| AMD Reveals High-Bandwidth Memory Plan Posted: 19 May 2015 03:58 PM PDT AMD is calling HBM a "revolution in chip design"GDDR5 will soon stall GPU performance growth, says AMD. According to the red team, GDDR5 is entering an inefficient region of the power-to-performance curve. GDDR5 will soon reach a performance bottleneck.
Historically, AMD would try and solve these power-to-performance issues by shrinking chips and integrating functions, but the company says that on-chip integration isn't ideal for DRAM, as DRAM is not size- or cost-effective for integration in a logic-optimized process. You could theoretically scale GDDR5 to be faster, but this requires more bandwidth and would consume more power. Here's the layout for AMD's HBM interposer.
AMD is attempting to solve these issues by introducing its interposer, which brings DRAM closer to the logic die. According to AMD, this closer proximity enables a much wider bus width, which also improves the bandwidth per watt as well. AMD says that bandwidth per watt is much more important than the sheer amount of RAM a graphics card has. And in case you were wondering, each stack here amounts to 1GB. So if AMD's hypothetical next-gen GPU were to have 4GB of high-bandwidth memory, there would be four stacks. The benefits of using the interposer along with this high-bandwidth memory method is that it takes up much less surface area, and this combination gives you much more bandwidth than GDDR5 at less than 50 percent the power consumption. 
Here's the anatomy of AMD's new high-bandwidth memory stack.
While this will be applicable to discrete graphics cards, AMD believes it will be able to leverage the technology to cover multiple verticals, including APUs, consumer applications, enterprise solutions, and more. The company is calling HBM a "revolution in chip design" that will ultimately allow for up to 3x performance per watt compared to GDDR5, and will consume 94% less PCB surface than GDDR5. What do you think of AMD's approach to solving the GDDR5 issue? Let us know in the comments below. |
| Windows 10 Upgrade Paths Explained Posted: 19 May 2015 01:34 PM PDT A look at various Windows 10 upgrade scenariosSometimes it feels like the closer we get to the release of Windows 10 (slated for this summer), the less we actually know. Yes, Microsoft finally revealed a list of Windows 10 editions last week, of which there are quite a few, but how exactly will upgrades work for users rocking a copy of Windows 7 or Windows 8.1? The answer is out there, or so it seems. Podcaster and senior technical analyst for Windows IT Pro, Paul Thurrott, stumbled onto a blog post from the Microsoft Australia Partner Network that contained information on the various Windows 10 announcements of late. 
The blog post was written by Alex Snelson, a Windows product manager for Microsoft Australia. In it she lists the various editions that were announced, and then goes over the upgrade paths. Here's what she wrote: - Microsoft will offer a free upgrade to Windows 10 for qualified Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.1 devices in the first year. After the first year, upgrades will be paid via boxed product and VL Upgrades
- Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 7 Home Basic and Home Premium devices upgrade to Windows 10 Home
- Windows 8/8.1 Pro and Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate devices upgrade to Windows 10 Pro
- If upgraded within the first 12 months following launch, the device will receive ongoing Windows 10 updates for free for the life of that device
- Excludes Windows Enterprise and RT devices
- The free Windows 10 upgrade is delivered through Windows Update; domain-joined machines can manually get the update via Windows Update. The upgrade cannot be deployed through WSUS
One of the questions that comes up here on Maximum PC is whether or not Windows 8/8.1 Pro and Windows 7 Professional users will get an upgrade to Windows 10 Pro. It looks like they will, as well as Windows 7 Ultimate users. So, there you go. That is unless Microsoft changes things up. |
| Newegg Daily Deals: Intel Core i7-5930K, Corsair 750W PSU, and More! Posted: 19 May 2015 10:53 AM PDT |
| Microsoft Office for Android Phones Arrives in Preview Form Posted: 19 May 2015 10:24 AM PDT First tablets, now phonesFollowing up on its launch of touch friendly Office apps for Android tablets back in January, Microsoft today announced that a preview version of Office for Android phones is now available. That includes previews for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, all of which look similar to and share the same features as the ones available on iOS, and more recently, Windows phones. Getting them installed is a bit of a process. First you have to make sure you're running Android 4.4.x KitKat or higher and have at least 1GB of RAM. If you pass the hardware and software requirements, you'll then have to join the Office Android Preview group, be a tester on Google Play, and join Microsoft's Google+ community. 
Your reward for jumping through Microsoft's hoops is the ability to install Office apps that have been optimized for touch. Editing tools are fairly basic compared to the desktop, though if you need to touch up documents on the go, this is your ticket. "Bringing these apps to Preview first provides you with an early look at the apps, while enabling us to gather critical user feedback helping us shape and improve the app experience on a wide range of Android phones across the world. The feedback we received from the Office for Android tablet Preview in January was critical to ensuring a high quality and consistent Office experience across Android tablet devices. Thank you!," Microsoft said in a blog post. If you'd rather not test the new apps but still are interested in Office for Android, the existing Office Mobile app for Android will remain available during the preview. |
| After 25 Years, Microsoft Tournament Sparks Renewed Interest in Solitaire Posted: 19 May 2015 09:12 AM PDT Better start practicing againOffice workers have been playing Solitaire in Windows for the past 25 years as a means of getting through the day. Hard to believe, isn't it? To celebrate Solitaire's 25-year anniversary on Windows, Microsoft is holding a pair of tournaments -- one for employees and a second one for everyone else around the world. "It was 25 years ago that Microsoft Solitaire debuted on Windows, and to honor the decades of fun it's given us all, we're celebrating with two big competitions. First, an internal competition among Microsoft employees kicks off today to determine who leads the leaderboards here. Then, in early June, the same challenges used in the tournament will be released in the game for the world to play," Microsoft stated in a blog post. 
Details of the tournaments are fairly scarce, though it does look like they will include all five game modes available in Windows -- Klondike, FreeCell, Spider, TriPeaks, and Pyramid. Beyond that, there are several unknowns, like whether the winner will receive anything more than bragging rights. If Windows 8 is your first Windows OS, you may not know what the big deal is. However, Solitaire has been included on every version of Windows from Windows 3.0 to Windows 7. It's not included by default in Windows 8 (it's available in the Windows Store), though will be a part of Windows 10. |
