Radeon R300 series

The R300 GPU, introduced in August 2002 and developed by ATI Technologies, is its third generation of GPU used in "Radeon" graphics cards. This GPU features 3D acceleration based upon Direct3D 9.0 and OpenGL 2.0, a major improvement in features and performance compared to the preceding R200 design. R300 was the first fully Direct3D 9-capable consumer graphics chip. The processors also include 2D GUI acceleration, video acceleration, and multiple display outputs.
The first graphics cards using the R300 to be released were the Radeon 9700. It was the first time that ATI marketed its GPU as a Visual Processing Unit (VPU). R300 and its derivatives would form the basis for ATI's consumer and professional product lines for over 3 years.
The integrated graphics processor based upon R300 is the "Xpress 200".
Development.
ATI had held the lead for a while with the Radeon 8500 but Nvidia retook the performance crown with the launch of the GeForce 4 Ti line. A new high-end refresh part, the 8500XT (R250) was supposedly in the works, ready to compete against NVIDIA's high-end offerings, particularly the top line Ti 4600. Pre-release information listed a 300 MHz core and RAM clock speed for the "R250" chip. ATI, perhaps mindful of what had happened to 3dfx when they took focus off their "Rampage" processor, abandoned it in favor of finishing off their next-generation R300 card. This proved to be a wise move, as it enabled ATI to take the lead in development for the first time instead of trailing NVIDIA. The R300, with its next-generation architecture giving it unprecedented features and performance, would have been superior to any R250 refresh.
The R3xx chip was designed by ATI's West Coast team (formerly ArtX Inc.), and the first product to use it was the Radeon 9700 PRO (internal ATI code name: R300; internal ArtX codename: Khan), launched in August 2002. The architecture of R300 was quite different from its predecessor, Radeon 8500 ("R200"), in nearly every way. The core of 9700 PRO was manufactured on a 150 nm chip fabrication process, similar to the Radeon 8500. However, refined design and manufacturing techniques enabled a doubling of transistor count "and" a significant clock speed gain.
One major change with the manufacturing of the core was the use of the flip-chip packaging, a technology not used previously on video cards. Flip chip packaging allows far better cooling of the die by flipping it and exposing it directly to the cooling solution. ATI thus could achieve higher clock speeds. Radeon 9700 PRO was launched clocked at 325 MHz, ahead of the originally projected 300 MHz. With a transistor count of 110 million, it was the largest and most complex GPU of the time. A slower chip, the 9700, was launched a few months later, differing only by lower core and memory speeds. Despite that, the Radeon 9700 PRO was clocked significantly higher than the Matrox Parhelia 512, a card released but months before R300 and considered to be the pinnacle of graphics chip manufacturing (with 80 million transistors at 220 MHz), up until R300's arrival.
Architecture.
The chip adopted an architecture consisting of 8 pixel pipelines, each with 1 texture mapping unit (an 8x1 design). While this differed from the older chips using 2 (or 3 for the original Radeon) texture units per pipeline, this did not mean "R300" could not perform multi-texturing as efficiently as older chips. Its texture units could perform a new "loopback" operation which allowed them to sample up to 16 textures per geometry pass. The textures can be any combination of one, two, or three dimensions with bilinear, trilinear, or anisotropic filtering. This was part of the new DirectX 9 specification, along with more flexible floating-point-based Shader Model 2.0+ pixel shaders and vertex shaders. Equipped with 4 vertex shader units, "R300" possessed over twice the geometry processing capability of the preceding Radeon 8500 and the GeForce4 Ti 4600, in addition to the greater feature-set offered compared to DirectX 8 shaders.
ATI demonstrated part of what was capable with pixel shader PS2.0 with their "Rendering with Natural Light" demo. The demo was a real-time implementation of noted 3D graphics researcher Paul Debevec's paper on the topic of high dynamic range rendering. A noteworthy limitation is that all R300-generation chips were designed for a maximum floating point precision of 96-bit, or FP24, instead of DirectX 9's maximum of 128-bit FP32. DirectX 9.0 specified FP24 as a minimum level for conforming to the specification for full precision. This trade-off in precision offered the best combination of transistor usage and image quality for the manufacturing process at the time. It did cause a usually visibly imperceptible loss of quality when doing heavy blending. ATI's Radeon chips did not go above FP24 until R520.
The R300 was the first board to truly take advantage of a 256-bit memory bus. Matrox had released their Parhelia 512 several months earlier, but this board did not show great gains with its 256-bit bus. ATI, however, had not only doubled their bus to 256-bit, but also integrated an advanced crossbar memory controller, somewhat similar to NVIDIA's memory technology. Utilizing four individual load-balanced 64-bit memory controllers, ATI's memory implementation was quite capable of achieving high bandwidth efficiency by maintaining adequate granularity of memory transactions and thus working around memory latency limitations. "R300" was also given the latest refinement of ATI's innovative HyperZ memory bandwidth and fillrate saving technology, "HyperZ III". The demands of the 8x1 architecture required more bandwidth than the 128-bit bus designs of the previous generation due to having double the texture and pixel fillrate.
Radeon 9700 introduced ATI's multi-sample gamma-corrected anti-aliasing scheme. The chip offered sparse-sampling in modes including 2×, 4×, and 6×. Multi-sampling offered vastly superior performance over the supersampling method on older Radeons, and superior image quality compared to NVIDIA's offerings at the time. Anti-aliasing was, for the first time, a fully usable option even in the newest and most demanding titles of the day. The R300 also offered advanced anisotropic filtering which incurred a much smaller performance hit than the anisotropic solution of the GeForce4 and other competitors' cards, while offering significantly improved quality over Radeon 8500's anisotropic filtering implementation which was highly angle dependent.
On March 14, 2008, AMD released the 3D Register Reference for R3xx.
Performance.
Radeon 9700's architecture was very efficient and much more advanced compared to its peers of 2002. Under normal conditions it beat the GeForce4 Ti 4600, the previous top-end card, by 15–20%. However, when anti-aliasing (AA) and/or anisotropic filtering (AF) were enabled it would beat the Ti 4600 by anywhere from 40–100%. At the time, this was quite special, and resulted in the widespread acceptance of AA and AF as truly usable features.
Besides advanced architecture, reviewers also took note of ATI's change in strategy. The 9700 would be the second of ATI's chips (after the 8500) to be shipped to third-party manufacturers instead of ATI producing all of its graphics cards, though ATI would still produce cards off of its highest-end chips. This freed up engineering resources that were channeled towards driver improvements, and the 9700 performed phenomenally well at launch because of this. id Software technical director John Carmack had the Radeon 9700 run the E3 "Doom 3" demonstration.
The performance and quality increases offered by the R300 GPU are considered to be one of the greatest in the history of 3D graphics, alongside the achievements GeForce 256 and Voodoo Graphics. Furthermore, NVIDIA's response in the form of the GeForce FX 5800 was both late to market and somewhat unimpressive, especially when pixel shading was used. R300 would become one of the GPUs with the longest useful lifetime in history, allowing playable performance in new games at least 3 years after its launch.
Further releases.
A few months later, the 9500 and 9500 PRO were launched. The 9500 PRO had half the memory bus width of the 9700 PRO, and the 9500 was also missing (disabled) half the pixel processing units and the hierarchical Z-buffer optimization unit (part of "HyperZ III"). With its full 8 pipelines and efficient architecture, the 9500 PRO outperformed all of NVIDIA's products (save the Ti 4600). Meanwhile, the 9500 also became popular because it could in some cases be modified into the much more powerful 9700. ATI only intended for the 9500 series to be a temporary solution to fill the gap for the 2002 Christmas season, prior to the release of the 9600. Since all of the R300 chips were based on the same physical die, ATI's margins on 9500 products were low. Radeon 9500 was one of the shortest-lived product of ATI, later replaced by the Radeon 9600 series. The logo and box package of the 9500 was resurrected in 2004 to market the unrelated and slower Radeon 9550 (which is a derivative of the 9600).
Refreshed.
In early 2003, the 9700 cards were replaced by the 9800 (or, R350). These were R300s with higher clock speeds, and improvements to the shader units and memory controller which enhanced anti-aliasing performance. They were designed to maintain a performance lead over the recently launched GeForce FX 5800 Ultra, which it managed to do without difficulty. The 9800 still held its own against the revised FX 5900, primarily (and significantly) in tasks involving heavy SM2.0 pixel shading. Another selling point for the 9800 was that it was still a single-slot card, compared to the dual-slot requirements of the FX 5800 and FX 5900. A later version of the 9800 Pro with 256 MB of memory used GDDR2. The other two variants were the 9800, which was simply a lower-clocked 9800 Pro, and the 9800 SE, which had half the pixel processing units disabled (could sometimes be enabled again). Official ATI specifications dictate a 256-bit memory bus for the 9800 SE, but most of the manufacturers used a 128-bit bus. Usually, the 9800 SE with 256-bit memory bus was called "9800 SE Ultra" or "9800 SE Golden Version".
Alongside the 9800, the 9600 (a.k.a. RV350) series was rolled out in early 2003, and while the 9600 PRO didn't outperform the 9500 PRO that it was supposed to replace, it was much more economical for ATI to produce by way of a 130 nm process (all ATI's cards since the 7500/8500 had been 150 nm) and a simplified design. Radeon 9600's "RV350" core was basically a 9800 Pro cut in half, with exactly half of the same functional units, making it a 4×1 architecture with 2 vertex shaders. It also lost part of HyperZ III with the removal of the hierarchical z-buffer optimization unit, the same as Radeon 9500. Using a 130 nm process was also good for pushing up the core clock speed. The 9600 series, all with high default clocking, was shown to have quite a bit of headroom by overclockers (achieving over 500 MHz, from 400 MHz on the Pro model). While the 9600 series was less powerful than the 9500 and 9500 Pro it replaced, it did largely manage to maintain the 9500's lead over NVIDIA's GeForce FX 5600 Ultra, and it was ATI's cost-effective answer to the long-time mainstream performance board, GeForce4 Ti 4200.
During the summer of 2003, the Mobility Radeon 9600 was launched, based upon the RV350 core. Being the first laptop chip to offer DirectX 9.0 shaders, it enjoyed the same success of the previous Mobility Radeons. The Mobility Radeon 9600 was originally planned to use a RAM technology called GDDR2-M. The company developing that memory went bankrupt and the RAM never arrived, so ATI was forced to use regular DDR SDRAM. Undoubtedly there would have been power usage savings, and perhaps performance gains with GDDR2-M. In fall 2004, a slightly faster variant, the Mobility Radeon 9700 was launched (which was still based upon the RV350, and not the older R300 of the desktop Radeon 9700 despite the naming similarity).
Later in 2003, three new cards were launched: the 9800 XT (R360), the 9600 XT (RV360), and the 9600 SE (RV350). The 9800 XT was slightly faster than the 9800 PRO had been, while the 9600 XT competed well with the newly launched GeForce FX 5700 Ultra. The "RV360" chip on 9600 XT was the first graphics chip by ATI that utilized Low-K chip fabrication and allowed even higher clocking of the 9600 core (500 MHz default). The 9600 SE was ATI's answer to NVIDIA's GeForce FX 5200 Ultra, managing to outperform the 5200 while also being cheaper. Another "RV350" board followed in early 2004, on the Radeon 9550, which was a Radeon 9600 with a lower core clock (though an identical memory clock and bus width).
Worthy of note regarding the R300-based generation is that the entire lineup utilized single-slot cooling solutions. It was not until the R420 generation's Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition, in December 2004, that ATI would adopt an official dual-slot cooling design.
New interface.
Also in 2004, ATI released the Radeon X300 and X600 boards. These were based on the "RV370" (110 nm process) and "RV380" (130 nm Low-K process) GPU respectively. They were nearly identical to the chips used in Radeon 9550 and 9600, only differing in that they were native PCI Express offerings. These were very popular for Dell and other OEM companies to sell in various configurations; connectors: DVI vs. DMS-59, card height: full-height vs. half-height.
Later the Radeon X550 was launched, using the same chip as Radeon X300 graphics card (RV370).


