2016: The year in which AMD will become a force?

[Halcyon.]

Recent years have not been kind to AMD, the only player CPU and GPU markets dedicated consumers who prevented a possible monopoly of Intel and Nvidia. In the dedicated video card AMD has only 18%, the remaining 82% belonging to Nvidia, while the fight Intel dominates with about 80% market share.

2016 could be the year that AMD will come back as a fierce competitor, in no small measure thanks to the new partnership with Samsung. AMD will launch the next generation of video cards, Arctic Islands, whose processors will be manufactured by Samsung after its partnership with GlobalFoundries was abandoned. Graphics solutions will be produced by the manufacturing process 14nm FinFET, while rumored that Nvidia might settle for 16nm, as TSMC, partner laboratories have difficulties with the current pace of 28nm. Whatever the outcome regarding Nvidia, AMD video cards will be able to propose more energy efficient, quieter and cooler than in recent years. Even if Nvidia is appreciated for exactly these benefits Maxwell series since its launch, AMD could neutralize the advantage and attract new customers.

Further, both AMD and Nvidia will use HBM v2 models memory performance, but AMD has the expertise to use this technology in the current series Fury, while Nvidia will debut. Also, a number of video games to support DirectX 12 will be launched in 2016, including Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Hitman, ARK: Survival Evolved or Star Citizen and an API rival, Vulkan, will also be released in the form final. It should be known that AMD has created Mantle, which was then developed Vulkan by makers of OpenGL, while DirectX 12 was also developed by Microsoft with the expertise of AMD, so the company has two winning cards, regardless of which API will be successful. Meanwhile, Nvidia has been involved in the development of DX12, but not to the same extent as AMD, at least according to unofficial information. The results can be seen in the first video game DX12, Ashes of the Singularity, where even the most powerful Nvidia can not use some technologies, such as Async Compute.

Also on the video card market, AMD has secured the partnership with Oculus Rift, prominent representative of the strongest trend of next year, virtual reality. AMD will provide Dell and Alienware in collaboration with preassembled systems called Oculus Experience. Moreover, CGN-generation video cards (7000, 200 and 300) are already using Multi-GPU Technology Affinity for superior performance on Oculus Rift games. AMD recently established and open source GPUOpen initiative, which aims to be competitor to Nvidia GameWorks. In closing this chapter, Radeon Technologies Group received mid-year more autonomy, which allows the team to work independently of the CPU, and the first step was taken with the new suite Radeon Software Crimson, which successfully replaced the Catalyst Control Center and it is closer to the GeForce Experience performance and functions.

Desktop and laptop processor market, AMD wore an unequal battle with Intel since the introduction of AM3 socket. Vishera Bulldozer series of FX and tried to fill the lower processing power per core with a higher number of cores, betting that producers of programs and games will begin to unlock the multi-core functionality. Windows 10 came in the meantime brought what AMD desperately waiting for years: optimizing multi-core top.

[CENSORED]ure Zen series processors per socket AM4 will be developed in 14nm technology by the same Samsung, after years stuck AMD 32nm and 28nm. Intel, with its series Skylake and Broadwell, switched to 14nm from 2014 and 2012, the Ivy Bridge 22nm processors already proposed. The chances are that, in the end, AMD equal the energy efficiency and low dissipation of Intel competitors.

Zen series will be developed with the thought of power per core, and AMD says that this value would be 40% higher than that offered by family Excavator. Furthermore, Zen will have support for DDR4 that offered by Intel Haswell-E in September 2014. There will be a Zen series APU, Raven Ridge, with a maximum of 95W, which could indicate a far superior graphics processing power solutions Current unified. Also experiencing memory AMD APU integrated HBM Zen, but there is no information at this time.

2016 will be the year that AMD will become a force?