AMD came roaring into GDC 2013 with a vengeance. Not only did the chipmaker introduce its first branded line of dedicated cloud gaming graphics cards - the Radeon Sky Series - we got a taste of what it claims is the world's fastest GPU.

Attendees of a Tuesday night press conference saw the GPU, the Radeon HD 7990, make its first public appearance. Later, a set of 7990s powered EA's 17-minute introductory Battlefield 4 demo on the big screen.

And though Sony spent more time talking about the PS4's DualShock controller than AMD's chippy contributions at the conference, Neal Robison, director of ISV relations at AMD, was more than happy to lay it out for TechRadar.

"You don't know how long we've been waiting for that Sony announcement, because we've been working on it for years," Robison said during a sit down in AMD's expo booth. "To finally be able to talk about a culmination of all this effort is really rewarding."

PlayStation 4 parlance

AMD provided the console's CPU design - eight x86-64, low-power Jaguar cores - plus a next-gen Radeon HD graphics card said to have 18 compute units. Beyond putting two individual pieces of silicon into one game box, the company smooshed them together to create a single APU.

"It's not just about an x86 solution, but it's about that Jaguar APU where it's a combination of the graphics and CPU together and being able to create something that's greater than just putting an x86 PC-like architecture together," Robison explained.

Sony, he said, approached AMD based on the company's track record with the Xbox 360, Wii and other consoles, effectively skipping over Nvidia, which provided the chips for the PS3.

"[Sony's] approach - and they've said this publicly over the last couple of days here at GDC - was, 'We looked at some of the ways that we approached hardware in the past, and we wanted to improve.' And they looked at us as being able as being able to provide that."

AMD could provide an integrated solution through its APU that Nvidia couldn't, he continued, by optimizing information flows, generating greater performance, better power and heat efficiency, and by providing tools and dev relationships to provide the PS4 a strong launch.

"We could say, 'Hey look, these guys already know how to develop on a PC architecture.' It's something that's really familiar to them and we showed Sony the tool chains and the work flows that had been developed by all these content developers that would very easily be able to move over."

Critics' corner

In a recent interview with TechRadar, Nvidia's Tony Tamasi sized up the PS4's specs to "a low-end CPU, and a low- to mid-range GPU" when compared to gaming PCs. The console's innards, Tamasi said, are outdated even now, months before the PS4 launches during the 2013 holiday season.

"Well, of course they're going to do that," Robison said with a laugh when told of the comparison. "They're a little bitter."

He didn't neglect to give a more nuanced response.

"For us, really by looking at that APU that we designed, you can't pull out individual components off it and hold it up and say, 'Yeah, this compares to X or Y.'

"It's that integration of the two, and especially with the amount of shared memory [8GB of GDDR5, 176GB/s raw memory bandwidth] that Sony has chosen to put on that machine, then you're going to be able to do so much more moving and sharing that data that you can address by both sides.

"It's more than just a CPU doing all these amazing calculations and a GPU doing calculations. We are now going to be able to move certain tasks between the two."

Devs, he said, will be able to push the console's capabilities beyond a traditional x86 PC architecture, and multithreading - being able to take advantage of all eight cores - is going "to become a huge deal for a lot of the big blockbuster games."

Robison deflected when asked about AMD putting its stamp on Microsoft's next-gen console, the Xbox 720, but he noted that the company had "tremendous success" with the Xbox 360.

"It was a great partnership and we enjoy working with them," he said.

We get the sense that this relationship isn't cooling off anytime soon.

TechRadar will have more from our GDC conversation with Robison, so stay tuned.

http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/consoles/amd-on-the-ps4-we-gave-it-the-hardware-nvidia-couldn-t-1141607

Looks at title.

Thems are fightin words.

Well Nvidia has not what Sony wanted yet. So obviously AMD had an advantage. APUs will become generally more important Intel expands Graphics AMD makes APUs and Nvidia does their ARM thing. HSA seems to be the future and AMD is in a good position at the moment.

"Well, of course they're going to do that" nice to read this at it is true for both sides :)

Good to read this comment.

I was expecting to see a load of "blah blah blah serves nVidia right blah blah blah". Business is business and clearly either the deal wasn't competitive enough for nvidia to want to bother or nvidia didn't have the tech needed. Both could be true to an extent. AMD is in desperate times and would likely accept a lower offer than nvidia for investment in anything and nvidia does likely have less power per watt efficieny in it's low-mid end products.

It's well documented that AMD's APUs are the best at the moment on the low end of integrated on chip graphics so in effect everyone's a winner and all parties are doing what is right for their business.

I don't take the "bitter" comment with any seriousness though. That's just silly although I'm sure this thread will attract the usual ignorant comment looking at it from that silly angle.

If I remember correctly, AMD has been stating that their hardware is not completely being supported (I don't know if that's the right words, how about Optimized programing) both in the Windows OS & in many games where Intel & Nvidia have a strong grip on the market. I remember people in Hardware forums saying that the CPU's run faster in Linux & that games not backed by Nvidia run equal or better (at times). I don't know how much truth there is to those claims, but I think it will be interesting to see what happens when you tailor make software for AMD's Chips. (New APUs)

It could be that AMD is full of crap, or it could be the operating systems & specialized engines that are hold this the chips architecture back. I am actually quite excited by AMD's move here, It could open doors for them or close them completely. Either way, It will be interesting to see how things unfold.

-Edit: You know what, I don't quite remember if it was AMD's or their famboy's claims. Either way, I still feel the same way.

Well this is true.

If software is optimised more for any set of hardware then it usually runs better on it.

Most software programs prefer single threaded cpu performance. So intel usually cleans up in benchmarks etc. However when it comes to multithreaded performance AMD cpu's are level and at times better.

For GPU's it is more prevelant. Games optimised for either company performs better on that platform. You can clearly see this with tomb raider and how badly it performs on nvidia gpu's.

I dont think its just fanboy talk its actually happening but i wont point fingers at nvidia/intel they all doing it. Some more than others though.

AMD just went up a little in my books.

Why is the "bitter" comment silly? Nvidia has come out at every opportunity to diss the next gen systems.

shots fired