BERLIN: The race has begun: Early this year the first desktop computers and notebooks based on the latest processor architectures from AMD and Intel hit the shelves.
AMD calls its new chip Fusion; Intel's is named Sandy Bridge.
While the names are different, the underlying principle is the same: both manufacturers placed the processor and graphics chip on a single circuit board. This, say the manufacturers, results in faster and more efficient computers.
Many new devices incorporating this processor technology were presented recently at the CeBIT IT trade show in Hanover, Germany.
MSI, for example, introduced a broad range of notebooks equipped with AMD Fusion processors. Acer, on the other hand, presented the Aspire Timeline X line of notebooks powered by Sandy Bridge processors.
At present, the combo chips are mainly used for mobile devices. And there's a reason for that, says Christian Siemers, professor for processor architecture at the Technical University of Clausthal in Germany.
"There's a clear trend towards highly specialised devices," he says. As these are powered by batteries and must be kept from overheating, energy-efficient chips are the ideal solution. The days of the traditional desktop PC designed to accommodate any application are numbered," he adds.
While Sandy Bridge and Fusion represent a viable alternative for notebooks and tablet computers, the integrated graphics processors do not always live up to the high requirements of desktop PCs and demanding users or gamers.
As opposed to Sandy Bridge graphics processors, the AMD Fusion chips support DirectX 11. This explains why, for instance, the Akoya P7750 desktop PC from Medion showcased at CeBIT houses a Radeon HD6870 graphics card, although the PC is powered by a Sandy Bridge- type Intel Core i7 2600.
A range of manufacturers expect to release PCs with AMD's new chips by early spring. Other manufacturers have communicated similar release dates for devices based on Intel's new line of chips. This delay is owing to the fact that some of the Sandy Bridge chip sets shipped early in the year were faulty and did not provide sufficiently reliable connectors for hard disks or other drives.
The resulting product recall and changed production processes have caused supply bottlenecks. Intel and AMD advertise the new processor generation to be both energy efficient and fast. According to Professor Siemers, "Even modern processors are often quite ineffective and leave a great fraction of their potential untapped." This means there's a lot of room for improving the performance.
An easy way to verify that the new chips consume less energy is to look at the battery life of notebooks. Manufacturers Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard just presented business notebooks with previously unthinkable battery lives.
Lenovo lists its new Thinkpad T420 15 with a standard battery life of 15 hours, which can even be upgraded to work for 30 hours with an optional module. Hewlett Packard's Elitebook 8460p reportedly runs for up to 32 hours but requires an additional plug-in battery to do so.
For the time being, both devices will be introduced in the US market only. So how realistic are these figures? Siemers is rather sceptical, but considers a 10-per cent performance increase to be well within the realm of the possible for the first generation based on this new processor architecture.
"Quantum leaps are not very likely to occur," he says. His colleague Rainer Leupers concurs. "Energy efficiency is also closely tied to the software employed," he says. "But this topic is still not being addressed very seriously."
One factor in this equation is the so-called GPGPU (general purpose computation on graphics processing unit). This technology allows the graphics chip to be used for general tasks when no graphics-related computing chores are pending. However, this technology can only be tapped with the right programming, says Leupers.