Radeon Technologies Group

[Jorge-Vieira]

AMD Reorganizes Graphics Division - Radeon Whole Once More, Led By Raja Koduri

It was a bit over nine years ago when AMD announced that they would acquire ATI, the Canadian graphics firm, developer of Radeon GPUs, and constant competitor to NVIDIA. In acquiring ATI, AMD set forth on a massive plan that forever changed how AMD went about building CPUs. The CPU alone would soon no longer be enough; CPUs would need to become something closer to SoCs, integrating I/O, graphics, and more. In AMD’s eyes the future would be fusion, and it would be ATI who would provide the missing pieces that would in time make AMD’s future whole.
By and large AMD achieved their technical goals with the ATI acquisition. On the I/O side of matters AMD’s chipsets improved dramatically, reaching a level of quality AMD previously never could achieve internally, nor could external 3^rd parties reach from outside AMD. Meanwhile AMD’s grander graphics related plans have moved along as well; the company successfully integrated an on-die GPU with Llano in 2011 – though not quite beating Intel to the punch. More recently the company executed on the first phases on their long-term Heterogeneous System Architecture project, forming the HSA consortium to make the project a group effort, shipping a preliminary HSA-capable processor with Kaveri in 2014, and following that up with a full HSA 1.0 capable processor this year with the launch of Carrizo.

None of this could have happened for AMD without the ATI acquisition, and while AMD paid a high price at the time for the technology, in the long run it’s very likely that the fusion of AMD and ATI is what has kept the modern AMD an important player in the current marketplace. Which is not to say that things have been easy for AMD – they are if nothing else the perennial underdog – as the challenges posted by Intel and NVIDIA are greater than ever, and not all of AMD’s initiatives have seen as much buyer traction as they anticipated. On the other hand, thanks to CPU/GPU integration AMD has been able to branch into entirely new markets, securing both the Playstation 4 and Xbox One video game consoles, and this newfound semi-custom business is expected to be a cornerstone of AMD’s progression in the long run.

AMD On The Synergies of Acquiring ATI In 2006

Meanwhile on the business side of matters, the fusion metaphor wasn’t just a technology metaphor, but a business metaphor as well. When AMD set out to acquire ATI they didn’t just want a GPU business sitting next to a CPU business, but they wanted GPUs to be part of everything AMD. As we wrote on the matter in 2006 “Having each company operate entirely independently makes no sense, […] it's what these two can do together that makes this acquisition so interesting.” To that end over the first four years of the acquisition AMD slowly but surely worked to absorb and digest ATI, culminating in a deep level of integration and the retirement of the ATI brand.
Reminiscing about the past aside, there is a point to taking a trip down memory lane, and that is understanding AMD’s past in order to understand their future. Today AMD is announcing a significant restructuring, one that in some ways even greater than last year’s business unit reorganization. Taking effect immediately, AMD is bringing the band back together. The company will be reforming a singular, monolithic graphics group – the Radeon Technologies Group – to oversee every aspect of AMD’s graphics efforts. The Radeon group will in turn be led by long-time ATI and AMD graphics guru, Raja Koduri.
When I first saw this announcement the plan came as a bit of a shock, and for good reason. AMD has spent a significant amount of time and energy on making graphics a core part of the company at every level, and now the formation of the Radeon Technologies Group runs counter to some of those efforts. This is unquestionably a bit of backtracking by AMD, though a move that after 9 years they feel is necessary.
Though I imagine most long-time AMD followers understand just what "graphics being an integral part of AMD" means at a high level, it wasn’t until this announcement that even I truly understood just how spread out AMD’s various graphics-related sub-groups have been. Between the various groups, AMD has had departments reporting to CTO Mark Papermaster, CVP of Global Marketing John Taylor, CVP and GM of graphics Matt Skynner, VP of Visual Computing Raja Koduri, and other executives within the AMD structure. The end result is that graphics is truly everywhere within AMD, but at times it is also nowhere.
Having graphics spread out as AMD has been was intended to foster deep cooperation between the various AMD CPU and graphics groups, by making everyone vested in the success of AMD’s graphics initiatives. However from what I’m hearing with respect to today’s announcements, being spread out in such a fashion has also hamstrung AMD’s graphics initiatives at times. Having different groups under different executives controlling technology, marketing, ISV relations, and other aspects of the business has prevented AMD from being able to execute swiftly on the graphics front, and ultimately that has hurt AMD as a whole.

