Computex 2011 Show Coverage - Part 4

The fourth installment of our continuing Computex 2011 update covers a fair bit of interesting items like the next generation NVIDIA Tegra 3, AMD Trinity APU and many more. In total, this edition covers booths from AMD, NVIDIA, Akasa, Aerocool, Deep Cool, Leadtek, Lian Li and Lancool.

By Vijay Anand - 2 Jun 2011

AMD's Trinity - 2012's Greatest APU?

AMD held their annual Computex press conference earlier today to provide the media and the industry with updates and their focus moving forward. Admittedly, we've to say it wasn't as exciting as the previous years, but a lot of this supposedly has to do with the fact that AMD has got their act right and are putting out products that people really want to use - such as the Fusion class of accelerated processing units (APUs).

With that said, the biggest highlight of the event is Rick Bergman (Senior VP & GM of AMD's Products Group) pulling out from his pocket the next generation APU - codenamed Trinity, this is going to be manufactured on the 32nm process technology featuring the Bulldozer CPU architecture, a definite jump in processing prowess from the current APUs based on the Bobcat CPU architecture. It will of course feature DX11 graphics processing hardware and would likely be on an AM3+ package though it's hard to say for certain now. Said to be the next year's best APU, here's the video snippet on what matters most:-

http://www.youtube.com/embed/DCIv9OJiVjA

AMD's Senior VP and GM of Products Group, Rick Bergman, shows off next year's best APU product - Trinity.

AMD also shared their APU roadmap progression, or otherwise simply known as the Fusion platform. As you can see in the middle of the presentation below, the APU codenamed Llano is this year's performance orientated Fusion processor with up to four cores and a Radeon HD 65xx class of graphics built-in. It's not yet in the market, but you'll hear from us in a couple of weeks and see corresponding products in retail soon enough. This APU is geared for mainstream systems and notebooks.

Ontario and to some extent Zacate are the first salvo of Fusion CPUs that were launched earlier this year and cater to the netbook, nettop segment. Now if you focus on the 2012 line-up, you'll see that the above mentioned Trinity APU based on a newer architecture will succeed the Llano. In the same fashion, Krishna will succeed the current Ontario and Zacate chips with an enhanced Bobcat architecture, which is mainly a die-shrink to the 28nm bulk process.

Now that we're done sharing the cool bits of the press conference, we detail a few other matters that would interest you. Still on the Fusion family of APUs, AMD now thinks it has spent enough time toying with the first generation Fusion platform and it's now prime enough to be implemented even in tablets. These APUs will be based directly on the current C and E-series of APUs (which are the Ontario and Zacate chips respectively), but they will feature a much lower TDP of below 6 watts. This tablet oriented APU will be identified as the Z-series and would come about later this year.

Fusion will also be heading into the embedded computing space and it's probably high time since computing requirements are ever rising and the multimedia centric APUs would be ideal. These APUs will be identified under the G-series and will have the following characteristics:-

AMD's new G-series of APUs will cater to the embedded computing market of products.

With the inclusion of the Z and G-series of APUs, this is how AMD's Fusion line-up would look like for this year:-

The complete AMD Fusion family of APUs for 2011.

Having seen how the Fusion range of APUs will evolve, AMD also provided a few other updates that will help shape the DIY enthusiast market and the retail scene of complete systems and notebooks:-

AMD's 9-series of chipsets are officially launched today, but there was little else detailed on how the new chipsets will pan out. The main highlights are as seen in the slide:- to embrace the new AM3+ socket and features of the design, SATA 6Gbps support throughout with a newer storage controller, and better CrossFireX support. We'll give you more details on both the chipset and the socket as we tackle the appropriate products in the coming weeks ahead.

Zambezi is the codename given to AMD's high performance enthusiast consumer CPU based on the Bulldozer architecture. Expect these to be on sale within 3 months - a marked improvement over the supposed delay that might have kept it out of competition if it came any later.

For the rest of the consumers, AMD has revamped their Vision based marketing to define the capabilities of a system. In this photo, we helped overlay the current naming scheme against the new naming scheme. While the description and the number of tiers remain, AMD has added a numerical tag scheme to the Vision brand name to help quickly denote the capability level - A4, A6, etc. Thus, descriptors like 'premium' and 'ultimate' have been tossed in favor of simplicity.

And on this slide, here are the other logos that would see accompanying the main Vision marketing where applicable. These are basically feature highlights like denoting quad-cores and when there are dual GPUs for added graphics crunching power.

More AMD Fusion based Products on Showcase

With over 165 desktop and notebook industry design wins to-date on the AMD Fusion platform, it's definitely an encouraging sign that even industry movers concur with AMD's new found solution for the modern multimedia consumption age. Although no AMD Llano based Fusion systems were unveiled, they shared with us even more Brazos platform offerings:-

Meet the first of our long list of new AMD Brazos based systems. As you know by now, Brazos is the codename for the first Fusion platform which consists of either the E-series or C-series APUs with the Hudson M1 platform I/O chipset. Pictured here is a nice turquoise blue HP Pavilion G series notebook with an E-350 APU.

This is the Acer Iconia W500 notebook and features a detachable keyboard like the ASUS Eee Transformer. Running the AMD E-350 Zacate-class APU, we'll have a pretty comprehensive review on this soon enough.

Here's another turquoise blue laptop courtesy of Acer's Aspire One 722. Since it's a netbook, it comes with an even lower powered APU with the AMD C-50 dual-core Fusion processor. Other spec include a 10-inch screen with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels, HDMI output, multi-finger gesture input trackpad, 320GB HDD and a 6-cell battery.

