AMD has unveiled two "made in India" processors -- codenamed Ontario and Zacate -- aimed at the burgeoning market for low power chips to fuel ultra thin notebooks, netbooks, smartphones and other hand-sized computing platforms. The chips were made in Hyderabad from drawing board to motherboard explained, Dasaradha R Gude, Managing Director ( India) and Corporate Vice-President, AMD, calling it a "defining moment" for Team India, especially the 86-member Hyderabad team. The company expects a revenue of US $ 2 billion from these chips.
Chief Engineer Michael Goddard said that the dual core 1.60 GHz chip could give a greater user experience especially in terms of visuals -- high-definition playback experience on bluray and YouTube.
Ontario is AMD's first "Fusion product" -- a system on a chip that integrates CPU ((Central Processing Unit) and graphical (Graphics Processing Unit) functions in the same slab of silicon.
The Research and Development Team in Hyderabad worked for two years to produce the chip. While shipping began recently, the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) will roll out their products powered by Ontario beginning January 2011. The approximately 9 watt Ontario contains 2 Bobcat CPU cores, each with 512 KB L2 cache, and a GPU integrated onto the die. Zacate, the other ( higher powered) chip unveiled last week, is aimed at ultrathin mainstream and value notebooks and desktops and all-in-ones.It is rated for around 18 watts TDP (the dynamic power), and is clocked at 1.6 GHz for the CPU cores and 750 MHz for the GPU portion.
Both two chips feature dual Bobcat cores and a DirectX 11 compatible GPU (which takes up most of the processor die as a chip-architect pointed out) that also includes UVD dedicated hardware acceleration for HD video including 1080p resolutions.
An analyst quoted by AMD has said: “Ontario runs circles around Atom on every benchmark test…”. It remains to be seen how Ontario fares in a propduct space hitherto dominated by Intel's Atom.
Ajay Naini, Project Director, quantifies the estimated TAM (total available market) for products of this ilk at 100 million units a year to power multiple consumer gadgets. The annualized market size is pegged at US $ 30-40 billion.
“When I accepted this role, I expected a bumpy ride given the fact that the design specification was so much complex. Within a few months, the sheer energy of the team to learn new things and the passion to excel overcame those barriers and we delivered ahead of schedule and with a very high quality,” Naini said.
“Designing the CPU and Graphics chips individually is a major challenge in itself. The team has to combine the two complex IPs on a single die and ensure it works flawlessly. All the engineers who worked on Ontario knew that AMD is betting big on the fusion and are working on a technology that is going to transform the PC industry forever,” Design Manager Srini Gutta added, “The moment we saw the early samples boot windows and running the 3D games in a matter of days, we all knew we have something special at our hands. Kudos to a young engineering team in Hyderabad that took on this enormous challenge and delivered high quality silicon and be part of the AMD Fusion success story".
AMD CEO Dirk Meyer, complemented the team for the success through a video message. Jeff VerHeul, Corporate Vice-President, also complemented the Team India..
This story is an edited version substantially drawn( with permission) from the reportage of AndhraBusiness.com
AndhraBusiness.com story: http://andhrabusiness.com/NewsDesc.aspx?NewsId=AMD-expects-$-2-b-market-for-Ontario--a-made-in-Hyderabad-chip.html
Dec 13 2010