Thursday December 14 AMD held their last Analyst Day for the year of 2006. This event was held so AMD could catch up with market analysts and give an update of their recent happenings. It also was held to provide an outline of AMD’s future and give an idea of the kind of products we will be seeing introduced from the company.

Last June AMD held a memorable Analyst Day in which they outlined their future for 2007. They released details about their future Quad core architecture, introduced a new roadmap which included Quad FX processors, at that time known as 4x4, and also announced their new Torrenza platform.

The Analyst Day held yesterday, December 14, showed a very new future for AMD. The first Analyst Day held after the acquisition of ATI, which was completed in October, the event combined both the futures of AMD and ATI. The event discussed future technologies that will be introduced by AMD and ATI. In particular, AMD shed some more light on their Fusion technology which combines both the CPU and GPU into one chip.

We begin our article with an analysis of the new business structure of AMD that was made as a result of the acquisition of ATI.

AMD has significantly reorganized their internal operations. The company now has three major divisions: processors (CPU), graphics processing units (GPU), and consumer electronics (CE). The divisions are synchronous with each other in marketing, research, and product development.

Ever since the acquisition of ATI by AMD, the future of the ATI brand has been unsure. The event last Thursday clarified the branding aspect of the relationship between AMD and ATI. The branding of products has been split into product families. The ATI Brand will continue to be used for the PC GPU segment along with the Game Console segment, such as for the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii. Chipsets designed for Intel processors will continue to bear the name of ATI, a wise move on AMD’s part, while chipsets for AMD processors will be branded with the AMD name. As can be expected, the processor segment for AMD will remain untouched. The same cannot be said for the consumer electronics segment as all products previously commercialized as ATI will now adopt the AMD name.

To summarize the above, the ATI brand will continue to exist in the GPU segment of AMD products. The ATI brand will also be used for Intel chipsets, a product segment in which the use of the AMD name would create potential problems.

Marty Seyer, senior vice president of the Commercial Business Unit for AMD, presented AMD’s roadmap for server processors, desktop processors, and mobile processors. The information that was presented this time around wasn’t very different compared to the last analyst day, however, some ulterior details were revealed.

The roadmap of AMD’s server solutions that was presented to us confirmed much of what we already knew. Barcelona, AMD’s first Quad core processor, is still on track for its release in the first half of 2007. Barcelona will be released for systems with 2 or more sockets while Budapest will be meant for single socket systems. The naming of the CPUs will go as follows: Opteron 1xxx for single socket systems, Opteron 2xxx for dual-socket systems, and Opteron 8xxx for 8-socket motherboards.

In early 2008 Barcelona will be “enhanced” with the Shanghai Core. Details regarding the enhancements are pretty scarce at the moment, however, it is expected that the new core will introduce a larger, shared L3 cache. The core is also expected to feature HyperTransport 3.0 which provides high-speed chip-to-chip and board-to-board communications. The TDP of the CPU is not expected to change and the adoption of DDR3 for the CPU is currently not on the horizon.

Again, there isn’t a large amount of new information for AMD’s Desktop Platform Roadmap that isn’t already known. Dual and Quad core solutions based on AMD’s next generation architecture are expected to be introduced in the second half of 2007. Towards the end of 2007 AMD will release Dual and Single Core processors aimed at the entry level segment of the market. In the second half of 2008 AMD will release a new family of processors based on socket AM3. These processors will have support for DDR3 memory and also support Single, Dual, or Quad Core.

AMD’s new platforms will begin to utilize HyperTransport 3.0 half-way through 2007. New chipsets will continue to support Crossfire technology for dual-graphics support. In the second half of 2007, AMD’s new chipsets will start coming with integrated graphics that support Microsoft DirectX 10, a definite plus for entry level systems.

The last roadmap of AMD is for their notebook solutions. In this case, the new processors will also be based off of a new architecture and are codenamed “Hawk.” Hawk CPUs will come supporting DDR2 Memory and will feature power management and battery life enhancements. In 2008 AMD will release a new processor code named Griffin. This new CPU will feature split power planes, which is the possibility to provide independent voltage to each core of a CPU, increasing energy efficiency. The CPU will also come with other power saving technologies ultimately increasing the battery life of Hawk-based laptops.

Laptop chipsets with integrated graphics that support DirectX 10 will debut towards the end of 2007. They will also feature DisplyPort technology and HyperTransport 3.0.