The end result is that after 9 years there is a reluctant admittance within AMD that such a deep fusion of the businesses has not worked out like AMD expected. GPUs are still essential to AMD’s technology plans and the technology fusion is critical to how AMD operates, but how those products are developed and marketed within AMD needs to change. Consequently AMD has decided to take a step back and to reevaluate how they want to organize their graphics business. And the outcome of that evaluation is that the graphics business will once again become whole, with AMD in a sense turning back the clock and keeping graphics as its own unit.
Leading this new group is AMD veteran Raja Koduri. Prior to today Raja was AMD’s Vice President of Visual and Perceptual Computing, and starting today Raja is being promoted to the executive level as the Senior Vice President and Chief Architect of the Radeon Technologies Group, reporting directly to CEO Dr. Lisa Su. As of this writing AMD does not have their new executive organization chart up, but with this reorganization and promotion, Raja is being promoted to the same level as AMD’s other SVPs, and Raja’s group being made a counterpart to AMD’s computing and EESC groups.

For Raja the path to the SVP position has not been a straight one. We previously wrote about Raja re-joining AMD in 2013, returning to the company after a four-year tenure at Apple, helping the company build up its own graphics technologies. As one time graphics CTO Raja is well versed in what AMD’s graphics technology is capable of, and as was the case around his return in 2013, Raja will be a critical part of AMD’s success with graphics technology going forward.
In many ways then today’s reorganization and promotion is the culmination of re-integrating Raja into AMD, embracing Raja’s task on a larger scale. Raja is no longer just overseeing AMD’s graphics hardware and software, but he is overseeing every facet of graphics at the company. Marketing, ISV relations, and more all fall under Raja.
Raja in turn has a grand task in front of him, figuring out how to steer the reformed graphics group after it has spent so much time in pieces. AMD’s market share of consumer discrete graphics has never been lower, and overall for x86 graphics vendors AMD is in a solid third place behind both Intel and NVIDIA. It will fall to Raja to orchestrate how AMD can recover this lost market share while also reinvigorating AMD’s graphics marketing and ISV relation efforts, all the while ensuring AMD continues to design awesome graphics architectures for APUs, discrete GPUs, and the embedded/semi-custom market. Raja will face significant challenges, but there is likely no one better suited for the task than Raja.

For the rest of AMD, this reorganization represents both a beginning and an end. Radeon becoming whole again will with any luck give the group the swiftness it has long needed and couldn’t find under the rest of the AMD bureaucracy. AMD is certainly trying to sell this reorganization as a positive thing, and having worked with so many people from AMD’s graphics side over the years I can only imagine that by and large for many of them this is a welcome change. On the other hand this is a reorganization, and while it’s not in AMD’s press release, from what I’m hearing the current CVP and GM of graphics and long-time AMD/ATIer Matt Skynner, will be leaving the company, so there will be changes at AMD besides just who reports to whom.
As for the Radeon Technologies Group’s immediate future, it will be interesting to see how long it takes the reorganization and Raja’s promotion to have a visible impact. When Raja first came back to AMD it was to take on hardware and software, the technical aspects of the graphics business where development is measured in years. However the rest of the graphics business that now falls under Raja’s control – the PR, the marketing, etc – operates on much smaller time scales and should be easier to change. What those changes are remains to be seen, but I’m hopeful that we’re going to see the first fruits of this change in time for the expected 2016 launch of AMD’s next-generation FinFET-based GPUs. The hardware will have been locked in for some time now, but Raja will have ample leverage to now change how AMD handles the launch of the hardware.
Finally, in the longer term, what remains to be seen is if Raja can reverse what has without a doubt been a difficult period for AMD. I think it would be remiss to point out that this kind of a reorganization would also be the precursor to splitting AMD and selling/merging parts of it, however from everyone I’ve talked to this doesn’t appear to be the plan. Rather there is a lot of energy over at AMD backing this reorganization, and that by making graphics whole again and putting it under the steady hand of Raja Koduri, AMD believes they can reinvigorate their graphics group. In the end time will tell, and for the time being there is a great deal of hope that in making Radeon whole once more AMD can carry on in what has been a 30 year legacy of graphics hardware development.

Noticia:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9612/a...by-raja-koduri


Esta noticia já tinha sido colocada no topico das R9300, mas dada a importancia deste assunto decidi criar este topico para se debater esta nova estrategia e nova organização na AMD.


Esta noticia faz-me lembrar novamente os tempos da ATI, uma empresa sozinha e parece-me um pouco isto que a AMD quer fazer com esta nova divisão em apenas GPUs e não sei até que ponto esta nova divisão não será também para atrair algum investidor que queira comprar este novo grupo.
A tarefa desta nova divisão não é nada fácil, para começar os fundos são poucos, num curto espaço de tempo têm de colocar nova tecnologia cá fora , têm de recuperar o longa quota de mercado que foi perdida nestes ultimos anos.