Mac OS X Jaguar

Mac OS X Jaguar (version 10.2) is the third major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system. It superseded Mac OS X 10.1 and preceded Mac OS X Panther. The operating system was released on August 23, 2002 either for single-computer installations, and in a "family pack," which allowed five installations on separate computers in one household. Jaguar was the first Mac OS X release to publicly use its code name in marketing and advertisements.
System requirements.
Mac OS X Jaguar required a PowerPC G3 or G4 CPU and 128 MB of RAM. Special builds were released for the first PowerPC G5 systems released by Apple.
New and changed features.
Jaguar introduced many new features to Mac OS X, which are still supported to this day, including MPEG-4 support in QuickTime, Address Book, and Inkwell for handwriting recognition. It also included the first release of Apple's Zeroconf implementation, Rendezvous (later renamed to Bonjour), which allows devices on the same network to automatically discover each other and offer available services, such as file sharing, shared scanners, and printers, to the user.
Mac OS X Jaguar Server 10.2.2 added journaling to HFS Plus, the native Macintosh file system, to add increased reliability and data recovery features. This was later added to the standard Mac OS X in version 10.3 Panther.
Jaguar saw the debut of Quartz Extreme, a technology used to composite graphics directly on the video card, without the use of software to composite windows. The technology allotted the task of drawing the 3D surface of windows to the video card, rather than to the CPU, to increase interface responsiveness and performance.
Universal Access was added to allow the Macintosh to be usable by disabled computer users.
The user interface of Jaguar was also amended to add search features to the Finder using the updated Sherlock 3.
Internally, Jaguar also added the Common Unix Printing System (also known as CUPS), a modular printing system for Unix-like operating systems, and improved support for Microsoft Windows networks using the open-source Samba as a server for the SMB remote file access protocol and a FreeBSD-derived virtual file system module as a client for SMB.
The famous Happy Mac that had greeted Mac users for almost 18 years during the Macintosh startup sequence was replaced with a large grey Apple logo with the introduction of Mac OS X Jaguar.
Marketing.
Unlike Mac OS X 10.1, Jaguar was a paid upgrade, costing $129. In October 2002, Apple offered free copies of Jaguar to all U.S K-12 teachers as part of the "X For Teachers" program. Teachers who wanted to get a copy simply had to fill out a form and a packet containing Mac OS X installation discs and manuals was shipped to the school where they worked.
Jaguar marked the first Mac OS X release which publicly used its code name as both a marketing ploy and as an official reference to the operating system. To that effect, Apple replaced the packaging for Mac OS X with a new jaguar-themed box.
Mac OS X 10.2 was never officially referred to as Jaguar in the United Kingdom due to an agreement with the car manufacturer Jaguar, although boxes and CDs still bore the Jaguar-fur logo.
Starting with Jaguar, Mac OS X releases were given a feline-related marketing name upon announcement until the introduction of OS X Mavericks in June 2013, at which point releases began to be named after locations in California, where Apple is headquartered. Mac OS X (rebranded as OS X in 2012 and later macOS in 2016) releases are now also referred to by their marketing name, in addition to version numbers.
Release history.
Mac OS X 10.2.7 (codenames Blackrider, Smeagol) was only available to the new Power Mac G5s and aluminum PowerBook G4s released before Mac OS X Panther. Officially, it was never released to the general public.
Mac OS X 10.2.8 is the last version of Mac OS X officially supported on the "Beige G3" desktop, minitower, and all-in-one systems as well as the PowerBook G3 Series (1998) also known as Wallstreet/PDQ; though later releases can be run on such Macs with the help of unofficial, unlicensed, and unsupported third-party tools such as XPostFacto.


