X-bit labs

The Strong Dedication to the Quality: Interview with John Byrne of AMD Graphics Product Group (page 3)

Category: Editorial

by Anton Shilov

[ 03/24/2007 | 04:18 PM ]

Chipsets with integrated graphics cores (or integrated graphics processors, IGPs) have been increasing their market share for several years now with the primary target to attack being entry level graphics cards. ATI used to have support from Intel and its Radeon IGPs are still popular. But without such support in future ATI will need to strengthen its entry-level stronghold even more.

X-bit labs: Going forward, it is highly doubtful that AMD will develop chipsets for Intel platform (which still has 75% of the market) and to maintain the share in the market of graphics cards, you will need to push entry-level graphics cards aggressively into the market. Do you have any special strategy for this?

John Byrne: AMD’s Fusion strategy shows clearly how we intend to provide the best customer experience in a world increasingly reliant upon 3D graphics, digital media and high-performance computing. With Fusion processors, AMD will continue to promote an open platform and encourage companies throughout the ecosystem to create innovative new co-processing solutions aimed at further optimizing specific workloads.

AMD executives say that graphics processors are like floating point co-processors back in the eighties, which have become an integrated part of any CPU currently on the market. As a result of the FPU integration the discrete math co-processors ceased to exist, it is really interesting, what will happen to standalone GPUs…

X-bit labs: Your colleagues believe that the GPU is a math co-processor of our times. Don’t you think that this essentially means the end of GPU as a discrete product?

John Byrne: Math co-processors were, essentially, very similar to the CPUs they were complimenting in both architecture and the types of processing demand placed on them. Our GPGPU initiative showed the tremendous levels of parallelism available within today’s graphics engines. Although the clocks are orders of magnitude slower than for CPUs, the actual throughput is amazing. That difference is likely to be here for some time. Innovation within our market is moving at a tremendous pace, but you can still see a solid place for dedicated GPUs into the foreseeable future.

X-bit labs: Can you imagine a situation when AMD decides to quit standalone GPU business?

John Byrne: Not at all. We are dedicated to our partners and this is something that we discussed with them very enthusiastically at our recent Global Partner Summits in Prague and China.

X-bit labs: Do you think game consoles, which are now capable of up to 1920x1080 resolutions pose competition to PC gaming systems?

John Byrne: The key advantage of the PC is that it is a ‘universal hub’ for all of your data processing requirements. Consoles are great, but generally fixed purpose. Also, consoles are developed on a much longer timeline to give programmers a ‘fixed target’ for their efforts. The results can be spectacular. Games created toward the end of a lifecycle for a console are, generally, impressive. However, one of the key reasons why they are impressive if because we (the audience) are impressed that so much has been achieved with so little. In the lifespan of a single console, CPUs and GPUs will have gone through many iterations. Our products can happily drive screens with resolutions of 2560x1600 at IQ levels that would make a console squeal. You also need to consider the audiences. Research by the BBC showed that most console owners are below 30 and most PC gamers are above. These products appeal to different audiences and compliment each other perfectly.

People have been predicting the death of PC gaming for many years and so far, I’m delighted to say, they’ve always been wrong.  I think there’s no doubt that the new more powerful consoles are going to put pressure on the PC market – but I also believe that the PC market will respond as it always has.

Since we’re talking about graphics I think it’s fair to point out that technically the most powerful of the new generation of consoles is Xbox360, and Microsoft have done a great job by getting to an installed base of more than 10 million in around a year.  The Xbox360 produces a terrific gaming experience with unsurpassed graphics – and it rightly deserves it’s success.

But the 10 million plus Xbox 360’s is a relatively small number when compared to the number of PCs out there capable of playing games.  And while I appreciate that not all PC get used for playing games one of the really cool things about our GPUs is that they tend to make most PCs very viable games machines.  That’s why we see so many casual gamers playing things like on-line games, and at the high end we produce graphics chips now which are already a generation ahead of what the consoles can do.  I’m not trying to diminish Microsoft achievement in taking such a lead in the next-generation console battle, I’m just pointing out that the markets are still very different.

And, of course the ‘dark horse’ in the console war has been Nintendo’s Wii.  It has shown that game play and in fact ‘pure fun’ is more important than technology.  The best gaming machine focuses first on the enjoyment of the gaming experience and uses technology as an enabler of that experience.  For that reason too the PC needs to be seen as different from the consoles.  It produces a quite different gaming experience and is therefore not in direct competition with the consoles.  Most console games players will chose just one of the consoles to buy, but they’re also quite likely to own a PC as well.