Não sei se as capacidades do Sr Raja para liderança são boas, mas conhecimentos e experiencia não lhe faltam e convém lembrar que alguns dos mais fantasticos GPUs da AMD sairam das ideias deste senhor.

Espero que isto seja um ponto de viragem, agora que não devem existir tantas pressões, para um novo rumo nas placas graficas da AMD.

[MAXLD]

it wasn’t until this announcement that even I truly understood just how spread out AMD’s various graphics-related sub-groups have been. Between the various groups, AMD has had departments reporting to CTO Mark Papermaster, CVP of Global Marketing John Taylor, CVP and GM of graphics Matt Skynner, VP of Visual Computing Raja Koduri, and other executives within the AMD structure. The end result is that graphics is truly everywhere within AMD, but at times it is also nowhere.
Having graphics spread out as AMD has been was intended to foster deep cooperation between the various AMD CPU and graphics groups, by making everyone vested in the success of AMD’s graphics initiatives. However from what I’m hearing with respect to today’s announcements, being spread out in such a fashion has also hamstrung AMD’s graphics initiatives at times. Having different groups under different executives controlling technology, marketing, ISV relations, and other aspects of the business has prevented AMD from being able to execute swiftly on the graphics front, and ultimately that has hurt AMD as a whole.

Basicamente deve-se resumir a isso. Empresas desta dimensão têm sempre uma estrutura interna que pode atingir uma complexidade contra-produtiva. Esperemos que seja benéfico ao ponto de dar também resultados para o exterior.

[Jorge-Vieira]

AMD Promotes Renowned Graphics Architect Michael Mantor to Corporate Fellow

AMD announced the appointment of graphics and parallel compute architect Michael Mantor to AMD Corporate Fellow for his demonstrated leadership in graphics engineering. At AMD, Corporate Fellow is the highest possible level of technical recognition with only four employees currently holding the title. Mantor has made key contributions to a diverse set of AMD graphics products, including those that power the Microsoft Xbox One™, Sony PlayStation® PS4™, and multiple generations of AMD Radeon™ graphics. As Corporate Fellow, he will lead graphics and compute architecture teams in the development of next generation architectures to be used in PCs, game consoles, virtual reality devices, workstations, and super computers.

Noticia:
http://www.hardocp.com/news/2015/12/...w#.Vl2wfL9v708

[Jorge-Vieira]

