AMD Announces FirePro W600, Sets Their Sights On Digital Wall Market

by Ryan Smith on 6/13/2012 3:01:00 AM
Posted in GPUs , AMD , GCN , FirePro

For AMD’s FirePro customers, they know that with GCN coming up on 6 months old now that this is the time to keep an eye on product announcements. It typically takes AMD 6 months to a year to release a professional product using a new GPU – primarily for driver and software validation purposes – so they’re just now entering that window.

Almost right on schedule, today AMD is announcing their first Graphics Core Next based FirePro product, the FirePro W600. However in an unusual move despite the FirePro name it’s not a professional card in the traditional sense. Rather it’s a professional card in the not-for-consumers sense.  GCN’s first professional task as it turns out is going to be a brand-new FirePro subcategory: digital signage and display walls.

In several respects digital signage and display walls are obvious markets for AMD. Fundamentally such functionality is based around Single Large Surface (SLS) technology, which AMD first gained in 2009 as their Eyefinity technology. Since then AMD has had the basic capabilities necessary for this market for some time now and have continued to add functions to Eyefinity over the years. At the same time they’ve even casually chased after the much broader digital signage market with embedded products like the E6760, but this is the first time they’ve gone after display walls with a dedicated part.

 AMD FirePro W600AMD FirePro V4900AMD FirePro V3900Stream Processors512?480480Core ClockN/A800MHz650MHzMemory ClockN/A1GHz (4GHz data rate) GDDR5900MHz (1.8GHz data rate) DDR3Memory Bus Width128-bit128-bit128-bitVRAM2GB1GB1GBDisplayPort Outputs621TDP<75W<75W<50WArchitectureGCNVLIW5VLIW5Manufacturing ProcessTSMC 28nmTSMC 40nmTSMC 40nmPrice Point$599$189$119

Fundamentally the W600 is a variation of the Cape Verde based Radeon HD 7750. It’s very similar to its consumer counterpart in most respects, but it has two key differences: it’s equipped with 2GB of GDDR5 rather than 1GB, and in place of a mix of monitor outputs it has 6 Mini DisplayPorts. As we stated earlier AMD is going for the many-monitors markets of digital signage and display walls, and in that market the name of the game is how many monitors can be driven off of a single card. With W600, AMD has built a card that can drive as many monitors as the Cape Verde ASIC can handle (6).

But why GCN for the display wall market? As it turns out AMD has added several different features to GCN that prove useful for this market.  While AMD’s previous generation Turks ASIC could support 6 DisplayPorts too, it had other fundamental limitations that GCN ended up resolving. The biggest of which here is that GCN supports higher Eyefinity resolutions than Turks; 16K x 16K under Windows (sans Aero) instead of 8K x 8K, which is particularly important for 6x1 configurations or configurations involving multiple 4K monitors (thanks to DP1.2). At the same time GCN also introduced support for Discrete Digital Multi-Point Audio, which again is of particular benefit for video walls.

AMD is also touting GCN’s power saving features, but in this case that seems to be rather empty. ZeroCore Power and PowerTune are both present, but with digital signage it’s unlikely that the card will ever get to sleep in a way that triggers ZeroCore. Nor is it likely that the card will be used to run graphically intensive applications (AMD doesn’t even list 3D performance figures for the W600). But still, they’re there if customers need the functionality.

Finally, AMD has announced one more software feature for GCN FirePro cards, a few months ahead of the feature’s planned Q4 launch. AMD will be adding support for edge blending and warping for projectors, which will greatly improve the ability to setup projectors in SLS configurations. Currently it’s doable, but it requires a great deal of care to perfectly align the projectors and it only works on flat surfaces. Edge blending will complement AMD’s existing projection overlap capabilities to make it easier to setup projectors in SLS (just set them up and let the software handle the fine details), while warping will allow for aspect-correct projection on curved surfaces.

Wrapping things up, the W600 is available immediately, for $599. AMD’s primary competition here is Matrox, so they seem rather confident that they can quickly swoop in and take this market for themselves with their much newer technology.

Source: AMD

Print This Article 7 Comments View All Comments Post a Comment Matrox? by highlnder69 on Wednesday, June 13, 2012 Matrox still makes graphics cards? I remember at a previous job we had IBM PC's with Matrox video cards. These things would seem to die on a regular basis. I did discover one trick to get most of them function again with what I called the MMVCRD, 'Magic Matrox Video Card Repair Disk' which would reflash firmware to the card and make it function again. I also remember having some sort of Matrox card a very long time ago for my gaming rig. highlnder69 Reply RE: Matrox? by Iketh on Saturday, June 16, 2012 Tons of people had that graphics card back then... was Hercules or something like that... was cheap and had awesome performance using 1024x768...

