Only time will tell if ATI will shout the news from its corporate rooftops, but according to the X Initiative, when it ships later this year an unspecified ATI PCI-Express graphics processor will be the first X Architecture chip on the market. ADVERTISEMENT
Before you drift off into dreams of the X-Men and Wolverine's Adamantine augmented skeleton, let us explain.
The X Initiative is a group of semiconductor companies promoting the X architecture for processors. (The group is fairly large, but doesn't include many of the major players in chip design, such at Intel, AMD, IBM and Freescale.)
X Architecture is about bringing diagonal interconnects (or diagonal routing) into the design of a chip.
Normally a chip uses all right angles to connect its various bits and pieces.
According to the X Initiative, "The X Architecture rotates the primary direction of the interconnect in the fourth and fifth metal layers by 45 degrees" from the traditional right angles, but remains compatible with "existing cell libraries, memory cells, compilers and IP cores by preserving the Manhattan geometry of metal layers one through three." The X Initive says this is the first "production-worthy approach" to the "pervasive use" of this design.
Why would a chip company move from the decades old right angle, or "Manhattan" chip design? Try a 20 percent reduction in wiring on a chip, which the X Initiative claims will "reduce chip costs, increase performance and lower power consumption."
In fact, ATI's new processor, manufactured using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's 0.11-micron process and designed with Cadence Design Systems X Architecture "eliminated one metal layer from the original Manhattan design, reducing die costs."
ATI is certainly bullish on the technology. Greg Buchner, vice president of Engineering at ATI claims that using the X Architecture afforded the company the opportunity to "increase the performance envelope while reducing costs." ATI is also joining the X Initiative, and will be its first fabless chip design member.
link
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...129TX1K0000532
anyone knows ?? if so it would oc even better, be cooler and cheaper, or is it a new core??
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