Into a new era

by Scott Wasson — 10:43 PM on December 2, 2015

Sixteen years ago, we fired up a modest web server session and began posting news items about the latest in PC tech and gaming. Over time, that little fly-by-night endeavor grew to become something bigger and better than anything we could anticipate—a full-time job for a number of very sharp people and a publication that produced some of the finest in-depth articles and reviews in the PC hardware space. We were able to build something unique, something that hadn't existed yet in print magazines or elsewhere, a place where community interaction fed our own ambitions to provide smarter testing, imaginative writing, and instant accountability. I'm very proud of what The Tech Report has become, and I'm happy to to have cataloged the incredible progress of an industry that has improbably made dreams come true for a generation of early PC enthusiasts. I'm especially pleased that we've been able to track that progress with an empirical approach to testing that attempts to capture a sense of the user experience.
Some months ago, I got a phone call from Raja Koduri, who heads up the newly formed Radeon Technologies Group at AMD. Raja asked me if I'd be interested in coming to work at AMD, to help implement the frame-time-based testing methods for game performance that I've championed here at TR. In talking with Raja, I came to see that he has a passion for doing things the right way, for creating better experiences for Radeon owners. He was offering me a unique opportunity to be a part of that effort, to move across organizational lines and help ensure that the Radeon Technologies Group creates the best possible experiences for gamers. AMD is a company facing some distinct challenges right now, but it's also loaded with potential—and the Radeon Technologies Group has a renewed vision and focus under Raja's leadership.
In the end, this opportunity was simply too good to pass up. Early in the new year, I will be joining AMD in my new role. As a result, I'll be stepping down as Editor-in-Chief of The Tech Report.
TR will continue, of course, under the able leadership of Jeff Kampman, who has been working with us for a year and a half and, as Managing Editor, has essentially been running the site for the past six months. Regular readers will already know that Jeff is a very capable writer and editor in the mold of our best staffers over the years. He will be assisted by a solid stable of writers, including Mark, Tony, and Bruno, all of whom have been providing excellent reviews and news in the TR tradition through the course of the past year. We are also looking to hire another full-time editor, as you may know, to help with my traditional coverage areas of CPUs and graphics. I believe strongly in The Tech Report's mission to provide honest, in-depth coverage of the personal computing space with style and insight. With your continued support, the site should go on fulfilling that mission for years to come. I'll be happy to provide what advice I can to Jeff and the rest of the TR staff from time to time, but given my new role in the industry, I won't have any input into TR's editorial choices going forward.
Some thanks
On a personal note, I'd like to take a moment to thank as many folks as I can for making the past sixteen years a possibility for me and the rest of the TR staff. First and foremost, the support we've gotten from our community of readers has been the key to everything. Without you all, I never could have had the privilege of testing and writing about the latest tech on a daily basis. Thank you for your moral and financial support, your interest, your patience with our faults, and yes, even your criticism. Serving you has been deeply rewarding.
Next, I want to thank a number of key TR staffers over the years, especially Geoff Gasior and Cyril Kowaliski, who put up with my brusque editorial critiques for way longer than anyone reasonably could have expected. Ronald Hanaki has posted our Shortbread links for ages without ever accepting a penny's worth of compensation, simply as a service to the community, and I can't thank him enough for his contribution. Jordan Drake served as our podcast host for seven years and somehow made a bunch of nerds sound conversationally competent. Our sales guy, Adam Eiberger, somehow managed to sell enough ads to keep multiple full-time editors employed even through the darkest of economic times. Steve Roylance built our custom content management system from the ground up and made it ridiculously quick. Bruno Ferreira extended it with the nifty Metal comments system and then built our distinctive pay-what-you-want subscription system, which I believe points to an important way forward for independent publishers. My lovely wife Stephanie quietly kept the books for TR all these years without ever drawing a paycheck, and she put up with my countless late nights on deadline and long days spent testing with a grace beyond measure. I'm missing people, because the list is too long, but thanks also to Sander Pilon, Steve Gibson, my co-founder Andy Brown, Jeff Atwood, and a host of other TR writers and supporters over the years.
Thanks also to the many companies who agreed to sponsor the site, especially long-time sponsors like Newegg, Asus, Corsair, Gigabyte, XFX, and OCZ. Many of these folks supported us even though our reviews often criticized their products. In a similar vein, thanks to all of the companies brave enough to send us hardware to review, despite knowing the risks they were taking. I'm also grateful for my fellow journalists who have acted as sounding boards and allies countless times. You're good folks.

Noticia:
http://techreport.com/blog/29390/into-a-new-era


A mais recente e sonante contratação da AMD.
Sou um adimirador deste senhor, quer pela forma como escreve, quer pela forma como faz as reviews, nos podcasts era sempre alguém tranquilo e com vastissímo conhecimento deste meio e pelo que sempre me deu a entender, defensor do PC Gaming.

Acho que a AMD fez aqui uma aposta para continuar o novo rumo que tem traçado, acho que todos os possuidores de placas AMD vão nos proximos tempos começar a ver efeitos desta nova contratação.

Por outro lado, acho que o site Tech Report "perdeu" uma pessoa que defenia muita coisa que era aquela site como uma das referencias actuais a nível de informação e reviews, vamos a ver agora o rumo que vai seguir.

[Jorge-Vieira]

The Tech Report's Scott Wasson Leaves for AMD

Update 2 (11:50pm): Okay, so. Scott Wasson was asked by Raja Koduri to join the Radeon Technologies Group, their intention being to implement the work he did with (and surrounding) his frame time benchmark to improve user experience. Scott Wasson will step down as Editor-in-Chief of The Tech Reprot, and promote Jeff Kampman in his place.
Update: Scott Wasson has just published a blog post about it, naturally minutes after I wrote this. We'll add more details above this as we digest them. Original news below!
AMD has just announced that Scott Wasson, Editor-in-Chief at The Tech Report, will leave his site and join their ranks. Details are still scarce because of how fresh this announcement is, but he will join the company to lead User Experience. Scott Wasson is a good friend of PC Perspective and our Editor-in-Chief, Ryan Shrout. They shared notes during the development of Frame Rating.

Ryan is still visiting AMD for the scheduled briefing, and will probably be talking more about this over the next couple of days. Scott Wasson's new position at the chip designer will take effect in January. We don't yet know how this will affect The Tech Report itself, whether someone will take over or not. Ryan broke the news on our most recent podcast from the event.

