AMD Unveils Ambidextrous Computing Roadmap

Announ­ces 64-bit ARM Core Archi­tec­tu­re Licen­se and Future “K12” ARM-based Core; Pin-Com­pa­ti­ble x86 and ARM Pro­ces­sors; Demons­tra­tes AMD Opte­ron A‑Series 64-bit ARM Ser­ver CPU Code­na­me “Seat­tle”

SAN FRANCISCO— May 5, 2014 AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announ­ced a road­map of near- and mid-term com­pu­ting solu­ti­ons that harness the best cha­rac­te­ristics of both the x86 and ARM® eco­sys­tems, cal­led “ambi­dex­trous com­pu­ting”. The cor­ner­stone of this road­map is the announce­ment of AMD’s 64-bit ARM archi­tec­tu­re licen­se for the deve­lo­p­ment of cus­tom high-per­for­mance cores for high-growth mar­kets. Today’s announce­ment also pro­vi­des a for­ward-loo­king glim­pse into AMD’s deve­lo­p­ment plans to deli­ver tru­ly unmat­ched ambi­dex­trous com­pu­ting and gra­phics per­for­mance using a shared, fle­xi­ble infra­struc­tu­re to enable its cus­to­mers to bla­ze new paths of inno­va­ti­on for the embedded, ser­ver and cli­ent mar­kets as well as semi-cus­tom solutions.

Befo­re today, AMD was the only com­pa­ny in the world to deli­ver high per­for­mance and low-power x86 with lea­der­ship gra­phics. AMD now takes a bold step for­ward and has beco­me the only com­pa­ny that can pro­vi­de high-per­for­mance 64-bit ARM and x86 CPU cores pai­red with world-class gra­phics,” said Rory Read, AMD pre­si­dent and CEO. “Our inno­va­ti­ve ambi­dex­trous design capa­bi­li­ty, com­bi­ned with our port­fo­lio of IP and exper­ti­se with high-per­for­mance SoCs, means that AMD is set to deli­ver ambi­dex­trous solu­ti­ons that enable our cus­to­mers to chan­ge the world in more effi­ci­ent and powerful ways.”

The mar­ket for ARM- and x86-based pro­ces­sors is expec­ted to grow to more than $85 bil­li­on by 2017[1]AMD is uni­que­ly posi­tio­ned as the only com­pa­ny deli­ve­ring dif­fe­ren­tia­ted solu­ti­ons capa­ble of addres­sing the breadth of this mar­ket.  This is the first time a major pro­ces­sor pro­vi­der has crea­ted the IP path to allow others to levera­ge inno­va­ti­on across both ARM and x86 ecosystems.

AMD’s ambi­dex­trous com­pu­ting road­map includes:

·         “Pro­ject Sky­Bridge” – This design frame­work, available start­ing in 2015, will fea­ture a new fami­ly of 20 nano­me­ter APUs and SoCs that are expec­ted to be the world’s first pin-com­pa­ti­ble ARM and x86 pro­ces­sors. The 64-bit ARM vari­ant of “Pro­ject Sky­Bridge” will be based on the ARM Cortex®-A57 core and is AMD’s first Hete­ro­ge­neous Sys­tem Archi­tec­tu­re (“HSA”) plat­form for Android; the x86 vari­ant will fea­ture next-gene­ra­ti­on “Puma+” CPU cores. The “Pro­ject Sky­Bridge” fami­ly will fea­ture full SoC inte­gra­ti­on, AMD Gra­phics Core Next tech­no­lo­gy, HSA, and AMD Secu­re Tech­no­lo­gy via a dedi­ca­ted Plat­form Secu­ri­ty Pro­ces­sor (PSP).

·         “K12” – A new high-per­for­mance, low-power ARM-based core that takes deep advan­ta­ge of AMD’s ARM archi­tec­tu­ral licen­se, exten­si­ve 64-bit design exper­ti­se, and a core deve­lo­p­ment team led by semi­con­duc­tor archi­tect Jim Kel­ler.  The first pro­ducts based on “K12” are plan­ned for intro­duc­tion in 2016.