Call gate (Intel)

A call gate is a mechanism in Intel's x86 architecture for changing the privilege level of a process when it executes a predefined function call using a CALL FAR instruction.
Overview.
Call gates are intended to allow less privileged code to call code with a higher privilege level. This type of mechanism is essential in modern operating systems that employ memory protection since it allows user applications to use kernel functions and system calls in a way that can be controlled by the operating system.
Call gates use a special selector value to reference a descriptor accessed via the Global Descriptor Table or the Local Descriptor Table, which contains the information needed for the call across privilege boundaries. This is similar to the mechanism used for interrupts.
Usage.
Assuming a call gate has been set up already by the operating system kernel, code simply does a CALL FAR with the necessary segment selector (the offset field is ignored). The processor will perform a number of checks to make sure the entry is valid and the code was operating at sufficient privilege to use the gate. Assuming all checks pass, a new CS/EIP is loaded from the segment descriptor, and continuation information is pushed onto the stack of the new privilege level (old SS, old ESP, old CS, old EIP, in that order). Parameters may also be copied from the old stack to the new stack if needed. The number of parameters to copy is located in the call gate descriptor.
The kernel may return to the user space program by using a RET FAR instruction which pops the continuation information off the stack and returns to the outer privilege level.
Format of call gate descriptor.
typedef struct _CALL_GATE
 USHORT OffsetLow;
 USHORT Selector;
 UCHAR NumberOfArguments:5;
 UCHAR Reserved:3;
 UCHAR Type:5; // 01100 in i386, 00100 in i286
 UCHAR Dpl:2;
 UCHAR Present:1;
 USHORT OffsetHigh;
}CALL_GATE,*PCALL_GATE;
Previous use.
Multics was the first user of call gates. The Honeywell 6180 had call gates as part of the architecture, but Multics simulated them on the older GE 645.
OS/2 was an early user of Intel call gates to transfer between application code running in ring 3, privileged code running in ring 2, and kernel code in ring 0.
Windows 95 executes drivers and process switching in ring 0, while applications, including API DLL such as kernel32.dll and krnl386.exe are executed in ring 3. Driver VWIN32.VXD provides key operating system primitives at ring 0. It allows calling of driver functions from 16-bit applications (MSDOS and Win16). This address is obtained by calling INT 2Fh, with 1684h in the AX register. To identify which VxD an
entry point is being requested for, the BX register is set to the 16-bit VxD ID. Upon return from the INT instruction, the ES.DI registers contain a far pointer that can be called to transfer control to the VxD running at ring 0. The descriptor pointed by ES is actually call gate. 32-bit applications, however, when they need to access Windows 95 driver code, call undocumented VxDCall function in KERNEL32.DLL which essentially calls INT 30h, which changes ring mode.
Modern use.
Modern x86 operating systems are transitioning away from CALL FAR call gates. With the introduction of x86 instructions for system call (SYSENTER/SYSEXIT by Intel and SYSCALL/SYSRET by AMD), a new faster mechanism was introduced for control transfers for x86 programs. As most other architectures do not support call gates, their use was rare even before these new instructions, as software interrupts or traps were preferred for portability, even though call gates are significantly faster than interrupts.
Call gates are more flexible than the SYSENTER/SYSEXIT and SYSCALL/SYSRET instructions since unlike the latter two, call gates allow for changing from an arbitrary privilege level to an arbitrary (albeit higher or equal) privilege level. The fast SYS* instructions only allow control transfers from ring 3 to 0 and vice versa.
Security issues.
To preserve system security, the Global Descriptor Table must be held in protected memory, otherwise any program will be able to create its own call gate and use it to raise its privilege level. Call gates have been used in software security exploits, when ways have been found around this protection. One example of this is the e-mail worm "Gurong.A", written to exploit the Microsoft Windows operating system, which uses \Device\PhysicalMemory to install a call gate.


Extended Video Graphics Array

Extended Video Graphics Array (or EVGA) is a standard created by VESA in 1991 denoting a non-interlaced resolution of 1024x768 at a maximum of 70 Hz refresh rate.
EVGA is similar to (but is not the same as) the IBM XGA standard. The 1990s were a period of evolving standards and EVGA did not achieve wide adoption.
External links.
VESA standards:


Ryzen

Ryzen ( ) is a brand of x86-64 microprocessors designed and marketed by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) for desktop, mobile, server, and embedded platforms based on the Zen microarchitecture. It consists of central processing units (CPUs) marketed for mainstream, enthusiast, server, and workstation segments and accelerated processing units (APUs) marketed for mainstream and entry-level segments and embedded systems applications.
AMD officially announced a new series of processors, named "Ryzen", during its New Horizon summit on December 13, 2016 and introduced Ryzen 1000 series processors in February 2017, featuring up to 8 cores and 16 threads, which launched on March 2, 2017. The second generation of Ryzen processors, the Ryzen 2000 series, features the Zen+ microarchitecture, an incremental improvement built on a 12nm process technology, was released in April 2018 and featured a marginal performance increase over Ryzen 1000 processors that first released in 2017. The third generation of Ryzen processors launched on July 7, 2019 and based on AMD's Zen 2 architecture, features more significant design improvements and a further shrink to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) 7 nm process. On June 16, 2020, AMD announced new Ryzen 3000 series XT processors with 4% higher boost clocks versus non XT processors. On October 8, 2020, AMD announced the highly anticipated Zen 3 architecture for their Ryzen 5000 series processors, featuring a 19% instructions per cycle (IPC) improvement over Zen 2, while being built on the same 7nm TSMC node.
A majority of AMD's consumer Ryzen products use the Socket AM4 platform. In August 2017, AMD launched their Ryzen Threadripper line aimed at the enthusiast workstation market. AMD Ryzen Threadripper uses the larger TR4 and sTRX4 sockets, which support additional memory channels and PCI Express lanes.
In December 2019, AMD started producing first generation Ryzen products built using the second generation Zen+ architecture. The most notable example is Ryzen 5 1600, with newest batches, having "AF" identifier instead of its usual "AE", being essentially a rebadged Ryzen 5 2600 with the same specifications as the original Ryzen 5 1600.
History.
Ryzen is especially significant for AMD since it was a completely new, "from scratch" design and marked the corporation's return to the high-end CPU market after many years of near-total absence. This is because AMD's primary competitor Intel had largely dominated this market segment starting from the 2006 release of their Core microarchitecture (marketed as "Core 2"), after abandoning the Pentium 4's extremely uncompetitive (with AMD's Athlon XP and Athlon 64) Netburst microarchitecture for an upgraded version of the prior Pentium 3 (which notably continues to underpin Intel's CPU designs to this very day). Intel's market dominance over AMD would only continue to increase as simultaneously with the above launch was the successful roll out of their now famous "tick-tock" CPU release strategy, which alternated between a new microarchitecture and a new fabrication node each and every year. Eventually becoming a product release cadence that Intel would manage to stick to for almost an entire decade.
Also of note is the release of AMD's Bulldozer microarchitecture in 2011, which despite being a clean sheet CPU design like Zen, had been optimized for parallel computing above all else, which was then still very much in its infancy (which led to starkly inferior real-world performance in any workload that wasn't highly threaded) and thus ended up uncompetitive in basically every area outside of raw multithreading and its use in low power APUs with integrated Radeon graphics. Despite a die shrink and several revisions of the Bulldozer architecture, performance and power efficiency failed to catch up with Intel's competing products. Cumulatively, all of this practically forced AMD to abandon the entire high-end CPU market (including desktop, laptops, and server/enterprise) until Ryzen's release in spring 2017.
Ryzen is the consumer-level implementation of the newer Zen microarchitecture, a complete redesign that marked the return of AMD to the high-end CPU market, offering a product stack able to compete with Intel at every level. Having more processing cores, Ryzen processors offer greater multi-threaded performance at the same price point relative to Intel's Core processors. The Zen architecture delivers more than 52% improvement in instructions per cycle (clock) over the prior-generation Bulldozer AMD core, without raising power use. The changes to instruction set also makes it binary-compatible with Intel's Broadwell, smoothing the transition for users.
Threadripper, which is geared for high end desktops (HEDT), wasn't developed as part of a business plan or a specific roadmap; instead, a small enthusiast team inside AMD saw an opportunity that something could be developed between the Ryzen and Epyc CPU roadmaps that would put the crown of performance on AMD. After some progress was made in their spare time, the project was greenlit and put in an official roadmap by 2016.
Since the release of Ryzen, AMD's CPU market share has increased while Intel appears to have stagnated.
Product lineup.
Ryzen 2000.
CPUs.
The first Ryzen 2000 CPUs, based on the 12 nm Zen+ microarchitecture, were announced for preorder on April 13, 2018 and launched six days later.
Zen+ based Ryzen CPUs are based on Pinnacle Ridge architecture, while Threadripper CPUs are based on the Colfax microarchitecture. The first of the 2000 series of Ryzen Threadripper products, introducing Precision Boost Overdrive technology, followed in August. The Ryzen 7 2700X was bundled with the new Wraith Prism cooler.
APUs.
Desktop.
In January 2018, AMD announced the first two Ryzen desktop APUs with integrated Radeon Vega graphics under the Raven Ridge codename. These were based on first generation Zen architecture. The Ryzen 3 2200G and the Ryzen 5 2400G were released in February.
Mobile.
In May 2017, AMD demonstrated a Ryzen mobile APU with four Zen CPU cores and Radeon Vega-based GPU. The first Ryzen mobile APUs, codenamed Raven Ridge, were officially released in October 2017.
Embedded.
Great Horned Owl.
In February 2018, AMD announced the V1000 series of embedded Zen+ Vega APUs, based on the Great Horned Owl architecture, with four SKUs.
Banded Kestrel.
In April 2019, AMD announced another line of embedded Zen+Vega APUs, namely the Ryzen Embedded R1000 series with two SKUs.
Ryzen 3000.
CPUs.
On May 27, 2019, at Computex in Taipei, AMD launched its third generation Ryzen processors which use AMD's Zen 2 architecture. For this generation's microarchitectures, Ryzen uses "Matisse", while Threadripper uses "Castle Peak". The chiplet design separates the CPU cores, fabricated on TSMC's 7FF process, and the I/O, fabricated on GlobalFoundries' 12 nm process, and connects them via Infinity Fabric. The Ryzen 3000 series uses the AM4 socket similar to earlier models and is the first CPU to offer PCI Express 4.0 (PCIe) connectivity. The new architecture offers a 15% instruction-per-clock (IPC) uplift and a reduction in energy usage. Other improvements include a doubling of the L3 cache size, a re-optimized L1 instruction cache, a larger micro-operations cache, double the floating point performance, improved branch prediction, and better instruction pre-fetching. The 6-, 8- and 12-core CPUs became generally available on July 7, 2019, and 24-core processors were launched in November.
The Ryzen Threadripper 3990X, part of Castle Peak generation of CPUs, has currently the world's largest number of both cores and threads available in consumer-oriented CPUs - 64 and 128, respectively. The competing Intel Core i9-10980XE processor has only 18 cores and 36 threads. Another competitor, the workstation-oriented Intel Xeon W-3275 and W-3275M, has 28 cores, 56 threads, and cost more when launched.
The 4-, 6- and 8-core processors have one core chiplet. The 12- and 16-core processors have two core chiplets. In all cases the I/O die is the same.
The Threadripper 24- and 32-core processors have four core chiplets. The 64-core processor has eight core chiplets. All Threadripper processors use the same I/O die.
APUs.
Both mobile and desktop APUs are based on the Picasso microarchitecture, a 12 nm refresh of Raven Ridge, offering a modest increase in clock speeds (up to an additional 300 MHz maximum boost), Precision Boost 2, an up to 3% increase in IPC from the move to the Zen+ core with its reduced cache and memory latencies, and newly added solder thermal interface material for the desktop parts.
Mobile.
In 2019, AMD first released the Ryzen 3000 APUs, consisting only of quad core parts. Then in January 2020, they announced value dual core mobile parts, codenamed Dalí, including the Ryzen 3 3250U.
Ryzen 4000.
APUs.
The Ryzen 4000 APUs are based on Renoir, a refresh of the Zen 2 Matisse CPU cores, coupled with Radeon Vega GPU cores. They were released only to OEM manufacturers in mid-2020. Unlike Matisse, Renoir does not support PCIe 4.0.
Ryzen Pro 4x50G APUs are the same as 4x00G APUs, except they are bundled a Wraith Stealth cooler and are not OEM-only. It is possible this is a listing mistake, since 4x50G CPUs are unavailable on retail (as of Oct. 2020) and PRO SKUs are usually the OEM only parts.
Mobile.
Zen 2 APUs, based on the 7 nm Renoir microarchitecture, commercialized as Ryzen 4000.
Embedded.
Grey Hawk.
In November 2020, AMD announced the V2000 series of embedded Zen 2 Vega APUs.
Ryzen 5000.
CPUs.
The desktop Ryzen 5000 series, based on the Zen 3 microarchitecture, was announced on October 8, 2020. They use the same 7 nm manufacturing process, which has matured slightly, as usual. Mainstream Ryzen 5000 CPU cores are codenamed Vermeer. Enthusiast/workstation Threadripper 5000 CPU cores are codenamed Genesis.
APUs.
In contrast to their CPU counterparts, the APUs consist of single dies with integrated graphics and smaller caches. The APUs, codenamed Cezanne, forgo PCIe 4.0 support to keep power consumption low.
Mobile.
Unevenly numbered models like the 5300U, 5500U and 5700U are Zen 2 based (codename Lucienne), while 5400U, 5600U and 5800U are Zen 3 based (codename Cezanne). HX models are unlocked, allowing them to be overclocked like Intel Core i9-xxxxxHK processors. SMT is now standard across the lineup unlike the 4000-series Ryzen Mobile.
Initial reception.
The first Ryzen 7 (1700, 1700X, and 1800X) processors debuted in early March 2017 and were generally well received by hardware reviewers. Ryzen was the first brand new architecture from AMD in five years, and without very much initial fine-tuning or optimization, it ran generally well for reviewers. Initial Ryzen chips ran well with software and games already on the market, performing exceptionally well in workstation scenarios, and well in most gaming scenarios. Compared to Piledriver-powered FX chips, Zen-powered Ryzen chips ran cooler, much faster, and used less power. IPC uplift was eventually gauged to be 52% higher than Excavator, which was two full generations ahead of the architecture still being used in AMD's FX-series desktop predecessors like the FX-8350 and FX-8370. Though Zen fell short of Intel's Kaby Lake in terms of IPC, and therefore single-threaded throughput, it compensated by offering more cores to applications that can use them. Power use and heat were found to be competitive with Intel, and the included Wraith coolers were generally competitive with higher-priced aftermarket units.
Ryzen 1800X's multi-threaded performance, in some cases while using Blender or other open-source software, was around four times the performance of the FX-8370, or nearly double that of the i7 7700K. One reviewer found that Ryzen chips would usually outperform competing Intel i7 processors for a fraction of the price when all eight cores are used.
However, one complaint among a subset of reviewers was that Ryzen processors lagged their Intel counterparts when running older games, or some newer games at mainstream resolutions such as 720p or 1080p. AMD acknowledged the gaming performance deficit at low resolutions during a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" thread, where it explained that updates and patches were being developed. Subsequent updates to "Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation" and "Rise of the Tomb Raider" increased frame rates by 17 to 31% on Ryzen systems. Developer id Software announced in April 2017 it would optimize its future games to make use of the greater parallelism available on Ryzen CPUs.
It has been suggested that low threaded applications often result in Ryzen processors being underused, yielding lower than expected benchmark scores, because Zen relies on its core count to make up for its lower IPC rating than that of Kaby Lake. However, AMD and others have argued thread scheduling is not the fundamental issue to Windows 10 performance. Early AM4 motherboards were also hindered by BIOS bugs and poor DDR4 memory support.
Operating system support.
Windows.
AMD verified that computers with Ryzen CPUs can boot Windows 7 and Windows 8 but on newer hardware, including AMD Ryzen and Intel Kaby Lake and later, Microsoft only officially supports the use of Windows 10. Windows Update blocks updates from being installed on newer systems running older versions of Windows, though that restriction can be circumvented with an unofficial patch.
Although AMD initially announced that Ryzen chipset drivers would not be provided for Windows 7, its chipset driver packages do in fact list and include them.
Linux.
Full support for Ryzen processors' performance features in Linux requires kernel version 4.10 or newer.
Known issues.
Spectre.
Like nearly all modern high performance microprocessors, Ryzen was susceptible to the "Spectre" vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities can be mitigated without hardware changes via microcode updates and operating system workarounds, but the mitigations incur a performance penalty. AMD Ryzen and Epyc suffer up to 9% penalty from the mitigations, depending on workload, comparing favorably with a penalty of in some cases more than 50% for Intel Core and Xeon processors, in part as a result of the AMD processors not requiring mitigation against the related Meltdown vulnerability.
Launched in 2019, Zen 2 includes hardware mitigations against the Spectre V4 speculative store bypass vulnerability.
Segmentation fault.
Some early shipments of Ryzen 1000 series processors produced segmentation faults on some workloads on Linux, especially while compiling code with GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). AMD offered to replace the affected processors with newer ones that are unaffected by the problem.
Alleged issues by CTS Labs.
In early 2018, Israeli computer security consultancy firm CTS Labs stated that they had discovered several major flaws in the Ryzen components ecosystem, publicly disclosing them after giving AMD 24 hours to respond and raising concerns and questions regarding their legitimacy, though they were later confirmed by two separate security firms. AMD has since stated that while the flaws are real and will be fixed via microcode updates, their severity was overstated as physical access to the hardware is required to exploit the flaws.