Noticia:
http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Te...son-Leaves-AMD

Cá aguardamos por um podcast bem elucidativo

[MAXLD]

Boa novidade para a AMD, tem ali experiência à farta para melhorar ainda mais nesse aspecto do frame pacing (que é crucial também na área do VR). Estou a gostar deste Radeon Group.

[Jorge-Vieira]

[Jorge-Vieira]

AMD Bringing Better Pixels to PC, HDR and Larger Color Space to Consumers

At the recent Radeon Technologies Group Summit, AMD announced their plans to increase the quality of color in pixels on being pushed to the screen. The idea is to increase the amount of color and luminescence information in each pixel, and encode and map it in such a way that it’s vastly superior looking. By doing so, they’ll be able to render scenes that more closely match what the human eye can actually perceive.

Better pixels, more color, and a better experience, AMD bringing HDR to everyone.

The basics are that AMD wants to bring 10-bit color rendering to every type of workflow, especially games and that they also want to introduce the world of true HDR to consumers. We’ll go over what HDR actually is at the end.
This philosophy starts with being able to render and send full 10bpp color encoding to the monitor, which all current-generation Radeon GPU’s do. In contrast, only NVIDIA’s professional line actually support that. They don’t want to stop there, though.
The idea is to eventually have 10bpp capable monitors available in the mainstream, with monitors and TV’s that are capable of higher nits, though not just to have a “brighter” image, but to be able to provide a better image as well. Currently there are very few monitors aside from professional monitors that can actually support true 10-bit color. Most that even claim to support over a billion colors are actually 8-bit panels making use of FRC to for approximations and dithering of actually displayable colors to make the others. The result is generally poor. AMD expects more of these kinds of monitors to be available in the second half of 2016.
So how are they planning on going about bringing us better colors? Better encoding of colors, better tone-mapping and supporting the creation of better monitors. In order to actually display colors on our monitor, information about each pixel is encoded into it that ends up being what we see. Tone-mapping refers to processing techniques used to map one set of colors, likely with more information, to another with less information in order to approximate the appearance of high-dynamic range. It doesn’t always work out for the better. And of course there are very few actual monitors that are true 10-bit capable.
Currently most media seems to be designed around a standard known as Rec.1886, which is includes 8-bits of color per pixel. It’s limited and generally covers the sRGB color-space. The 10-bit ST 2084 standard of encoding is that which is used by professionals working in the imaging sector and covers far more color than you could imagine.

Though we’re trichromatic and can discern only around 7-10 million different colors, the larger number a monitor and media, can display, the better and more realistic it might actually look with different light bearing parameters being able to be replicated correctly. The problem then lies in mapping those colors to what your display is capable of, whether it’s an HDR capable monitor or not. That mapping is called tone-mapping, and it is here that new headway will also be made. The better that we can map a particular shade of green that an artist is trying to convey to the appropriate color that your hardware is capable of, the better it’ll be for everyone and all types of content.
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AMD wants to make HDR a big part of all aspects of computing in the near future. But before we get into the specifics of what AMD is planning and what that means for the industry, it’s vitally important to discuss what HDR actually is.
For most consumers, High Dynamic Range is associated to photos and videos that are overexposed and have over exaggerated and over saturated colors that can look good in some instances, but horrid in others. What’s being sold as “HDR” is actually an artistic design so that something “pops” and looks more catchy. It’s a blatant over exaggeration, and it’s simply not true.
What really is HDR then? Put simply, it is the pursuit of showing a higher dynamic range of luminance in order to better represent the colors and brightness that the human eye can actually perceive. It’s the absolute opposite of what you may have thought. It’s not a “neutral” representation of a given scene by any means, but a representation of what you might actually be seeing at any given time.
So then, AMD isn’t looking to over saturate games and images to give make it look ridiculous. They want to match the number of colors and amount of brightness that your GPU can render to that of our natural ability so that we have a much better looking image. A natural image.
There are several things that are needed In order for AMD to achieve their dreams of having better pixels brought to consumers. This is something that needs a whole solution from GPU to monitor and everything in-between to actually be viable. Certainly it’s possible, and for AMD, it’s all about making the experience better, not necessarily outright faster.
We need better pixels

And we do, not necessarily drastically so, but this type of investment in the future of visual computing is a welcome one. If we can get past the typical assumption of what HDR is, then you can hopefully grasp what this means for gaming. This won’t be as dramatic a difference as moving from 16-bit internally rendered color to 32-bit, but it’ll still be quite the difference when combined with increased luminance ranges and contrast ratios. Of course, it all has to be used right to make a drastic difference.

