Tensilica, Inc. today announced that it has joined the HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) Foundation, a not-for-profit consortium dedicated to developing architecture specifications that will unlock the performance and power efficiency of parallel computing engines found in many modern devices. Tensilica will contribute its years of experience assisting customers in bringing heterogeneous multicore SoC (system-on-chip) designs to market to the development and promotion of standards for parallel computing.

"Tensilica is a long-established leader in multicore technology, delivering unique solutions that enable both control plane and compute-intensive dataplane functions," stated Steve Roddy, Tensilica's vice president of product marketing and business development. "Tensilica customers today use multiple Tensilica processors for diverse functions such as audio offload, wireless baseband, image processing and general purpose control. We welcome the efforts and ambitions of the HSA to bring standards to the market that will greatly facilitate innovation in embedded applications."

AMD (NYSE: AMD), a leading provider of technology that enables visually-rich experiences for today's consumers, provided an early look at its new 2013 accelerated processing units (APUs) and announced a new OEM relationship with VIZIO. At an International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) event, AMD demonstrated working silicon of its first true system on chip (SoC) APUs, codenamed "Temash" and "Kabini," which will be the industry's first quad-core x86 SoCs. Both APUs are scheduled to ship in the first half of 2013. Demonstrations included a range of leading-edge applications and games on a "Kabini"-based ultrathin notebook and a "Temash"-based performance tablet and hybrid notebook.

AMD also introduced the new APU codenamed "Richland" which is currently shipping to OEMs and delivers visual performance increases ranging from more than 20 percent to up to 40 percent over the previous generation of AMD A-Series APUs1. "Richland" is expected to come bundled with new software for consumers such as gesture- and facial-recognition to dramatically expand and enhance consumers' user experiences. The follow-on to "Richland" will be the 28nm APU codenamed "Kaveri" with revolutionary heterogeneous system architecture (HSA) features which is expected to begin shipping to customers in the second half of 2013.

AMD today announced availability of the AMD APP SDK 2.8 and the AMD CodeXL unified tool suite to provide developers the tools and resources needed to accelerate applications with AMD accelerated processing units (APUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs). The APP SDK 2.8 and CodeXL tool suite provides access to code samples, white papers, libraries and tools to leverage the processing power of heterogeneous compute with OpenCL, C++, DirectCompute and more.

"With CodeXL and APP SDK 2.8, our highest performing SDK to date which leaps past the competition in performance on standard benchmarks1, AMD continues to empower developers with the resources they need for greater performance and power-efficient applications," said Manju Hegde, corporate vice president, Heterogeneous Applications and Developer Solutions, AMD. "From today's ultraportable mobile solutions to the highest performing supercomputers, our latest tools and solutions help developers more easily leverage the power of heterogeneous computing and take greater advantage of the compute capabilities of AMD's processing solutions."

The Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) Foundation today announced that LG Electronics has joined as a member. LG's diverse product portfolio and industry experience are valuable additions in helping HSA and its members reach common goals, ultimately benefiting consumers. With LG Electronics on board, new possibilities emerge as the fusion of HSA and LG's current IP bring a whole new level of interactivity for consumers- from home appliances to entertainment systems, the HSA foundation acquires greater depth in the smartphone, tablets, TV, digital cameras, game consoles and even the E-reader space. This allows for an entire ecosystem of electronics that touch the lives of consumers throughout their day to be enhanced via a common Heterogeneous Systems Architecture.

The HSA Foundation continues working toward developing a single architecture specification that will unlock the performance and power efficiency of parallel computing engines found in many modern devices. These specifications also open up a more simplified approach to software development in heterogeneous environments which will enable a broad range of programmers to drive richer user experiences into their applications.

Digital Media Professionals Inc. (DMP), a leading provider of 2D/3D graphics Intellectual Property (IP) cores, today announced it has become a new member and contributor to the Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) Foundation. HSA aims to push standards based architecture and interfaces for common computing use cases between CPU and GPU, enabling more effective hardware accelerated performance and power consumption on next generation compute platforms.

By supporting the HSA Foundation initiative, DMP wants to accelerate and simplify application development for mobile GPGPU platforms. The benefits of heterogeneous architectures and computing will allow smooth user experience for computer vision, image processing and graphics intensive applications on small consumer devices.

In a bold strategic move, AMD announced that it will design 64-bit ARM technology-based processors in addition to its x86 processors for multiple markets, starting with cloud and data center servers. AMD's first ARM technology-based processor will be a highly-integrated, 64-bit multicore System-on-a-Chip (SoC) optimized for the dense, energy-efficient servers that now dominate the largest data centers and power the modern computing experience. The first ARM technology-based AMD Opteron processor is targeted for production in 2014 and will integrate the AMD SeaMicro Freedom supercompute fabric, the industry's premier high-performance fabric.

AMD's new design initiative addresses the growing demand to deliver better performance-per-watt for dense cloud computing solutions. Just as AMD introduced the industry's first mainstream 64-bit x86 server solution with the AMD Opteron processor in 2003, AMD will be the only processor provider bridging the x86 and 64-bit ARM ecosystems to enable new levels of flexibility and drive optimal performance and power-efficiency for a range of enterprise workloads.