At ARM we are dedi­ca­ted to working with part­ners who revo­lu­tio­ni­ze and trans­form expe­ri­en­ces ever­y­whe­re from sen­sors to ser­vers,” said Simon Segars, CEO at ARM. “AMD’s mar­ket reach and pro­ven expe­ri­ence in lea­ding indus­try tran­si­ti­ons to 64-bit com­pu­ting in cli­ent and ser­ver envi­ron­ments, com­bi­ned with ARM’s low power exper­ti­se and ser­ver base sys­tem archi­tec­tu­re (SBSA) stan­dard, will deli­ver new capa­bi­li­ties and dri­ve inno­va­ti­on across mul­ti­ple high growth markets.”

AMD today also publicly demons­tra­ted for the first time its 64-bit ARM-based AMD Opte­ron™ A‑Series pro­ces­sor, code­na­med “Seat­tle,” run­ning a Linux envi­ron­ment deri­ved from the Fedo­ra Pro­ject.  The Fedo­ra Pro­ject is a Red Hat-spon­so­red, com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven Linux dis­tri­bu­ti­on, pro­vi­ding a fami­li­ar, enter­pri­se class ope­ra­ting envi­ron­ment to deve­lo­pers and IT admi­nis­tra­tors world­wi­de.  This Fedo­ra Pro­ject-based Linux envi­ron­ment enables com­pa­nies to tran­si­ti­on to ARM-based ser­vers wit­hout the need to inte­gra­te enti­re­ly new tools and soft­ware plat­forms to their IT envi­ron­ments. This demons­tra­ti­on repres­ents a signi­fi­cant step for­ward in expan­ding the foot­print of ultra-effi­ci­ent 64-bit ARM pro­ces­sers within the data center.

Today’s news was dis­c­lo­sed at a press con­fe­rence and web­cast held at the Ritz-Carl­ton in San Fran­cis­co.  A replay of the web­cast will made available at appro­xi­m­ate­ly noon Eas­tern tomor­row at ir.amd.com.

Sup­port­ing Resources

About AMD

AMD (NYSE: AMD) designs and inte­gra­tes tech­no­lo­gy that powers mil­li­ons of intel­li­gent devices, inclu­ding per­so­nal com­pu­ters, tablets, game con­so­les and cloud ser­vers that defi­ne the new era of sur­round com­pu­ting. AMD solu­ti­ons enable peo­p­le ever­y­whe­re to rea­li­ze the full poten­ti­al of their favo­ri­te devices and appli­ca­ti­ons to push the boun­da­ries of what is pos­si­ble. For more infor­ma­ti­on, visit www.amd.com.

30

AMD, the AMD Arrow logo and Opte­ron are trade­marks of Advan­ced Micro Devices, Inc. Other names are for infor­ma­tio­nal pur­po­ses only and may be trade­marks of their respec­ti­ve owners.