Noticia:
http://wccftech.com/amd-bringing-bet...#ixzz3tjpROboG

[Enzo]

Essas cores agora ate me fizeram lembrar as voodoo2
Bora AMD. Deves um grande pedido de desculpas a todos nós!!

[Jorge-Vieira]

Radeon technology group RTG brings back ATI spirit

Raja Technology Group

Fudzilla was part of Radeon technology group event in Sonoma California where RTG group showed a few things to come in 2016. For the first time in ages we saw the spirit of ATI come to the fore..

The event was the biggest gathering of AMD graphics engineers we ever experienced in a decade and a half. We got to talk to some of the smartest people behind the scene who made the Radeon GPUs, drivers, FreeSync, video engine, Virtual Reality and a few other things.
It is hardly a secret that Nvidia had the upper hand and managed an incredible 80 percent of discrete market. The latest Jon Peddie research report indicated that AMD increased its market share to a 18.8 percent. This is a low number when you compare the market share a few years back.
AMD has been aware of the missed opportunity and the RTG group has been working on the next generation technologies. The first one to show its face in the course of 2016 and will be smaller than 28nm in FinFET and this is the technology to fight Nvidia Pascal generation of GPUs.
AMD has quite a good chance to regain some of the market back in 2016. There are a lot of variables but the GPU team has definitely a much better line up then their CPU colleagues.
Zen CPU architecture, usually attributed as the AMD’s come back product will only happen in very late 2016 and will influence the 2017 financial results. The next generation GPU, the one we call Greenland will launch sooner.

Noticia:
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/graphic...ack-ati-spirit


Só trazer o espírito não chega, é preciso aliar a isso bons produtos.

[Enzo]

Bem...melhor que nada...
Smells like ATI spirit. Vamos ver se atingem o Nirvana com isso. Ou se suicidam.

[Jorge-Vieira]

GPUOpen initiative gives devs the keys to AMD's graphics black boxes

A couple weeks ago at AMD's Radeon Technologies Group Tech Summit, Nick Thibieroz, senior manager of ISV engineering for the division, told us about what the company perceives as major problems for developers on the PC these days. He argued that limited access to the GPU and proprietary code wrapped up in black boxes (a thinly-veiled reference to Nvidia's GameWorks middleware) are causing headaches for developers who want to extract the most performance possible from the underlying hardware. He also feels that proprietary resources stifle information-sharing and collaboration among developers, a situation that ultimately harms graphics innovation in games.

AMD wants to counter this notion of the black box and cultivate more information-sharing by radically opening up large portions of its software and tools. This initiative, called GPUOpen, will offer devs full source code access to effects like TressFX, tools like the CodeXL static analyzer, and the LiquidVR and Firerays SDKs when it goes live in January 2016. What's more, AMD will make these resources available under the permissive MIT License, meaning that GPUOpen resources can be examined, modified, reused, and resold without restriction.

AMD says GPUOpen resources will get a dedicated portal with links to open-source content hosted on GitHub. The company also plans to offer blog posts related to its resources and the graphics development community. The company was adamant that those posts will be written by developers, not marketing personnel.
As an example of what developers can do with GPUOpen resources, AMD brought Jean-Normand Bucci, director of Labs R&D for Eidos Montreal, on stage to talk about his team's work with TressFX. The team wanted to extend TressFX for its work on the upcoming Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and because TressFX is now a GPUOpen resource, the Labs R&D team was able to improve that code for its internal use.
The notion of "AMD games" and "Nvidia games" that include proprietary resources from those companies (to the perceived or actual detriment of the competitor's hardware) has been a major bone of contention among PC gamers over the past couple years. GPUOpen could be seen as a de-escalation in that battle, in that the community will have the opportunity to dig into AMD's development resources and tools without restriction. This move could also be risky in that it gives competitors a detailed peek into the workings of AMD's formerly proprietary tech. We'll have to see what devs can do with the keys to the kingdom.