Black Lab Linux

Black Lab Linux is a free software Linux distribution for x86 and x86-64 hardware. It was first released in November 2013 by PC/OpenSystems LLC. Black Lab Linux is based on Ubuntu Linux tailored both for general desktop use and for the more technical user. It is commercially made available by PC/OpenSystems LLC for business desktops, education facilities, as well as parallel computing.
Formerly known as OS/4, the product was renamed by Roberto J. Dohnert and the software team to Black Lab Linux after the USPTO denied his trademark application for OS/4. PC/OpenSystems LLC had acquired the rights to the name Black Lab Linux in 2008 after the acquisition of Terrasoft Solutions by Fixstars. In its current incarnation, Black Lab Linux does not share any code or platform similarities with Terrasoft Solutions's product called Black Lab Linux as Terrasoft Solutions's release was for the PowerPC Processor. Fixstars Linux's products, Yellow Dog Linux and Y-HPC, are currently developed under the Yellow Dog Linux brand.
Upon the purchase of the Linspire intellectual properties from Bridgeways, Inc. in 2018, PC/OpenSystems LLC discontinued Black Lab Linux in favor of Linspire and Freespire.


List of PlayStation 5 games

This is a list of games for the PlayStation 5, which released in North America, Oceania, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore on November 12, 2020, for the rest of the world on November 19, 2020, Indonesia on January 22, 2021, India on February 2, 2021, and China on May 15, 2021. This list includes cross-generation games that will be released natively with enhanced versions optimized for PlayStation 5. The PlayStation 5 is backwards compatible with all but nine PlayStation 4 games.
There are currently games on this list.


