Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has announced that it plans to bring its Kaveri chips to laptops and desktops early in 2014.
The Kaveri chips are expected to be used in desktops in January 2014 and then in laptops soon after. One of the features of the Kaveri chips is that it will bring console-style gaming to PCs by bringing together AMD's latest graphics and CPU processors code-named Steamroller.
AMD announced that the Kaveri chips will have up to four CPU cores and eight GPU cores. The graphics of the chips will be based on the same technology as used in the next-generation Microsoft Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4.
The Kaveri chips will deliver up to 856 gigaflops of performance and will outperform Intel's Haswell, the rival's fastest PC chip.
However, Kaveri will also have certain problems when compared to Intel. Kaveri is AMD's first 28-nanometer chip, while on the other hand, Intel is already working on the more efficient 22-nm manufacturing node. Moreover, Intel will also bring the 14-nm Broadwell chip in 2014.
The Kaveri chips were expected to reach desktops and laptops in 2013, but due to unknown reasons the release has been delayed t 2014. Kaveri will replace AMD's older chips code-named Richland, which started shipping in desktops earlier this year.
Kaveri is also AMD's first chip to support open hardware interface specifications released by the Heterogeneous System Architecture (HAS) Foundation. Under the open hardware interface specifications, program execution can be easily offloaded to other processing resources such as GPUs. The company aims that the Kaveri chips will deliver performance improvements and at the same time draw less power.
AMD is one of the few chip makers to give stiff competition to Intel. With the shipment of Kaveri chips to desktops and laptops in early 2014, the company may get successful in diverting customers from Intel to AMD, which may increase competition in the chip market even more.