Noticia:
http://techreport.com/news/29436/gpuopen-initiative-gives-devs-the-keys-to-amd-graphics-black-boxes

Mais informações:
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphic...ng-Development

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/amd-launches-gpuopen-initiative.html

http://www.legitreviews.com/gpuopen-will-give-game-developers-unprecedented-gpu-control_176140

http://hothardware.com/news/amd-goes-open-source-announces-gpuopen-initiative-new-compiler-and-drivers-for-lunix-and-hpc

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-gpuopen-open-source-development,30750.html

[Jorge-Vieira]

AMD Radeon Technologies Group Previews Polaris Architecture

AMD Polaris Architecture Coming Mid-2016

In early December, I was able to spend some time with members of the newly formed Radeon Technologies Group (RTG), which is a revitalized and compartmentalized section of AMD that is taking over all graphics work. During those meetings, I was able to learn quite a bit about the plans for RTG going forward, including changes for AMD FreeSync and implementation of HDR display technology, and their plans for the GPUOpen open-sourced game development platform. Perhaps most intriguing of all: we received some information about the next-generation GPU architecture, targeted for 2016.
Codenamed Polaris, this new architecture will be the 4^th generation of GCN (Graphics Core Next), and it will be the first AMD GPU that is built on FinFET process technology. These two changes combined promise to offer the biggest improvement in performance per watt, generation to generation, in AMD’s history.

Though the amount of information provided about the Polaris architecture is light, RTG does promise some changes to the 4^th iteration of its GCN design. Those include primitive discard acceleration, an improved hardware scheduler, better pre-fetch, increased shader efficiency, and stronger memory compression. We have already discussed in a previous story that the new GPUs will include HDMI 2.0a and DisplayPort 1.3 display interfaces, which offer some impressive new features and bandwidth. From a multimedia perspective, Polaris will be the first GPU to include support for h.265 4K decode and encode acceleration.

This slide shows us quite a few changes, most of which were never discussed specifically that we can report, coming to Polaris. Geometry processing and the memory controller stand out as potentially interesting to me – AMD’s Fiji design continues to lag behind NVIDIA’s Maxwell in terms of tessellation performance and we would love to see that shift. I am also very curious to see how the memory controller is configured on the entire Polaris lineup of GPUs – we saw the introduction of HBM (high bandwidth memory) with the Fury line of cards.
Continue reading our overview of the AMD Polaris announcement!!
It looks like the mobile variations of Polaris, at least, will be using standard GDDR5 memory interfaces. AMD didn’t comment more specifically than that, only elaborating that they “were invested in HBM” and that it would “continue to be on the company’s roadmap.” To me, that sounds like we’ll see a mix of products with HBM and GDDR5 technology, even in the desktop market. Likely, only more expensive, flagship graphics cards will be getting HBM.
Performance characteristics were missing from any discussions on Polaris with one exception – a demonstration of power efficiency of an unnamed Polaris GPU compared to a GeForce GTX 950 GPU. Maxwell was a big step forward for NVIDIA in terms of power efficiency and AMD is hoping that Polaris, along with the FinFET process technology, will offer an even bigger jump.

For the single data point that AMD provided, they compared the GTX 950 to a similarly priced Polaris graphics. At 1920x1080 resolution, run medium image quality settings at 60 FPS, full system power for Star Wars Battlefront was around 140 watts on the NVIDIA system. The Polaris system was using just 86 watts. That’s a difference of 54 watts, a considerable amount for GPU in this class.
It is likely that this is the first Polaris GPU being brought up (after only 2 months I’m told) and could represent the best improvement in efficiency that we will see. I’ll be curious to see how flagship GPUs from AMD compare under the same conditions.
How is Polaris able to achieve these types of improvements? It comes from a combination of architectural changes and process technology changes. Even RTG staff were willing to admit that the move to 14nm FinFET process tech was the majority factor for the improvement we are seeing here, something on the order of a 70/30 split. That doesn’t minimize the effort AMD’s engineers are going through to improve on GCN at all, just that we can finally expect to see improvements across the board as we finally move past the 28nm node.

AMD did spent quite a bit of time at the RTG summit discussing the benefits of moving to FinFET technology from the current 28nm planar technology that dominates GPU production. It’s been 5 years since we saw 28nm GPUs, BY FAR the longest stretch between node upgrades. There were just too many technical and availability issues with 22/20nm processes for either NVIDIA or AMD to adopt them. But, with FinFET 3D transistors at the 16nm and 14nm nodes, we should see sizeable improvements in power efficiency provided by its ability to have a higher “on” current and lower “off” current.

FinFET isn’t new, it’s just new to anyone other than Intel. We have been writing about 3D, FinFET transistors since 2012, with theories about its implementation and advantages for GPUs. I did learn that the first Polaris chip we saw demoed in December was built on GlobalFoundries 14nm FinFET process; whether or not AMD will also build Polaris chips on TSMC’s 16nm process has yet to be confirmed.

FinFET technologies not only offer very obvious product-level performance advantages but also lower variation. This should allow AMD (and NVIDIA) to better predict bins for this generation of GPUs. This means RTG should have no issues planning out their product line well in advance.

