Comment Re:Not that far fetched. (Score 1) 229
I think AMD merging with ATI will finally make GPUs in the GHz range possible. Not long ago, I read an article on chip design (especially CPUs), and optimizing a chip by hand for various tasks is something reserved to the very big CPU makers Intel, AMD and probably IBM. Others have sub-GHz chips because they don't have the required manpower and financial resources to design entirely custom circuits. This means only critical parts of the chip are optimized by hand and everything else is using blocks from CAD software where you specify what you need and it designs something that works for you.
This is good, but designing by hand is way better: the designer can take into consideration heat dissipation, similar circuit proximity, etc. I'm not a chip designer so I can't say very much on this, but according to the article I read, if AMD or Intel were using the same kind of resources they use for CPU design, but on GPUs, we'd already have like 600 FPS in FEAR on a passively-cooled 65nm GPU (which would be connected through a high-speed bus like HT3 to the CPU, RAM, etc.)
Thinking about it, I really HOPE AMD and ATI merge!
Oh, and AMD chipsets are always the most stable for their chips, so I can't wait to see them produce more and drop VIA et al. (which have exactly the same resource problem I just described).
So, yeah, go AMD and let's kick Conroe's 15-years-old roots to hell. (See TomsHardware's article on the Conroe, a descendant of the Pentium M, which is a descendant of the Pentium 3, which is a descendant of the Pentium Pro, itself a RISC chip with an x86 instruction translator... ugly design).
Oh yeah and I also have to say this: the last time AMD had a huge win (the Athlon64 design), it was because it brought new people in through an acquisition. I have a lot of confidence we'll see this happening again if they grab ATI's hand.
My two cents.
This is good, but designing by hand is way better: the designer can take into consideration heat dissipation, similar circuit proximity, etc. I'm not a chip designer so I can't say very much on this, but according to the article I read, if AMD or Intel were using the same kind of resources they use for CPU design, but on GPUs, we'd already have like 600 FPS in FEAR on a passively-cooled 65nm GPU (which would be connected through a high-speed bus like HT3 to the CPU, RAM, etc.)
Thinking about it, I really HOPE AMD and ATI merge!
Oh, and AMD chipsets are always the most stable for their chips, so I can't wait to see them produce more and drop VIA et al. (which have exactly the same resource problem I just described).
So, yeah, go AMD and let's kick Conroe's 15-years-old roots to hell. (See TomsHardware's article on the Conroe, a descendant of the Pentium M, which is a descendant of the Pentium 3, which is a descendant of the Pentium Pro, itself a RISC chip with an x86 instruction translator... ugly design).
Oh yeah and I also have to say this: the last time AMD had a huge win (the Athlon64 design), it was because it brought new people in through an acquisition. I have a lot of confidence we'll see this happening again if they grab ATI's hand.
My two cents.
