Efficient Polaris Architecture drives AMD performance in ASEAN

For decades, AMD has designed and integrated technology that has been the driving force behind more intelligent devices that can be counted. These range from personal computers and game consoles all the way to massive capacity on cloud servers that are redefining the way the organizations around the world do business. With a global workforce of more than 10,000, AMD is a technology pioneer that empowers people to do more to be the inspiration of tomorrow.

Here in Malaysia, AMD has been an active part of the community for over four decades. First established locally in 1972, AMD has had microprocessor assembly facilities, research and development units, as well as testing facilities in the country. From Malaysia, AMD also supports part of its internal global network. Malaysia also houses AMD’s only data center outside of North America.

Easier access to next-generation technology

AMD’s major product lines include graphics, compute as well as embedded product, but for the Malaysian market the first two are a focus point.

“Within the next decade the world is expecting to see more than 50 billion digital devices. Technologies such as Virtual or Augmented Reality are already coming to the fore. These technologies are not only fundamentally a challenge to businesses, but also in a way to the consumer,” said Ryan Sim, Channel Sales Director for ASEAN and India, AMD.

Since even before Moore’s law stated that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits double every year, the race to technology has always been driven by companies that have touted “better and faster”. Yet few have paid much attention to the most basic pain-point of consumers; pricing.

“In a sense, that is what AMD has striven so hard to overcome these years. We are aiming not only for fast products, but those that are more reasonably within reach of the masses. Today, with the available of our Polaris architecture, I feel that we have made great headway in that direction,” said Sim.

Lowering cost, increasing efficiency

Polaris is a new graphics architecture that was specifically designed with a few key areas in mind. It offers vast improvement in many areas that graphics chips were designed for; and took it a step further. Polaris architecture based cards, in addition to seamless VR performance also focused on architectural efficiency, delivering more power per watt than any chip the company had designed before.

Greater power efficiency naturally translated to a much cooler and quieter gaming experience.

While this is of course vital to many gamers and even most consumers, many of them often forget the most important factor of increased power per watt. The lower the power draw of the graphic card the less power is required to run the overall system.

“Many people forget to consider the cost of electricity when running gaming systems. Some high-end PC system can consumer even more electricity than refrigerators. What we have done over the recent years is to basically ramp up not only the energy efficiency of our GPU, but also our APUs. We wanted better performance for a lower total cost of ownership and I would say for GPU we’ve achieved this with Polaris,” said Sim.

“The Polaris family includes the RX480, RX 470 and RX460. All of these cards are currently out in the market already and the uptake has been astonishing, even to us. Even now we are seeing increases in production due to high demand and I’ve no doubt that we will do well both in Malaysia as well as the region,” he said.

While some may be skeptical of the power for Polaris, Market sentiment certainly is not. Since the release of Polaris this year, AMD has already seen significant market share increase and has reaped the benefits in surges in its own share prices. According to Mercury Research, AMD’s Q2 market share this year jumped to 29.9%, much better than over the same quarter last year of 22.8%.