AMD creates Fusion fund to subsidize development of software

[cbn]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/other/...und_to_Subsidize_Development_of_Software.html

 

[alyarb]

nice. is that arab money being put to good use? weird.

 

[Idontcare]

Hey Marty it looks like we got our answer!

As a part of its Fusion Experience Program, Advanced Micro Devices this week established its AMD Fusion Fund, which will provide financial to developers of software that takes advantage of heterogeneous multi-core processors, such as AMD Fusion chips that include both general-purpose x86 cores as well as highly-parallel graphics processing engines.

No mention as to how big a bucket AMD is talking about though...not that that is unusual, just it would have helped foster the speculation of us couch-managers had we some hard numbers to bitch about

 

[cbn]

The client level development makes sense with Llano and Ontario out of the gate first.

But what about the eventual server level deployment and development? What kinds of Pros and Cons are being envisioned for this? In what applications?

 

[JFAMD]

nice. is that arab money being put to good use? weird.

AMD is an american company. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA.

 

[Fayd]

AMD is an american company. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA.

their primary backers when their company went in the shits was some arab investing firm. currently they're still co-owners of GF.

 

[Phynaz]

AMD is an american company. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA.

With the Arab investors holding 36% of the float - enough for a controlling interest.

While the company may be headquartered in the US, it is most certainly not an American company at this point in time.

 

[Idontcare]

relevance?

 

[JFAMD]

their primary backers when their company went in the shits was some arab investing firm. currently they're still co-owners of GF.

Nope, wrong.

 

[JFAMD]

With the Arab investors holding 36% of the float - enough for a controlling interest.

While the company may be headquartered in the US, it is most certainly not an American company at this point in time.

Nope, 19.3% according to the investment in 2008; a controlling interest would be 50.1%.

But none of that is really germane to the conversation anyway.

We live in a global industry and we sell products around the world, which is why we have facilities in the US, europe, asia and latin america.

I'm sure if you went down the roster of investors for any "american" company (especially those in the technology industry) you'd find investors and corporate locations around the world. That is how things are done in this industry. To ignore any part of the world essentially closes you off to their markets and their customers. You can't be closed minded and be successful in a global economy.

 

[cbn]

You can't be closed minded and be successful in a global economy.

JFAMD,

Speaking of Global Economy, Are we at the point where CO2 emissions (or other environmental concerns) are factoring into data center buying decisions? (I am not up on the legal issues myself)

At the moment I am under the impression "performance per watt" is the largest concern.

 

[JFAMD]

CO2 is becoming a real issue. I sit on the board of directors of the Green Grid and we are seeing more and more of our members asking and showing concern about CO2. Not as much from an environmental standpoint (that is an area that I won't wade into, I have an economics degree, not biology or science) but from a legislative standpoint.

Countries are starting to wake up to the issue and are starting to take action. The most important thing that companies can do is join into the discussion to help shape the outcome. Just putting your head in the sand or ignoring the issue is not going to make it go away. Most bad legislation occurs not because people want to pass bad legislation, but because it is a one-sided discussion instead of a real conversation. That is why the Green Grid is working on behalf of its members to make sure that their voices are heard and that smart decisions are made. Jointly.

 

[Martimus]

Hey Marty it looks like we got our answer!



No mention as to how big a bucket AMD is talking about though...not that that is unusual, just it would have helped foster the speculation of us couch-managers had we some hard numbers to bitch about

Awesome. I hope that it has some success in creating a market for the product.

EDIT: I just checked and I got a response to my question: http://blogs.amd.com/fusion/2010/05/03/opencl%e2%84%a2-and-amd-fusion%e2%84%a2/#comment-56

We are actively working with some large software ISVs to, in the short term, release versions of their software accelerated with ATI Stream technology through OpenCL. OpenCL and AMD Fusion are key technologies for AMD and we are certainly making sure we drive adoption of those technologies by developers.