Cau­tio­na­ry Statement 

This Press Release con­ta­ins for­ward-loo­king state­ments con­cer­ning AMD, inclu­ding: the fea­tures and func­tion­a­li­ty of new AMD pro­ducts and the timing and avai­la­bi­li­ty of such pro­ducts; our abili­ty to offer both X86 and ARM pro­ces­sors for embedded, ser­ver, cli­ent and semi-cus­tom mar­kets; our abili­ty to crea­te high per­for­mance cores for our embedded, ser­ver and low-power cli­ent mar­kets; our abili­ty to deli­ver and exe­cu­te on our  X86 and 64-bit ARM Ambi­dex­trous Com­pu­ting Road­map; which are made pur­su­ant to the safe har­bor pro­vi­si­ons of the Pri­va­te Secu­ri­ties Liti­ga­ti­on Reform Act of 1995. For­ward-loo­king state­ments are com­mon­ly iden­ti­fied by words such as “would,” “may,” “expects,” “belie­ves,” “plans,” “intends,” “pro­jects,” and other terms with simi­lar mea­ning. Inves­tors are cau­tio­ned that the for­ward-loo­king state­ments in this release are based on cur­rent beliefs, assump­ti­ons and expec­ta­ti­ons, speak only as of the date of this release and invol­ve risks and uncer­tain­ties that could cau­se actu­al results to dif­fer mate­ri­al­ly from cur­rent expec­ta­ti­ons. Risks include the pos­si­bi­li­ty that that Intel Corporation’s pri­cing, mar­ke­ting and reba­ting pro­grams, pro­duct bund­ling, stan­dard set­ting, new pro­duct intro­duc­tions or other acti­vi­ties may nega­tively impact the Company’s plans; that the Com­pa­ny will requi­re addi­tio­nal fun­ding and may be unable to rai­se suf­fi­ci­ent capi­tal on favorable terms, or at all; that cus­to­mers stop buy­ing the Company’s pro­ducts or mate­ri­al­ly redu­ce their ope­ra­ti­ons or demand for its pro­ducts; that the Com­pa­ny may be unable to deve­lop, launch and ramp new pro­ducts and tech­no­lo­gies in the volu­mes that are requi­red by the mar­ket at matu­re yields on a time­ly basis; that the Company’s third-par­ty foundry sup­pli­ers will be unable to tran­si­ti­on the Company’s pro­ducts to advan­ced manu­fac­tu­ring pro­cess tech­no­lo­gies in a time­ly and effec­ti­ve way or to manu­fac­tu­re the Company’s pro­ducts on a time­ly basis in suf­fi­ci­ent quan­ti­ties and using com­pe­ti­ti­ve pro­cess tech­no­lo­gies; that the Com­pa­ny will be unable to obtain suf­fi­ci­ent manu­fac­tu­ring capa­ci­ty or com­pon­ents to meet demand for its pro­ducts or will not ful­ly uti­li­ze the Company’s pro­jec­ted manu­fac­tu­ring capa­ci­ty needs at GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc. (GF) micro­pro­ces­sor manu­fac­tu­ring faci­li­ties; that the Company’s requi­re­ments for wafers will be less than the fixed num­ber of wafers that we agreed to purcha­se from GF or GF encoun­ters pro­blems that signi­fi­cant­ly redu­ce the num­ber of func­tion­al die the Com­pa­ny recei­ves from each wafer; that the Com­pa­ny is unable to suc­cessful­ly imple­ment its long-term busi­ness stra­tegy; that the Com­pa­ny inac­cu­ra­te­ly esti­ma­tes the quan­ti­ty or type of pro­ducts that its cus­to­mers will want in the future or will ulti­m­ate­ly end up purcha­sing, resul­ting in excess or obso­le­te inven­to­ry; that the Com­pa­ny is unable to mana­ge the risks rela­ted to the use of its third-par­ty dis­tri­bu­tors and add-in-board (AIB) part­ners or offer the appro­pria­te incen­ti­ves to focus them on the sale of the Company’s pro­ducts; that the Com­pa­ny may be unable to main­tain the level of invest­ment in rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment that is requi­red to remain com­pe­ti­ti­ve; that the­re may be unex­pec­ted varia­ti­ons in mar­ket growth and demand for the Company’s pro­ducts and tech­no­lo­gies in light of the pro­duct mix that it may have available at any par­ti­cu­lar time; that glo­bal busi­ness and eco­no­mic con­di­ti­ons, inclu­ding con­su­mer PC mar­ket con­di­ti­ons, will not impro­ve or will wor­sen; that demand for com­pu­ters will be lower than curr­ent­ly expec­ted and the effect of poli­ti­cal or eco­no­mic insta­bi­li­ty, dome­sti­cal­ly or inter­na­tio­nal­ly, on the Company’s sales or sup­p­ly chain. Inves­tors are urged to review in detail the risks and uncer­tain­ties in the Company’s Secu­ri­ties and Exch­an­ge Com­mis­si­on filings, inclu­ding but not limi­t­ed to the Annu­al Report on Form 10‑K for the year ended Decem­ber 28, 2013.


[1] Based on AMD’s inter­nal estimates.