I wish they were able to deliver on their promise for a followup... can't remember the details... ill have to look up the article on this site Iketh Reply This is good by diggity0 on Wednesday, June 13, 2012 The edge blending feature is very exciting. A couple of years ago we implemented a video wall using a single PC with an eyefinity video card and 4 projectors. The missing link was how to edge blend the whole thing. We found a piece of software that would do it and it worked well, but it was a $15,000 purchase. If I can do the same thing with this card and save $15,000 on project costs we might sell a few more of these systems. diggity0 Reply LOL - Price scalping anyone ? Did anyone even notice ? by CeriseCogburn on Thursday, June 14, 2012 The crappy 7750 is $109+ to $159, and they want $1,500 for this modded piece of junk.

R O F L

Amd is evil, and far worse than nVidia ever was or ever will be. It appears the new amd is a fat pig money hog cheap piece of junk central doctrine company. CeriseCogburn Reply RE: LOL - Price scalping anyone ? Did anyone even notice ? by behrouz on Friday, June 15, 2012 Rofl , Enjoy your troll behrouz Reply RE: LOL - Price scalping anyone ? Did anyone even notice ? by Iketh on Saturday, June 16, 2012 Do you enjoy expressing your ignorance to the world? Iketh Reply RE: LOL - Price scalping anyone ? Did anyone even notice ? by knutjb on Tuesday, June 19, 2012 Your ignorance is entertaining. Watch a business channel sometime and look at all the displays in the trading areas...$$$ Professional cards always carry a premium and it's in the sofware. You obviously haven't priced professional graphics cards. knutjb Reply Subject Comment Post Comment Please login or register to post a comment.
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Western Digital Enters Router Market with My Net Series

by Dustin Sklavos on 6/14/2012 8:00:00 AM
Posted in router , Networking , Western Digital , 802.11n

We recently had the opportunity to take a meeting with Western Digital in San Francisco, California while a good chunk of the press were out in Taipei for Computex. It's difficult to get excited about new announcements from mechanical hard drive companies these days, especially with the way prices on the drives themselves haven't dipped much since the floods hit (with Western Digital being particularly guilty of maintaining those inflated prices), and with SSDs having become substantially cheaper over the past few months.

Which is what made our meeting with Western Digital so surprising. Western Digital is no stranger to networking and cloud-based products, but a full on line of routers? That's something else entirely. Western Digital is releasing four routers in their brand new My Net series, starting from the $79 My Net N600 all the way up to the exceedingly fancy $349 2TB My Net N900 Central, a combination router and NAS. Each router, top-to-bottom, is based on 802.11n and capable of running in both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands.

The My Net N600 is the entry level router, featuring four 10/100 ethernet ports alongside a WAN port, a single USB 2.0 port for networking printers or storage, 300Mbps throughput on either band (or a cumulative 600Mbps throughput on both), and standard antennae instead of high range ones. At $79 it looks like a decent enough value for a dual-band router, but the lack of gigabit networking hurts a little bit. That changes when you move up to and past the N750. $119 gets you four gigabit ethernet ports, increased range, a second USB 2.0 port, and up to 450Mbps access on the 5GHz band.

From there, we have two versions of the My Net N900 router: one with built-in network attached storage (the My Net N900 Central), and one without. Both feature full 450Mbps throughput on either 2.4GHz or 5GHz bands (or a cumulative 900Mbps on both), high-range antennae, gigabit connectivity, and DLNA certification. The standard N900 features a whopping seven gigabit ethernet ports in addition to the WAN (the N900 Central offers only four) along with two USB 2.0 ports (one on the Central), and retails for $179. If you want internal storage, the 1TB model runs for $299 while the 2TB model runs for $349.

Beyond the basic speeds and feeds, Western Digital is leveraging their experience with cloud storage by adding a cloud backup service to each model in the line, easily accessible from anywhere you have internet access. Cloud access can be managed through a browser, but also through applications for Windows, Mac OS X, Android, and iOS. Western Digital also includes software to allow for automated backups to the networked storage and to the cloud, but unfortunately the automation only goes one way.

There's also Western Digital's secret sauce, their FasTrack Streaming technology. FasTrack is essentially traffic prioritization technology implemented in the core SoC that can be customized by the end user to allow for simultaneous gaming, downloading, and video streaming over the network with minimal interruptions or hiccups. Standard FasTrack supports up to 21 open queues and comes with six services pre-identified, and allows the end user to add and configure more services as needed. More interesting is the FasTrack Plus technology, available exclusively on the N900 routers (standard FasTrack is available only on the N600 and N750), which uses a dedicated chip for the QoS implementation. It supports unlimited open queues and actually dynamically analyzes sessions to intelligently route data.

Ganesh actually has an N900 in house for review as I write this post. We believe the routers are based on Qualcomm Atheros chipsets, and will be confirming it in our review.

At the $179.99 price point, it is the same as that of the 802.11ac routers already in the market. However, WD touts the QoS implementation (FasTrack / FasTrack Plus) and three extra GbE ports on the router as
the differentiation points. Depending on how much of an early adopter the consumer is, it might make sense to go with WD's implementations as 802.11ac capable equipment is not widespread yet. Also worth noting is that the N900 is actively cooled. Note also that despite having a blue USB port, Western Digital's routers do not support USB 3.0.

