The birth of 3A platform indicates that AMD has changed from a pure CPU supplier to a platform supplier integrating CPU, motherboard chipset and graphics display core.
The initial development of the 3A platform was not smooth, but the concept of "3A" has been widely known through the continuous updating and promotion of AMD. So how did the 3A platform come into being? What causes the continuous update and development of 3A platform? And what impact will its development bring to the IT industry? Below we will answer some questions for readers.
The background of platform 3A.
Background processor -K 10 architecture
At present, three generations of 3A platforms have used processors based on K 10 architecture. It can be said that the emergence of K 10 architecture makes 3A platform have the heart of operation.
1 the birth of the multi-core era
The emergence of K 10 architecture can be traced back to before the emergence of dual cores. At the beginning of 2 1 century, the direction of processor research and development faced a decisive problem. The easiest way to improve processor performance is to increase processor frequency. Although this method can intuitively improve the efficiency of the processor, the improvement of efficiency is a bit too radical.
First of all, at that time, the transistor technology was difficult to further improve the working frequency of the processor. The higher heat generated by higher frequency would make the heat dissipation burden of the system greater and increase the unstable factors. Secondly, although multithreading was popular at that time, the execution efficiency of thread processor was not dominant in the application.
The advantages of Hyper-Threading Technology proposed by Intel before are obvious to all. Therefore, drawing on the advantages of some existing multi-core processors, AMD and Intel are developing more efficient processors in the direction of dual-core or even multi-core.
The development idea of the whole multi-core processor is to increase the number of instructions executed by the processor in each clock cycle by means of instruction-level parallelism, thus improving the efficiency of the processor. Soon, both Intel and AMD proposed their own integrated multi-core processor solutions. AMD introduced Athlon 64×2 processor based on K8 architecture, and Intel released Pentium D processor.
2 K 10 architecture to reverse gan Kun
AMD took the lead in the release of dual-core processors, and the innate architecture and system bus control of K8 processor are obviously superior to Intel's Pentium D processor. Therefore, in the next competition, Pentium D was defeated, and its market share fell again and again. It is with this opportunity that AMD's market share has increased from about 1 1% to more than 16%, which is 64.
But it didn't last long. In 2006, Intel finally launched the Core 2 dual-core processor with Core architecture. This processor, which fully supports L2 cache, caused a sensation as soon as it came out. Its excellent execution efficiency and low power consumption completely exceeded the efficiency provided by the Athlon 64 X2 processor, so Intel gradually regained its lost market share, and AMD once again fell into a dilemma.
Faced with the strong performance of the core architecture, AMD can barely maintain its market share by fighting a price war, but this has an impact on profitability after all. The so-called times make heroes. In this context, after a long wait, the K 10 architecture was finally officially released on1October 20th, 2007. At the same time, the first generation 3A "Spider" platform promoted by AMD has also appeared.
K 10 has the performance not inferior to that of Intel Core architecture, and also has a high-quality solution in terms of power consumption. It can be said that AMD didn't have a sharp weapon to compete with Intel until the emergence of KIO architecture, and its declining market share was picked up and gradually recovered.
Chipsets and graphics cards in the background of 3A platform
In 2006, AMD acquired ATI, which caused a sensation in the IT industry. Although this acquisition plan did not bring much income to AMD in the short term, it is of great significance.
First, in the marketing strategy, it attracted the attention of the market and successfully shifted the public's attention from the weak processor link to the integration of chipset and graphics card.
Second: Technically, the technology integration of the two chip manufacturers has brought higher-performance integrated chipsets and display chips to the industry, which is also a prerequisite for the birth of the 3A platform in the future.
On July 24th, 2006, AMD and ATI announced the merger, with a transaction amount of about US$ 5.4 billion (1 13). The picture in the lower right corner is "AMD joined hands with ATI in 2006", and the picture on the left is David, president and CEO of ATI. Orton, pictured on the right is Hector, chairman and CEO of AMD. Dr Hector ruiz).
1 motherboard chipset
Before the release of AMD 7 series, AMD, the first generation of "Spider" platform's royal chipset and integrated ATI graphics technology, tentatively launched AMD 590FX and 690G chipsets, which achieved a comprehensive harvest. So on the 7-series chipset, AMD launched AMD 790FX, AMD 790G and AMD 770 with great fanfare (later, 780G and 785G chipsets were also launched).
AMD 7 series chipsets are manufactured by 65nm process, and the TDP power consumption is only 10 ~ 12w, while the competitor X38 power consumption at that time was 26W. Moreover, in some motherboards of the 7-series chipset, AMD has joined ATI's crossfire technology, and as a high-end 790FX, it can meet the crossfire of up to 4 cards. Today, the 8-series chipset has successfully replaced the 7-series chipset as the standard of the new generation LEO platform.
2 graphics cards
The graphics card in 3A platform was the only one that existed before the platform was released. One of its members, Radiron HD 3850 and 3870, both adopt RV670 display core and have 320 stream processors. It supports DircetX 10. 1 and PCI-E 2.0 respectively, with GDDR3 and GDDR4 memory particles. The performance of its products has surpassed the previous generation Radeen HD 2900XT, and the power consumption and calorific value have also been greatly reduced, which was extremely gratifying to users at that time. In the following three years, AMD successively introduced HD4000 series graphics cards and HD5000 series graphics cards supporting DX 1 1, which can become one of the core accessories of 3A platform.
