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AMD strikes a balance

Posted on 10 Mar 2010 at 08:55

Darien Graham-Smith talks to AMD which has a unique perspective on the battle between graphics cards and processors

As the only major company producing both CPUs and discrete graphics (under the ATI brand), you’d expect AMD to have an objective outlook. We spoke to AMD’s marketing manager Sasa Marinkovic.

Q Do you think GPU computing is going to change the world?

A GPU computing is definitely a massive paradigm shift in the way real-world problems are solved. Already we’ve seen companies such as CyberLink, ArcSoft and Adobe embracing GPU acceleration.

There’s going to be a bit of a learning curve for developers to get there, but we expect to see a lot more GPU-accelerated applications in 2010 and 2011.

Q Do you think Nvidia’s CUDA programming model will give it an advantage?

A I don’t want to comment on anyone else’s approach, but we’ve seen a lot of proprietary systems fail in the past.

GPU computing is definitely a massive paradigm shift in the way real-world problems are solved

The open standards OpenCL and DirectCompute have really only been available in the past few months, but already the industry has moved to these because developers want to get the best from their engineering efforts.

And we want to drive these industry standards, to set the canvas for vendors to paint on and enable cross-platform development.

Q Does the cancellation of Intel’s Larrabee hardware present an opportunity for AMD?

A In discrete graphics, we’ve been setting the relentless pace for the past few years, driving up performance per watt and per dollar, and I don’t understand how Larrabee was ever supposed to change that. So we’re just staying focused on execution and bringing innovative features to market.

Q Does the rise of GPU computing mean that the CPU is becoming less important?

A AMD believes in a balanced platform. A GPU with a massive number of processors may be the most powerful computational device on the market, but the CPU is better suited to serial loads.

Offloading different applications to the right place benefits the end user in terms of performance, and for mobile PCs it probably means better battery life. We’re the only company producing both CPUs and GPUs, and that ability to produce a truly balanced platform gives us an advantage over our competitors.

Author: Darien Graham-Smith