All of these routers, along with a basic My Net Switch featuring eight gigabit ethernet connections for $69, should be available today from retailers and online at www.wdstore.com. Ganesh's exhaustive review of the My Net N900 is forthcoming.

Print This Article 24 Comments View All Comments Post a Comment Hurts it a little bit? by Etsp on Thursday, June 14, 2012 "At $79 it looks like a decent enough value for a dual-band router, but the lack of gigabit networking hurts a little bit. " The wireless connection is faster than the wired! It's asinine. You want to put a fileserver on this network, you better buy a wireless card for it.

Not to mention, gigabit LAN components are dirt cheap these days... I'm not sure why these companies are pulling this crap, but it's ridiculous. Etsp Reply RE: Hurts it a little bit? by FATCamaro on Thursday, June 14, 2012 100 mbit ethernet > 300 mbit wireless at a distance of 5 feet or more. FATCamaro Reply RE: Hurts it a little bit? by FATCamaro on Thursday, June 14, 2012 Or if more than 1 computer is transmitting or receiving since ethernet is switched. FATCamaro Reply RE: Hurts it a little bit? by Souka on Thursday, June 14, 2012 100Mbps is plenty fast for 95% of home users.

Most activity is just browsing webpages, watching video, or music.... all of which will be limited by wireless bandwidth far before 100Mbps.

I suspect NAS performance will be in the 8-12 MB/s... again 100 Mbps is fine for that.

Also, a 100Mbps WAN port is beyond what 99% people have at home for internet connectivity.

I run Comcast Blast! at home... about 45/Mbps

Until recently at home I ran a WRT-54GL router with a 4-port gigabit switch between a few of the systems so I could move files around at 500-800Mbps..... but the 100Mbps router ports were plenty fast for my 20Mbps throughput on the wi-fi.

Now I have a ASUS N66U and am loving the speed boost, but it's not like 10x faster. Souka Reply RE: Hurts it a little bit? by Bluestealth on Thursday, June 14, 2012 Well 12 MB/s is maxing out a 100 Mbps link, it might be very annoying if they are browsing the internet at the same time, I just don't think FastEthernet it is fast enough these days for a LAN connection. It is also fairly weird seeing a Fast Ethernet switch these days since basic Gigabit switch ASICs are so cheap.

You are very correct about the 100Mbps WAN port, although I wish you were not, getting over 50 Mbps anywhere is like asking for a miracle in the United States. My current router maxes out at ~38 Mbps, which is fast enough for my Time Warner connection but if I ever move somewhere better my Cisco 1841 is getting trashed, immediately. Bluestealth Reply RE: Hurts it a little bit? by heffeque on Thursday, June 14, 2012 Wow... Spain in the middle of a huge crisis yet the main cable operator (Ono) offers up to 200 Mbps with no bandwidth caps.
What's the matter with the North America!? Something has to be done. heffeque Reply RE: Hurts it a little bit? by Impulses on Thursday, June 14, 2012 Lack of corporate oversight + huge geographical distances. Impulses Reply RE: Hurts it a little bit? by Souka on Thursday, June 14, 2012 Comcast (Xfinity) offer's "Extreme 50" and "Extreme 105" service to residental customers.

Extreme 50 = 50Mbps down, 15 up
EXtreme 105=105Mpbs down, 20 up

So with Extreme 105... the 100Mbps WAN link would in inadequate... but if you're paying $200/mo for service, I'd hope you'd get a better than $60 router! :)

Far as 12MB/s maxing a 100Mbps...yes that is correct but at $60 the NAS is likely to be well under 10MB/s.... depends on chipset.

Point is... most people do just fine on 100Mbps LAN ports...and 2.4GHz 802.11n

YOU (most daily tech readers do not fall under the classifaction of "most users") ! Souka Reply RE: Hurts it a little bit? by iwod on Friday, June 15, 2012 Yeah, we continue to see replies from Americans crying about no one needs a fast WAN port in the world.
( Americans Dictionary explains the World equals US )
When there are plenty of places in Real World that offer 100Mbps + Internet Speed at affordable price.

And we do need higher then 12MB/s if you have NAS. NAS are getting popular by day and even if you are transferring files between computer on the LAN you would want faster rate. 12MB/s is slow.

Yes, this is 2012, we are well over a decade that we stuck with 100Mbps Ethernet. I agree Something NEEDS to be done. iwod Reply RE: Hurts it a little bit? by Souka on Friday, June 15, 2012 MOST, not all, routers with NAS functionality have very poor performance to/from the HDD attached to the router.

A dedicated NAS or a PC sharing files is another story.

:)

Yes Fast Ethernet needs to go away in the middle-class router market...and it slowly is. Souka Reply Subject Comment Post Comment Please login or register to post a comment.
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