This chart, above, illustrates the advantages of FinFET in curves mapping power consumption and performance (clock speed). AMD’s Joe Macri stated, during our talks, that they expect this FinFET technology will bring a 50-60% power reduction at the same performance level OR a 25-30% performance increase at the same power. In theory then, if AMD decided to release a GPU with the same power consumption as the current Fury X, we might see a 25-30% performance advantage. I think, in practice, they would lower voltages a bit instead, to improve overall efficiency more dramatically, but we’ll find out in mid-2016.

One thing we will definitely see from Polaris is competition for NVIDIA in the mobile space, with Radeon GPUs finally making inroads to modern gaming notebooks. And we might be lucky enough to see further changes in the form factors available with high performance GPUs, much like we did with the Radeon R9 Nano.

But honestly, other than what we have here, very little is known about what Polaris will be and what it will offer PC gamers when it is finally released (later this year). Will AMD release mobile and mainstream GPUs first and follow up with flagship high-end parts? Or will we see the more expensive cards first in our review lineup? We don’t know and AMD and the Radeon Technologies Group aren’t talking yet. It is also going to be crucial to learn how many architecture changes will find their way to Polaris and how effective they are in change the performance efficiency for Radeon. NVIDIA’s GeForce line will be built on the same FinFET process later in 2016 so any inherent advantages of that process will apply to both parties.
Check out the video from AMD if you'd like as well.

Noticia:
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/AMD-Radeon-Technologies-Group-Previews-Polaris-Architecture

Fica aqui o preview do Guru 3D:
http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages...tecture,1.html

[Jorge-Vieira]

Radeon Technologies Group Demoes HDR Technology at CES 2016 – Part of the Better Pixels Initiative

AMD has been making a lot of headway in developing graphics technologies, diversifying its strategies away from just a processor manufacturer. Part of that initiative, which can loosely be referred to as the “better pixels” initiative, is its new foray into HDR technology. HDR simply put, means High Dynamic Range, or the co-existence of bright highlights and shadows without loss of detail. We didn’t actually think modern LED monitors are in any dire need of said HDR tech, but AMD clearly thinks there is.

A slide showing the differences between SDR and HDR monitors. @AMD Public Domain

AMD RTG demoes HDR technology at CES 2016

Before LCDs and LEDs, people went by with CRTs. Those monitors had almost perfect HDR capabilities and reproduced a more or less accurate color gamut. With the advent of LCDs, the initial offerings were severely lacking in terms of color reproduction. The blacks were greyish, and the colors were not vibrant at all. Ghosting was also an issue considering the response time was very low. Monitor technology has come a long way since that time. A good LED monitor in today’s time is almost on the same level as a CRT of old. Yet, the technology is still evolving.






OLEDs are a good example of the pros and cons of existing display tech. While they can produce a good color gamut and have decent HDR capabilities, they suffer from burn-in, same as Plasma Tvs do. This is one of the reasons, they are very rarely chosen as the choice for computer monitors, where parts of the screen stay frozen for long periods of time. What AMD wants to do, is something even further. It wants to extend the HDR capabilities of existing technologies by driving the tone map through their hardware. This involves not only developing a hardware standard for monitors but also incorporating the technology into Radeon graphic cards. Apart from that, there isn’t much information that we have available.
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As you can see on-screen, there is a very clear difference between the SDR and HDR examples shown by the AMD engineer. Ofcourse, you will not be able to see all the differences considering you probably aren’t using an HDR setup to view this video. However, since the video being recorded by the camera is already processed, you should be able to get the basic idea. It is also worth pointing out that the type of panel and color vibrance makes a lot of difference in these tests and we don’t know what the exact specifications of these monitors were. As fa as we can see however, it looks like AMD is once again, working on a solid piece of technology, which considering the company’s past trend will probably be open source.
Its worth pointing out that this HDR demo is just one faucet of the bigger picture. AMD is working on multiple aspects on improving the pixels you see – not just driving more pixels (and ideology of quality as well as quantity). This involves improving everything from the color gamut to the dynamic range of the monitors resulting in a more vibrant – truer to life – picture. More information about AMD RTG’s Better Pixels initiative can be found here.

Noticia:
http://wccftech.com/amd-demoes-hdr-technology-ces-2016/#ixzz3wf2bBLHK


Tecnologia bastante promissora que a AMD está a apostar.

[Enzo]

Portanto, daqui a pouco vamos ter o Tiran a explicar que o olho humano não distingue mais do que x cores, e o Sonas a mandar vir com ele, correcto?