14 DAY TRIAL // AMD has recently attended the "Analyst Day" conference, where the Wall Street analysts judged the company's failure on the market. As every "convict" that is the target of harsh accusation, AMD laid their cards on the table. The "investigators" managed to squeeze interesting names in the company's roadmap, such as the "Montreal" processor, or the "Piranha" server platform. The chip manufacturer also disclosed that it would focus on multiple GPUs on a single card for a new line of high-end graphics products.
The company is reported to have started developing the technology for the Radeon 3000 series. The news emerged from sources at the ATI graphics division and, according to them, the first product to see daylight will be the Radeon HD 3870 X2. It features two RV670XT GPUs and is scheduled for launch in January next year.
The two GPUs are linked using a PCI Express bridge chip, called the PEX6347. The bridge will allow the GPUs to work together on the same card and will considerably reduce the dual CPU card costs. The approach is more expensive than producing a single GPU card, but will spare research and development costs, and will also reduce the time until the products arrive on the market.
The method is not a breakthrough in the field, since ATI used a similar "recipe" for its AGP All-in-Wonder cards that featured FireWire input (it allowed the FireWire controller to work over an AGP interface). The technology is not new at all, which means that AMD won't have any excuse should it stumble on the roadmap.
AMD is planning to integrate their PCI Express bridge chip directly into the following GPUs, in order to avoid third-party chips that would add extra production costs. The first chip to include the new bridge is supposed to be the R700.
The Radeon HD 3870 X2 will arrive in January and will carry a price between $299 and $349.