Overview of 3A platform background: From the previous introduction, readers can observe that "3A" appears as a concept term of integrated platform promoted by AMD. Since the successful acquisition of ATI, the nature of AMD has undergone some changes, and the appearance of "3A" platform is the manifestation of this change reflected in the products.
The Development Course of 3A Platform
Up to now, 3A platform * * * has gone through three times, namely spider platform, dragon platform and Leo platform. During this period, every platform upgrade is accompanied by the birth of new technologies and the improvement of performance. Horn, the first generation spider platform, was first tried out.
In 2007,165438+1October 20th, AMD released an excellent spider platform. The platform includes 65nm Opteron processor based on K 10 architecture, AMD 7 series motherboard chipset and Radiron HD 3800 series graphics card.
At the beginning of the platform release, the price of processors based on K 10 architecture remained high, so the spider platform was positioned at the high end. According to the early three different 7-series chipsets-790fx, 790X and 770, they are aimed at enthusiasts, high-performance users and mainstream users respectively.
But soon, with the release of various performance tests and practical application experiences of Spider platform, we found that the performance of AMD processor still lags behind that of Intel processor in the same period, so Spider platform quickly changed from "noble" to civilian.
Although AMD quickly adopted the price reduction strategy, we still haven't seen good feedback from the "Spider" platform. There are two main reasons for its failure:
First, the performance of Phenom desktop quad-core processor is average. Although the price of Intel's flagship products is unattainable, there are still many products with high performance-to-price ratio in the mid-end market, so even if the price war is fought, it still cannot shake Intel's monopoly position:
Second, the performance of HD3800 display chip is still not competitive compared with NVIDIA display chip of the same grade.
The so-called one move is enough to move the whole body. Two of the three leading players in the spider platform are not performing well, and the platform promotion is bleak.
The platform of the second generation "Dragon" Idla Gong-a sudden emergence of a new force
On June 5438+1early October, 2009, AMD released the second generation integrated desktop platform "Dragon" as scheduled, and also released the first batch of 45nmT Phenom II X4 quad-core processors.
It is worth mentioning that the supporting software of Dragon platform is also very rich, including AMD OverDrive, Gamlng's game system optimization tool AMDFuslon, graphics card driver package ATl Catalyst, general computing technology ATI Stream, video transcoding tool ATl Video Converter, multimedia tool AMD Fusion MEDLA ExplorerBeta and so on.
Compared with the previous generation of integrated platforms, the "Dragon" platform can be described as a sudden emergence. TDP, a 45nm processor, has lower power consumption, higher efficiency and performance comparable to that of Intel processors. The performance of HD4800 series graphics cards is several times higher than that of the previous generation HD3800 graphics cards. At that time, the performance of the graphics card was unparalleled and was widely affirmed by users. On the motherboard chipset, with the steady development of AMD 7 series chipset, the Snapdragon platform was in the limelight for a time. It was then that the 3A platform really took root in people's hearts.
Now, with the addition of the new AM3 processor, the Dragon platform has been slightly upgraded. Compared with the previous combination of 45nm Phenom ll processor +AM2+ motherboard +ATI HD4870 graphics card, Xinlong platform is improved to: AM3 processor +AM3 motherboard +ATI HD4890 graphics card. With DDR3 memory, the new generation of Dragon platform pushes the performance of AMD platform to a new peak.
The third generation LEO platform-getting better and better
20 10 on April 28th, AMDfT launched a new generation flagship platform, AMDLEO platform, which is a top-level configuration consisting of AMD Opteron II X6 processor +AMD 8 series chipset +ATI Radiron HD5000 series graphics card.
The HD5000 series display core was released as early as 2009. As of today, AMD 8 series motherboards have also been listed one after another. LEO platform has brought us many new functions, but the most critical component is still CPU, the first six-core desktop processor series released by AMD.
Compared with the previous two generations of 3A platforms, LEO platform is the generation that adopts the most new technologies. Although there are so many technical highlights, the price of the whole set of high-end LEO platform is maintained at around 8,000 yuan, and only one Intel high-end 6-core processor can be purchased at this price. Compared with the platform built by InteI quad-core i7 930+NVIDIAFemi+x58 with the same price, we have passed the practical application test and obtained the result that AMD 6-core processor has obvious performance advantages in the application. Therefore, in the case that the price of Intel's flagship processor remains high, LEO platform can be called the king of cost performance in the high-end market.
AMD 3A integrated platform has developed to the third generation LEO platform, and it is getting better and better. The importance of this more closely related integrated platform has been paid more and more attention by the industry and consumers.
Finally, AMD strives to promote the integrated platform of CPU, GPU and chipset, which is a market expansion strategy based on the changes in the nature of its own company. Therefore, the development of 3A platform is actually a process that AMD is committed to transforming its own image, but this process will never be recognized and known overnight. However, from the initial attempt of spider platform to the rise of LEO platform, AMD has been tirelessly promoting the concept, which shows its determination to change.
So far, from the consumer's point of view, the transcripts submitted by AMD are still satisfactory. The introduction and promotion of various innovative technologies have indeed brought about many performance improvements. What is rare is that AMD has always adhered to the principle of high cost performance and made its products closer to ordinary consumer groups. However, is the change of AMD's role a deeper monopoly or can IT inject more creativity into the IT industry in technology? Which is more important, advantages or disadvantages? These problems need further observation and discussion.