GeForce 4 series

The GeForce 4 series (codenames below) refers to the fourth generation of GeForce-branded graphics processing units (GPUs) manufactured by Nvidia. There are two different GeForce4 families, the high-performance Ti family, and the budget MX family. The MX family spawned a mostly identical GeForce4 Go (NV17M) family for the laptop market. All three families were announced in early 2002; members within each family were differentiated by core and memory clock speeds. In late 2002, there was an attempt to form a fourth family, also for the laptop market, the only member of it being the GeForce4 4200 Go (NV28M) which was derived from the Ti line.
GeForce4 Ti.
Architecture.
The GeForce4 Ti (NV25) was launched in February 2002 and was a revision of the GeForce 3 (NV20). It was very similar to its predecessor; the main differences were higher core and memory clock rates, a revised memory controller (known as Lightspeed Memory Architecture II), updated pixel shaders with new instructions for Direct3D 8.0a support, an additional vertex shader (the vertex and pixel shaders were now known as nFinite FX Engine II), hardware anti-aliasing (Accuview AA), and DVD playback. Legacy Direct3D 7-class fixed-function T&L was now implemented as vertex shaders. Proper dual-monitor support (TwinView) was also brought over from the GeForce 2 MX. The GeForce 4 Ti was superior to the GeForce 4 MX in virtually every aspect save for production cost, although the MX had the Nvidia VPE (video processing engine) which the Ti lacked.
Lineup.
The initial two models were the Ti4400 and the top-of-the-range Ti4600. At the time of their introduction, Nvidia's main products were the entry-level GeForce 2 MX, the midrange GeForce4 MX models (released the same time as the Ti4400 and Ti4600), and the older but still high-performance GeForce 3 (demoted to the upper mid-range or performance niche). However, ATI's Radeon 8500LE was somewhat cheaper than the Ti4400, and outperformed its price competitors, the GeForce 3 Ti200 and GeForce4 MX 460. The GeForce 3 Ti500 filled the performance gap between the Ti200 and the Ti4400 but it could not be produced cheap enough to compete with the Radeon 8500.
In consequence, Nvidia rolled out a slightly cheaper model: the Ti4200. Although the 4200 was initially supposed to be part of the launch of the GeForce4 line, Nvidia had delayed its release to sell off the soon-to-be discontinued GeForce 3 chips. In an attempt to prevent the Ti4200 damaging the Ti4400's sales, Nvidia set the Ti4200's memory speed at 222 MHz on the models with a 128 MiB frame buffer—a full 53 MHz slower than the Ti4400 (all of which had 128 MiB frame buffers). Models with a 64 MiB frame buffer were set to 250 MHz memory speed. This tactic didn't work however, for two reasons. Firstly, the Ti4400 was perceived as being not good enough for those who wanted top performance (who preferred the Ti4600), nor those who wanted good value for money (who typically chose the Ti4200), causing the Ti4400 to be a pointless middle ground of the two. Furthermore, some graphics card makers simply ignored Nvidia's guidelines for the Ti4200, and set the memory speed at 250 MHz on the 128 MiB models anyway.
Then in late 2002, the NV25 core was replaced by the NV28 core, which differed only by addition of AGP-8X support. The Ti4200 with AGP-8X support was based on this chip, and sold as the Ti4200-8X. A Ti4800SE replaced the Ti4400 and a Ti4800 replaced the Ti4600 respectively when the 8X AGP NV28 core was introduced on these.
The only mobile derivative of the Ti series was the GeForce4 4200 Go (NV28M), launched in late 2002. The solution featured the same feature-set and similar performance compared to the NV28-based Ti4200, although the mobile variant was clocked lower. It outperformed the Mobility Radeon 9000 by a large margin, as well as being Nvidia's first DirectX 8 laptop graphics solution. However, because the GPU was not designed for the mobile space, it had thermal output similar to the desktop part. The 4200 Go also lacked power-saving circuitry like the MX-based GeForce4 4x0 Go series or the Mobility Radeon 9000. This caused problems for notebook manufacturers, especially with regards to battery life.
Performance.
The GeForce4 Ti outperformed the older GeForce 3 by a significant margin. The competing ATI Radeon 8500 was generally faster than the GeForce 3 line, but was overshadowed by the GeForce 4 Ti in every area other than price and more advanced pixel shader (1.4) support. Nvidia, however, missed a chance to dominate the upper-range/performance segment by delaying the release of the Ti4200 and by not rolling out 128 MiB models quickly enough; otherwise the Ti4200 was cheaper "and" faster than the previous top-line GeForce 3 and Radeon 8500. Besides the late introduction of the Ti4200, the limited release 128 MiB models of the GeForce 3 Ti200 proved unimpressive, letting the Radeon 8500LE and even the full 8500 dominated the upper-range performance for a while. The Matrox Parhelia, despite having several DirectX 9.0 capabilities and other innovative features, was at most competitive with the GeForce 3 and GeForce 4 Ti 4200, but it was priced the same as the Ti 4600 at US$399.
The GeForce 4 Ti4200 enjoyed considerable longevity compared to its higher-clocked peers. At half the cost of the 4600, the 4200 remained the best balance between price and performance until the launch of the ATI Radeon 9500 Pro at the end of 2002. The Ti4200 still managed to hold its own against several next generation DirectX 9 chips released in late 2003, outperforming the GeForce FX 5200 and the midrange FX 5600, and performing similarly to the mid-range Radeon 9600 Pro in some situations.
GeForce4 MX.
Architecture.
many criticized the GeForce 4 MX name as a misleading marketing ploy since it was less advanced than the preceding GeForce 3. In the features comparison chart between the Ti and MX lines, it showed that the only "feature" that was missing on the MX was the "nfiniteFX II engine"—the DirectX 8 programmable vertex and pixel shaders. However, the GeForce4 MX was not a GeForce4 Ti with the shader hardware removed, as the MX's performance in games that did not use shaders was considerably behind the GeForce 4 Ti and GeForce 3.
Though its lineage was of the past-generation GeForce 2, the GeForce4 MX did incorporate bandwidth and fill rate-saving techniques, dual-monitor support, and a multi-sampling anti-aliasing unit from the Ti series; the improved 128-bit DDR memory controller was crucial to solving the bandwidth limitations that plagued the GeForce 256 and GeForce 2 lines. It also owed some of its design heritage to Nvidia's high-end CAD products, and in performance-critical non-game applications it was remarkably effective. The most notable example is AutoCAD, in which the GeForce4 MX returned results within a single-digit percentage of GeForce4 Ti cards several times the price.
Despite harsh criticism by gaming enthusiasts, the GeForce4 MX was a market success. Priced about 30% above the GeForce 2 MX, it provided better performance, the ability to play a number of popular games that the GeForce 2 could not run well—above all else—to the average non-specialist it sounded as if it were a "real" GeForce4—i.e., a GeForce4 Ti. GeForce 4 MX was particularly successful in the PC OEM market, and rapidly replaced the GeForce 2 MX as the best-selling GPU.
In motion-video applications, the GeForce4 MX offered new functionality. It (and not the GeForce4 Ti) was the first GeForce member to feature the Nvidia VPE (video processing engine). It was also the first GeForce to offer hardware-iDCT and VLC (variable length code) decoding, making VPE a major upgrade from Nvidia's previous "HDVP". In the application of MPEG-2 playback, VPE could finally compete head-to-head with ATI's video engine.
Lineup.
There were 3 initial models: the MX420, the MX440 and the MX460. The MX420 had only Single Data Rate memory and was designed for very low end PCs, replacing the GeForce 2 MX100 and MX200. The GeForce 4 MX440 was a mass-market OEM solution, replacing the GeForce 2 MX/MX400 and GeForce 2 Ti. The GeForce 4 MX460 was initially meant to slot in between the MX440 and the Ti4400, but the late addition of the Ti4200 to the line at a very similar price point (combined with the existing GeForce 3 Ti200 and ATI's Radeon 8500LE/9100, which were also similarly priced) prevented the MX460 from ever being truly competitive, and the model soon faded away.
In terms of 3D performance, the MX420 performed only slightly better than the GeForce 2 MX400 and below the GeForce 2 GTS, but this was never really much of a problem, considering its target audience. The nearest thing to a direct competitor the MX420 had was ATI's Radeon 7000. In practice its main competitors were chipset-integrated graphics solutions, such as Intel's 845G and Nvidia's own nForce 2, but its main advantage over those was multiple-monitor support; Intel's solutions did not have this at all, and the nForce 2's multi-monitor support was much inferior to what the MX series offered.
The MX440 performed reasonably well for its intended audience, outperforming its closest competitor, the ATI Radeon 7500, as well as the discontinued GeForce 2 Ti and Ultra. When ATI launched its Radeon 9000 Pro in September 2002, it performed about the same as the MX440, but had crucial advantages with better single-texturing performance and proper support of DirectX 8 shaders. However, the 9000 was unable to break the MX440's entrenched hold on the OEM market. Nvidia's eventual answer to the Radeon 9000 was the GeForce FX 5200, but despite the 5200's DirectX 9 features it did not have a significant performance increase compared to the MX440 even in DirectX 7.0 games. This kept the MX440 in production while the 5200 was discontinued.
The GeForce4 Go was derived from the MX line and it was announced along with the rest of the GeForce4 lineup in early 2002. There was the 420 Go, 440 Go, and 460 Go. However, ATI had beaten them to the market with the similarly performing Mobility Radeon 7500, and later the DirectX 8.0 compliant Mobility Radeon 9000. (Despite its name, the short-lived 4200 Go is not part of this lineup, it was instead derived from the Ti line.)
Like the Ti series, the MX was also updated in late 2002 to support AGP-8X with the NV18 core. The two new models were the MX440-8X, which was clocked slightly faster than the original MX440, and the MX440SE, which had a narrower memory bus, and was intended as a replacement of sorts for the MX420. The MX460, which had been discontinued by this point, was never replaced. Another variant followed in late 2003—the MX 4000, which was a GeForce4 MX440SE with a slightly higher memory clock.
The GeForce4 MX line received a third and final update in 2004, with the PCX 4300, which was functionally equivalent to the MX 4000 but with support for PCI Express. In spite of its new codename (NV19), the PCX 4300 was in fact simply an NV18 core with a BR02 chip bridging the NV18's native AGP interface with the PCI-Express bus.
GeForce4 Go driver support.
This family is a derivative of the GeForce4 MX family, produced for the laptop market. The GeForce4 Go family, performance wise, can be considered comparable to the MX line.
One possible solution to the lack of driver support for the Go family is the third party Omega Drivers. Using third party drivers can, among other things, invalidate warranties. The Omega Drivers are supported by neither laptop manufacturers, laptop ODMs, nor by Nvidia. Nvidia attempted legal action against a version of Omega Drivers that included the Nvidia logo.
Discontinued support.
Nvidia has ceased driver support for GeForce 4 series.
Final Drivers Include.
Windows 95/98/Me Driver Archive
Windows XP/2000 Driver Archive
Unix Driver Archive