 

[Martimus]

There is a blog about the new "Fusion Fund" on the AMD site as well: http://blogs.amd.com/fusion/2010/06...f-computing-experiences-talked-to-amd-lately/

 

[manimal]

nice. is that arab money being put to good use? weird.

Saying Arab money makes you sound provincial if not bigoted.

 

[Idontcare]

There is a blog about the new "Fusion Fund" on the AMD site as well: http://blogs.amd.com/fusion/2010/06...f-computing-experiences-talked-to-amd-lately/

Interesting. I really like the idea of seeding a grassroots ecosystem rather than solely focusing on getting a few tier-1 guys on board for photo-ops when it comes to jumpstarting the mindshare momentum gameplan.

(I'm thinking specifically of Intel's approach with Larrabee in the case of the latter)

 

[alyarb]

Saying Arab money makes you sound provincial if not bigoted.

nah, if anything they saved AMD. it's just funny because in no other decade and in no other market would you see arab money not only bolstering, but leading the development of western tech.

 

[Idontcare]

This is an odd tangential topic to discuss here...but alyarb unless I'm mistaken aren't the citizens of most Arabic-speaking countries also consumers of goods which must be imported?

Electronics, transportation, agriculture.

Dollars flow both directions, constantly. I don't quite understand how there could be any factual underpinnings to your argument, casting aside the question of whether such discussion itself is endemic of something less savory, what is the premise of your statement?

 

[DrMrLordX]

From a technical standpoint, what's going to be the real difference between a Fusion APU and a standard PC with an AMD CPU and AMD video card utilizing stream processing units similar to (if not identical to) those found in the aforementioned Fusion APU besides latency in communications between the x86 cores and stream processors?

You would think AMD would provide APIs that would make it easier to utilize their stream processors for non-rendering tasks to go along with Llano/Ontario, but wouldn't the same APIs make it easier to utilize their discrete graphics cards in much the same fashion?

In other words, wouldn't the programming tools necessary to make Fusion really work take Fusion well beyond the realm of the APU? Why focus the fund solely on Ontario/Llano when the resulting software products would almost certainly benefit from being run on AMD CPU/GPU PCs as well?

(still waiting on HTX slots in desktop boards . . .)

 

[JFAMD]

nah, if anything they saved AMD. it's just funny because in no other decade and in no other market would you see arab money not only bolstering, but leading the development of western tech.

Actually, they are very forward thinking. They recognize that there is a finite amount of oil in the ground and that there needs to be a "plan b" as well. Tech is a large part of that.


To answer the question about the fusion APU, because the basis for GPGPU is OpenCL and DirectCompute, the things that are being done to optimize software generally benefit the entire industry, not just AMD. Unlike frameworks like cuda, these open environments allow almost any hardware to take advantage of the software changes, so you will see great benefit in a wide variety of areas.

Folks (on another board) have been griping that AMD needs to have some proprietary "special sauce" to make fusion run better. We disagree. We need to have the best architecture to win, not a proprietary lock in that says if you play game X then the only way to play it is on AMD. It is a philosophical position, but you have to think about it from the customer standpoint.

 

[heyheybooboo]

The client level development makes sense with Llano and Ontario out of the gate first.

But what about the eventual server level deployment and development? What kinds of Pros and Cons are being envisioned for this? In what applications?

I think the answer resides somewhere close to the intersection of SSE5 and AVX.





--

 

[Fayd]

Nope, wrong.

how was i wrong?

 

[Voo]

nah, if anything they saved AMD. it's just funny because in no other decade and in no other market would you see arab money not only bolstering, but leading the development of western tech.

Ah you don't know how funny that really is.. from a historical point of view at least (guess who lead development of western technology and culture a few hundred years ago, when we were busy trying to find out how to burn people in the most effective ways)
Ahm though the question remains why we're discussing that here? Why is it important which money that is?

b2t: Sounds like a good project, seems like Amd learned their lessons - if they want fusion to take of they need good compiler support and get the devs interested in it..