for an educational laptop, the ThinkPad X130e comes with choices of the latest Intel or AMD processors and fast, integrated graphics as well as wireless connectivity and multimedia tools for today's digital learning. Designed to be handled by kids, the ThinkPad X130e has a reinforced and extra durable top cover, keyboard and hinges. Schools will also like its performance, reliability and customizable options including asset tags, BIOS modifications, custom imaging and a broad selection of custom colors.