List of AMD Athlon X2 microprocessors

The AMD Athlon X2 microprocessor family consists of microprocessors based on both the Athlon 64 X2 and the Phenom processor families. The original Athlon X2 processors were low-power Athlon 64 X2 "Brisbane" processors, while newer processors released in Q2 2008 are based on the K10 "Kuma" processor.


Beast Wrestler

 is a 1991 fighting video game that was released exclusively for the Mega Drive in Japan and North America. The game's cover art was created by Yasushi Nirasawa, in his position as a model-builder for Hobby Japan magazine.
Gameplay.
This game is a one-on-one fighting game that allows beasts and dragons to battle each other using an isometric view. Despite the fantastical appearance of the beasts, the video game takes place in a science fiction futuristic environment. The Japanese version of the instruction manual sets it in the year 2020.
The two basic attacks are a punch and a tail attack. Throws and choking moves can also be made at appropriate spots in the match. Once all three icons are red, the player automatically loses the fight. The arena is surrounded by an electric fence that can either be used for an attack or as a way to initiate a jump attack. It very difficult to pull off a close attack from behind. However, these attacks have the distinct advantage of being irreversible by the opponent. Regular matches are like exhibitions while tournaments are more like role-playing games where the player's chosen beast/dragon is weak and has to power up by defeating stronger foes. A store can be visited which provided strength-increasing food between fights in the arena. Diskettes containing the vital statistics of the different monsters, dragons, and miscellaneous beasts can also be found. They provide vital knowledge needed to defeat future opponents.
During certain parts of the game, the DNA of the beast can be spliced with defeated monsters to learn new abilities for future fights.
Reception.
Gaming website "Sega-16" gave the game a 30% rating, saying it has "bad hit detection", but praising the sound and music. Another gaming website, "Allgame", gave "Beast Wrestler" a score of 2 stars out of a possible 5.
"Entertainment Weekly" gave the game a C+ and wrote that "An electrified, three-dimensional playing field, appropriately gruesome creatures (which look like something out of a David Cronenberg movie), and a thumb-busting array of holds and throws don't quite make up for "Beast Wrestler"'s tedious game play. When the monsters tangle it up in the ring, you're reminded of those intricate mating rituals Marlin Perkins used to narrate on "Wild Kingdom"."


Motorola Single Board Computers

Motorola Single Board Computers is Motorola's production line of computer boards for embedded systems. There are three different lines : mvme68k, mvmeppc and mvme88k. The first version of the board appeared in 1988. Motorola still makes those boards and the last one is MVME3100.
NetBSD supports the MVME147, MVME162, MVME167, MVME172 and MVME177 boards from the mvme68k family, as well as the MVME160x line of mvmeppc boards.
OpenBSD supports the MVME141, MVME165, MVME188 and MVME197 boards.


