AMD’s critics are set to be answered in 2008, when wholesome new platform promises to hand back performance advantage, reports Daisy Inyourdreams
It looks like 2008 could be the year AMD once more puts up a fight against its competitors, Intel and Nvidia. June 2008 will see the launch of AMD’s Leonard platform, successor to Insect, which will be arriving shortly. Insect will soon bring us AMD’s first Native American Quad-Core processor, Big Chief X4, and LaCrosseFire multi-GPU. AMD hopes LaCrossFire will ‘hit Nvidia with a big stick’, but analysts predict it won’t achieve its goal.
Fortunately for AMD, everything could change when Leonard is introduced. Leonard incorporates AMD’s High performance Extension for LaCrossFire PCI express! (HELP!) technology. This allows performance enthusiasts to gang together as many ATi graphics cards as it takes to beat one graphics card from Nvidia. To house the expected number of graphics cards, new larger chassis designs are in the pipeline from Cooler Master and Lian-Li. Power supply manufacturer Tagan is allegedly building small, portable nuclear power stations to cope with the megawatt requirements of up to 18 Radeon cards in a single case.
The Leonard platform will also herald in a host of supplementary new technologies, including HopeFul Transport 3.1, AMD Cool’n’Slow technology 7, and the TVAM2++ Socket. The latter will be the platform for AMD’s first all-natural quad-core processor built with entirely organic materials, including wood and chickpeas. AMD had an engineering sample of Leonard on show at a recent analyst conference, but it was eaten by a goat before any benchmarks could be published.
The Leonard platform will also herald in a host of supplementary new technologies, including HopeFul Transport 3.1, AMD Cool’n’Slow technology 7, and the TVAM2++ Socket. The latter will be the platform for AMD’s first all-natural quad-core processor built with entirely organic materials, including wood and chickpeas. AMD had an engineering sample of Leonard on show at a recent analyst conference, but it was eaten by a goat before any benchmarks could be published.