A very large benefit that AMD has received from their acquisition of ATI is that they are now able to offer customers with complete platforms for workstation and desktop systems along with notebooks. The notebook market is a market in which AMD has had a large amount of trouble to gain marketshare in. A major reason for AMD’s difficulty to penetrate the notebook market was that they couldn’t introduce complete notebook platforms to manufacturers while Intel could. Because of ATI’s chipset capabilities, AMD can now create complete notebook platforms for manufacturers.

Throughout 2007 AMD will be introducing new platforms that combine their Turion 64 processors with chipsets that were in the ATI roadmap before being bought by AMD. In 2009, AMD will completely change their platform approach with the introduction of Fusion which are processors that fuse the CPU and GPU together into one chip. Fusion will find a comfortable niche in the mobile segment as it will allow for great energy efficiency, a characteristic which plays a fundamental role in the success of portable products.

Historically, AMD has been a company that has worked very closely with partners. Much of their original success was based off of partnerships, such as that with NVIDIA, primarily because the company was dependant on third-party chipsets. Even though AMD now has capabilities to create their own chipsets, the company will still maintain strong ties with partners by integrating their technologies into AMD platforms. This is a very interesting business approach that AMD has taken as it will allow the company to supply platforms with AMD chipsets along with platforms that use chipsets from different manufacturers.

Fusion Technology has a very strong potential to succeed in the consumer electronics market. The technology will be able to supply compatibility with x86 applications while not compromising battery life or performance. This means that Fusion CPUs will most likely be widely adopted in products that require performance, compatibility, and protability. In this market, the role of ATI for AMD’s success will be an integral one as the experience that ATI has in the consumer electronics market will be invaluable for AMD.

Every couple of years CPU manufacturers begin following a new trend. The first trend was the race for GHz, which died out with Intel’s Netburst architecture. The second trend, which is the one we are currently in, is the race for multiple cores. The past two years have seen a huge increase in the number of cores that are on a CPU. From single cores, to dual cores, we are now on the stage of quad cores and on the eve of octal-cores.

AMD has forecasted that by 2010 we will see the multi-core trend come to an end. Instead, AMD will begin to focus heavily on Fusion technology, bringing about the birth of APUs (Accelerated Processing Units).

All of this might sound a little confusing at first, so we will summarize it as simply as we can. Fusion is a technology that fuses both the CPU and GPU into one package. Processors based on Fusion technology are called Accelerated Processor Units. Accelerated Processors will be initially used for mobile devices, such as PDAs and Cell Phones. This is primarily because the fusion of a GPU and CPU will be able to reduce power consumption and also increase efficiency. Over time, APUs will evolve to be used in computer systems from entry-level systems to high performance workstations.

APUs (Fusion CPUs) will use a modular approach and can be classified into two categories. In the first category, Fusion CPUs will be general and geared for a variety of applications. The second category of APUs will be targeted towards different segments of the market and will be application specific. Basically, AMD’s vision for APUs is that they will be a set of building blocks that can be mixed and matched together to create specific processing capabilities depending on the end market. This means that, in time, APUs (Fusion processors) will be found in a variety of devices from PDAs to high-end servers. It is important to remember, however, that initially Fusion will focus heavily on mobile solutions and from there make its debut into the mainstream.

Accelerated Processors can also be used with AMD’s Torrenza platform. This means that you can have a Fusion processor plugged into a Torrenza platform along with another application specific coprocessor. This means that your computer can be very application specific to have huge performance benefits in a specific application. In theory, a general Fusion processor could also be used along with an application specific coprocessor allowing the best of both worlds. As can be seen, AMD Stream Technology can also be used in accordance with Torrenza and Fusion. Fusion, Stream, and Torrenza combined come out to equal equal AMD Accelerated Computing.

For Fusion processors, integration of the GPU and CPU will happen at the silicon level. With APUs, AMD aims to take advantage of their integrated memory controller and the flexibility of HyperTransport. The role that ATI will play in Fusion processors is vital as the GPU will ultimately be very closely tied with the CPU.

Fusion Processors are a very radical change compared to traditional processors. Some might even consider it a reinvention of the microprocessor. Despite how promising the technology may seem at the moment, AMD still has a long and hard road ahead of them. Their ambitious view of the Fusion Processor penetrating all levels of the market will require large amounts of money, work, and time. In the course of the next year we hope that we will see more practical example of this architecture working on some prototypes. Since the technology is still in its very early stages, we expect AMD to make quite a few changes to it before we actually see it debut. Until that time, we still have AMD’s quad-core Barcelona to look forward to.