Following last week's 15% workforce cut that came with the company's Q3 2012 results, AMD plans to consolidate its workforce and eliminate "bureaucracy." According to a VR-Zone report, the company plans to announce its future strategy next week, on October 29. This strategy could ride heavily on recent moves the company made in the area of "heterogeneous computing," and a working alliance it built with the likes of ARM, MediaTek, Qualcomm, Samsung and TI, under the heterogeneous system alliance (HSA).

According to the report, AMD's future looks to be heading towards building highly versatile SoCs for devices in the post-PC era. It's not far-fetched to imagine, for example, that AMD could integrate ARM IP onto APUs with x86 cores, with the ARM cores based on recent micro-architectures such as Cortex-M5, performing specific kinds of tasks (such as data-encryption). Down the line, AMD could also integrate baseband components into the APU, beating Intel to the punch on similar efforts.

The Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) Foundation today announced that Qualcomm Incorporated has joined as a Founder Member. Qualcomm's commitment reinforces HSA as the next technological underpinning in computing for a broad range of platforms and devices. Since its formation in June, the HSA Foundation has more than doubled its membership with new Founder, Supporter, Contributor and Associate members that have joined the consortium.

Qualcomm joins AMD, ARM, Imagination Technologies, MediaTek Inc., Samsung Electronics Ltd. and Texas Instruments as founder members of the HSA Foundation. The companies are working together to drive a single architecture specification, which simplifies the programming model for software developers on modern platforms and devices. The HSA Foundation will unlock the performance and power efficiency of the parallel computing engines found in heterogeneous processors.

During the JavaOne 2012 Strategy Keynote, AMD announced its participation in OpenJDK Project "Sumatra" in collaboration with Oracle and other members of the OpenJDK community to help bring heterogeneous computing capabilities to Java for server and cloud environments.

The OpenJDK Project "Sumatra" will explore how the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), as well as the Java language and APIs, might be enhanced to allow applications to take advantage of graphics processing unit (GPU) acceleration, either in discrete graphics cards or in high-performance graphics processor cores such as those found in AMD accelerated processing units (APUs).

Today the Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) Foundation announced six new members. The HSA Foundation is pleased to welcome Apical, Arteris Inc., MulticoreWare Inc., Sonics, Symbio and Vivante Corporation to the membership roster. Each company adds expertise to the HSA ecosystem by assisting with research, development, production, manufacture, use, and the sale of HSA IP and heterogeneous computing software and solutions.

These new members have joined at different levels including: supporter, contributor and associate. Working closely with the founder members of AMD, ARM, Imagination Technologies, MediaTek Inc., Samsung Electronics and Texas Instruments (TI), the new members will contribute to the growing adoption of HSA in heterogeneous computing.

In a keynote address opening the prestigious annual Hot Chips symposium, AMD CTO Mark Papermaster delivered a vision for the coming "Surround Computing Era", and unveiled new processor architecture details, enabling technologies and design methodologies that will help drive the next era in computing. Surround computing is an extension of pervasive and ambient computing trends and describes an environment where computing technologies are completely natural and seamless parts of daily life.

"Surround computing imagines a world without keyboards or mice, where natural user interfaces based on voice and facial recognition redefine the PC experience, and where the cloud and clients collaborate to synthesize exabytes of image and natural language data. The ultimate goal is devices that deliver intelligent, relevant, contextual insight and value that improves consumers' everyday life in real time through a variety of futuristic applications. AMD is leading the quest for devices that understand and anticipate users' needs, are driven by natural user interfaces, and that disappear seamlessly into the background," said Papermaster during his opening remarks.

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.

At its annual Financial Analyst Day, AMD (NYSE: AMD) detailed a new "ambidextrous" strategy that builds on the company's long history of x86 and graphics innovation while embracing other technologies and intellectual property to deliver differentiated products.

AMD is adopting an SoC-centric roadmap designed to speed time-to-market, drive sustained execution, and enable the development of more tailored customer solutions. SoC design methodology is advantageous because it is a modular approach to processor design, leveraging best practice tools and microprocessor design flows with the ability to easily re-use IP and design blocks across a range of products.

Today at its annual Financial Analyst Day, AMD has presented an updated roadmap detailing the hardware it plans to bring to the table during 2012 and 2013. For this year, the Sunnyvale-based company is preparing a processor quarter which includes the Trinity, Brazos 2.0 and Hondo APUs (accelerated processing units) and the Vishera CPU.

Set to be the main weapon in AMD's x86 arsenal, the Trinity APU (aka the 2nd gen A Series) is made on 32 nm process technology, and features DirectX 11 graphics, two/four Piledriver cores (Piledrive is said to deliver 25% better performance than the Stars cores found in Llano APUs), and a TDP that can go as low as 17 W on mobile parts. Trinity is expected to debut in Q2 and already has close to 100 design wins (more than Llano had before its release).

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.