A champagne colored and contoured Samsung RV415 notebook sporting the Fusion platform raises the profile of this class of portable computes a fair bit. It can be easily mistaken for a much more expensive product.

MSI's X370 pictured here is yet another pretty Fusion notebook to consider if appearances are important. This one is built more like a notebook than a netbook with a larger 13.4-inch. 1366 x 768 pixels resolution glare-type screen. Inside, it has the AMD E-350 APU with on-board Radeon HD 6310 class graphics, 2GB DDR3 memory, 500GB HDD, multi-touch trackpad and a chiclet style keyboard.

Not to be left out is the Inspiron M102Z, 10-inch netbook from Dell which also sports the AMD Brazos platform.

Last but not least, although this picture has nothing to do with Fusion, perhaps one day Fusion will gain enough processing power to drive multi-screen gaming. For now, we'll leave you with the AMD showgirls parading this expansive five screen gaming solution with the new DIRT 3 game running on AMD's most powerful discrete GPU solution. The screenshot says it all - if you can splurge on the hardware, you can experience a very immersive game play like never before. See it to believe it! But apart from the cost, the other flip side is that not many games can take advantage of multi-screen gaming.

NVIDIA's Tegra 3 Demoed!

Over at the green team, we met up with several key people at NVIDIA, including CEO Jen-Hsun Huang to get an update on the state of things. We'll share some of those details in appropriate upcoming articles, but for now, we'll show you Tegra 3 in action!

http://www.youtube.com/embed/9JC4T2bGdRE

This is an upcoming game that would be available on Tegra Zone in the future and was demoed on Tegra 3 hardware. For this game, quad-core processing is necessary to ensure the game's full capabilities are unleashed and shown in its full glory. Of course game developers need only set a game quality control to ensure it is playable on other devices too - but with less fidelity.

Some windmill tech demo to further showcase the GPU capabilities - also based on the OpenGL ES 2.0 API.

So far, here's what we know of Tegra 3 and its status:-

Originally codenamed as Project Kal-El
The world's first quad-core SOC with a quad-core CPU engine.
12 GPU CUDA cores based NVIDIA GPU intrgrated
Runs OpenGL ES 2.0 content fluently
Has an overall processing throughput 5 times that of the Tegra 2.
Thermal design power (TDP) is roughly equivalent to that of Tegra 2.
Supports screen resolutions as high as 2560 x 1600 pixels.
Able to process and playback very high definition videos; up to 4 x Full HD (1440p)
Retail products with Tegra 3 can be expected after Q3 this year.
Also targeted at tablets and super phones.

As the Tegra 3 development kit based demos show, Tegra 3 is pretty much shaping up for adoption by vendors. Just like Tegra 2 was adopted for super phones (well, more powerful smartphones) and tablets, Tegra 3 will also be applicable to both product groups. When we probed the product manager further, he shared with us that the TDP of Tegra 3 is roughly similar to Tegra 2. With Kal-El's impressive specs, that mean up to five times more processing throughput than Tegra 2 in the same form factor.

Since Tegra 2 is still plenty powerful now, the upcoming Tegra 3 won't displace the former. Instead, new price points and products will appear to feature both SOC platforms. There's also the possibility that Tegra 3 might be available in multiple SKUs as required by the form factors and requirements of products being designed by the vendors, so those details are still up in the air for now.

We also talked at length with NVIDIA' CEO on the value proposition by NVIDIA in both the GPU and Tegra segments and it was reassuring to know that NVIDIA knows its strengths and leverage on them.

But with other vendors also intensely competing in the same mobile market space, how will NVIDIA's solution stand out? What about the lackluster Tegra 2 battery life experience as tested by our reviewers to-date? How then will Tegra 3 deliver and make it a product that vendors will want to offer?

Speaking with NVIDIA's CEO, he reassured with several valid points. On the note of battery life, over-the-air updates are being pushed out regularly and those ensure the various devices are constantly being 'upgraded' on various levels from compatibility, to fixes and even enhancements. Tegra 2 is after all still a rather fresh platform and in time to come, it should deliver its proposition better.

On the performance front, NVIDIA constantly improves their drivers and have years of knowledge with a big software team to ensure gaming experience stays ahead of the competition. For example, Tegra Zone focuses on all the premium gaming and multimedia content that works best on the GeForce engine within the Tegra SOC to offer either smoother performance, better image quality and other such matters.

On the note of features, Tegra 3 will bring with it yet another plus point - enjoying true 3D content without developers having to develop content for 3D viewing. Sounds familiar? In fact it is; this is what 3D Vision brings to the table in the PC side of things. The Tegra 3 ecosystem, with the right screen, will offer 3D Vision on smartphones without glasses and on any OpenGL ES 2.0 API based software and games. This is still a work in progress but Jen-Hsun shared with us a prototype of if in action and we will say this - it works really swell.

Here's a prototype Tegra 3 (Kal-El) development kit showing off 3D Vision in action at this early stage.

Note the Unreal engine based demo in action and the stereoscopic display. It was mentioned that this unit would run content in full HD in 2D but work on a 720p resolution in 3D.

Overall experience, engagement and features that matter to consumers would naturally make people gravitate towards a more recognizable overall solution, which is NVIDIA's main proposition. This doesn't apply only to consumers, but also for the developers and hardware vendors working with NVIDIA. Despite all this, the competition cannot be underestimated and it would be interesting to see how the next Tegra will fare when complete solutions start hitting retail.