PCGH: Hi Vijay. AMD decided not to launch R600 officially at Cebit. Can you give us a clue, what was your reason to do or not do so?
Vijay Sharma [Director of Desktop Discrete Product Marketing at AMD]: Sure. Our initial plan as you're probably aware was to do an NDA press media event this week just before Cebit at Amsterdam. And we realized that we had two derivative products of R600 coming. So we had a whole family of R600-products coming within 45, 60 days of each other. So we said rather than have the press come to Amsterdam before Cebit and then another month later do another event lets talk about the whole family at once and include desktop and mobile products as well. So we have a very strong story and we choose to hold on the R600 and have a combined event later in april.
PCGH: So that means the reason for the delay is not R600 not being ready...
Vijay Sharma: No, no. The R600 schedule hasn't changed. So we're building boards, we're on the same hardware-schedule that we've always been. We're just not launching the product until we launch the family.
PCGH: But a broad bus interface and high speed memory - GDDR4 - is a cost factor and it would make R600 more expensive than if you were using GDDR3 and a 256 to 384 Bit interface.
Vijay Sharma: If you had a 512 bit interface doesn't mean that you can't use just 256 bits. And you can use different memories. So from a bandwidth perspective we can certainly match or exceed anyones bandwidth with the architecture.
PCGH: Are you sticking to the ring bus memory controller concept? After all you've put much effort into it in R5x-architecture.
Vijay Sharma: In the 5x-architecture we have the ringbus memory controller - there have been some changes in the 600-family.
PCGH: On another matter: Nvidia stated that the G80-Chip in it's current form is not compatible with their AGP-Bridge - maybe future chips are again, but G80 will not be. Can you tell us about R6x?
Vijay Sharma: We have a brigde chip and it works with 600 family.
PCGH: Power consumption. We've seen the photos on the internet of the so called OEM-designs of the R600, we've seen the photo in the press conference of your teraflop-box. The coolers look very very massive. Is this to be on the quiet side of thing or do you just have to get rid of massive amounts of thermal energy.
Vijay Sharma: Both. You know, there's no surprise that the next generation - whether it's G80 or R600 - these are big chips. And you saw the two 600s put out a teraflop. And they don't get that at low wattage. You need power. They do consume power and we have air-cooled dual-slot cooling solutions for the R600. And we've designed it such that we meet acoustic requirements and also provide the cooling that's required. We will have third parties making liquid cooled solutions. I think in the high-end and in the enthusiast space we're going to level off in terms of power consumption.
PCGH: So you don't expect power to go much higher than R600/G80-level.
Vijay Sharma: Well certainly not from AMDs perspective - I don't know what Nvidia's going to do - but certainly not AMDs perspective I think you're going to the a levelling off of power certainly in the enthusiast space. Some people have asked will power consumption come down in the enthusiast space. It can because we can go to 65nm where the per gate leakage is much lower. Or we can go to 55 and employ different techniques in the process. But in the enthusiast space the game is to deliver maximum performance.
PCGH: I mean for high-end.
Vijay Sharma: The purpose of this cooling team is to look at all possible ways to cool GPUs. We've looked at liquid cooling designs, we've looked at air-cooling, we've looked at vapor-chambers. We've done Heatpipes. We've gone to third parties around the world who work specifically on cooling solutions to see what they can come up with. We actually want to take the best in innovation and put it on the product.
PCGH: Given the fact - as I take it - that the R600 is produced at 80 nm. How much of an advantage does that give you because after all it's just one-ninth from 90 nm. So how much of an improvement do you think that gave you.
Vijay Sharma: Yeah, I think the big advantage that 80 gives you over 90 from a process perspective is transistor density. You just get more and the chip will cost less for a given transistor count than it would at 90.
PCGH: But did you go for less cost or maximum transistor count?
Vijay Sharma: In the high-end, methodology is when we develop the chips, we do go for cost target. So we specify a cost we need, and then the engineers need to put as many transistors and as much performance into that cost budget. And although a lot of people say that it's "Deliver the highest performance no matter what there's always a "matter what - whether it's cost or power or something else. So we do do that. So the choice of 80 was aligned with what we need to deliver and it did give us a cost advantage over 90. So we choose to go that way.
PCGH: You felt it was worth the hassle compared to the proven process of 90nm?
Vijay Sharma: Oh the R600 wasn't the first 80nm part we've done.
PCGH: But I'd bet definitely by far the most complex...
Vijay Sharma: O certainly it was the most complex. But from a process perspective we have not had 80nm process issues on the R600.
PCGH: Another word on the family of R6x. You plan to introduce all products at once you said. Does that include mobile products?
Vijay Sharma: Right now we're looking at a whole family of products. So there's a whole set of R600-class mobile products and desktop products. And so we do one big tech event for the press under NDA. And then following that will be the announcements, formal public announcements for the products.