Game Boy Advance family

The Game Boy Advance family of battery-powered handheld game consoles by Nintendo consists of the Game Boy Advance and its revisions. As of June 30, 2010, 81.51 million units have been sold worldwide. Part of the Game Boy line, it was succeeded by the Nintendo DS line in 2004.
All models of the Game Boy Advance family combined have sold 81.51 million units.
History.
Game Boy Advance.
In Japan, on March 21, 2001, Nintendo released a significant upgrade to the Game Boy line. The Game Boy Advance (also referred to as GBA) featured a 32 bit 16.8 MHz ARM. It included a Z80 processor and a switch activated by inserting a Game Boy or Game Boy Color game into the slot for backward compatibility, and had a larger, higher resolution screen. Controls were slightly modified with the addition of "L" and "R" shoulder buttons. The system was technically likened to the SNES and received successful conversions such as "Super Mario Advance 2", ', and '. There are also new exclusives, such as ' and '. A widely criticized drawback of the Game Boy Advance is that the screen is not backlit, making viewing difficult in some conditions, but this can be solved via modding. The Game Paks for the GBA are roughly half the length of original Game Boy cartridges, and so older Game Paks would stick out of the top of the unit. When playing older games, the GBA provides the option to play the game at the standard equal square resolution of the original screen or the option to stretch it over the wider GBA screen. The only Game Boy Color games known to be incompatible with the system are "Pocket Music" and "Chee-Chai Alien".
Game Boy Advance SP.
First released in Japan on February 14, 2003, the Game Boy Advance SP—Nintendo model AGS-001—resolves several problems with the original Game Boy Advance model. It featured a new smaller clamshell design with a flip-up screen, a switchable internal frontlight, a rechargeable battery, and the only problem is the omission of the headphone jack, which requires a special adapter, purchased separately. In mid-September 2005, around the same time of the Game Boy Micro's release, Nintendo released a significantly improved Game Boy Advance SP model known as Nintendo model number AGS-101 in North America, that features a high quality backlit screen instead of a frontlit, similar to the Game Boy Micro's screen, but larger.
Game Boy Micro.
The third and final form of Game Boy Advance system, the Game Boy Micro is four and a half inches wide (10 cm), two inches tall (5 cm), and weighs 2.8 ounces (80g). By far the smallest Game Boy created, it has approximately the same dimensions as an original NES controller pad. Its screen is approximately 2/3 the size of the SP and GBA screens while maintaining the same resolution (240×160 pixels), but now has a higher quality (than the original SP, not the improved SP) backlit display with adjustable brightness. Included with the system are two additional faceplates which can be swapped to give the system a new look. Nintendo of America used to sell additional faceplates on its online store. In Europe, the Game Boy Micro comes with a single faceplate. In Japan, a special "Mother 3" limited edition Game Boy Micro was released with the game in the "Mother 3 Deluxe Box". Unlike its predecessors, the Game Boy Micro is unable to play any original Game Boy or Game Boy Color games, only playing Game Boy Advance games except the Nintendo e-Reader.
Game Paks.
Game Boy Advance cartridges use a physical lock-out feature. Notches are located at the base of the cartridge's two back corners. One of these notches is placed as to avoid pressing a switch inside the cartridge slot. When an older Game Boy or Game Boy Color game is inserted into the cartridge slot, the switch is pressed down and the Game Boy Advance starts in Game Boy Color mode, but a Game Boy Advance cartridge does not touch the switch and the system starts in Game Boy Advance mode. The Nintendo DS replaces the switch with a solid piece of plastic that allows Game Boy Advance cartridges to be inserted into Slot 2, but prevents an older Game Boy cartridge from being inserted fully into the slot.
Advance cartridges (also known as class D) are half the size of all earlier cartridges and are compatible with Game Boy Advance and later systems including the Nintendo DS. Some cartridges are colored to resemble the game, usually for the "Pokémon" series; "Pokémon Emerald", for example, being a clear emerald green. They are also compatible with Nintendo DS and DS Lite (but see the Reception section for limitations). Some Advance cartridges have built-in features, including rumble features ("Drill Dozer"), tilt sensors ("", "Yoshi's Universal Gravitation") and solar sensors ("Boktai"). The product ID of games on advance cartridges starts with "AGB".
Accessories.
The Game Boy Advance, as with many other consoles, has had a number of releases from both first-party and unlicensed third-party accessories.
Game Boy Player.
The Game Boy Player is a device released in 2003 by Nintendo for the GameCube which enables Game Boy (although Super Game Boy enhancements are ignored), Game Boy Color, or Game Boy Advance cartridges to be played on a television. It connects via the high speed parallel port at the bottom of the GameCube and requires use of a boot disc to access the hardware. Unlike devices such as Datel's Advance Game Port, the Game Boy Player does not use software emulation, but instead uses physical hardware nearly identical to that of a Game Boy Advance.
Legacy.
The Nintendo DS and Nintendo DS Lite are able to play the large library of Game Boy Advance games. However, the DS consoles do not have a GBA game link connector, and so cannot play multiplayer GBA games (except for the few that are multiplayer on a single GBA) or link to the GameCube. Like the Game Boy Micro, the DS and DS Lite cannot play original Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. The Nintendo DSi, Nintendo DSi XL, and all the Nintendo 3DS models do not have a GBA slot.
Certain games released for the Game Boy Advance are available via the Virtual Console service on the Nintendo 3DS. Ten Game Boy Advance games, along with ten NES games, were released to Nintendo 3DS ambassadors, as in Nintendo 3DS owners who bought a 3DS, logged into the 3DS eShop, and updated the system before the major August 2011 price drop. The Virtual Console GBA features of releases are limited, and there are no plans to release them to the public. However, starting from April 2014, Nintendo has been releasing Game Boy Advance games as Virtual Console games via the Nintendo eShop for the Wii U.


List of games which support Xbox SmartGlass

Xbox app (also known as Xbox SmartGlass) is an application for the Xbox platform. Some games developed for Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Xbox One are compatible with the SmartGlass application. SmartGlass is also compatible with some applications and multimedia content produced for the consoles.


List of PlayStation applications

This is a list of PlayStation applications currently planned or released via the PlayStation Network.


8-bit color

8-bit color graphics are a method of storing image information in a computer's memory or in an image file, so that each pixel is represented by 8-bits (1 byte). The maximum number of colors that can be displayed at any one time is 256 or 28.
Color quantization.
In order to turn a 24-bit image into an 8-bit image, the image must go through a process called color quantization. Color quantization is the process of creating a color map for a less color dense image from a more dense image. The simplest form of quantization frequently called 8-bit truecolor is to simply assign 3 bits to red, 3 to green and 2 to blue (the human eye is less sensitive to blue light) to create a 3-3-2
8-bit color image, but this process is sub optimal. There could be different groupings of colors that make evenly spreading the colors out inefficient and likely to misrepresent the actual image. Because the color map doesn't need to have every color in it and just needs to accurately represent the more color dense image, an arbitrary color can be assigned to each of the 256 available color 'slots' on the map. Popular approaches for creating these maps include the "popularity algorithm" which chooses the 256 most common colors and creates a map from them. The more accurate "median-cut" algorithm resorts and divides colors to find the median of different color groups resulting in a more accurate final color map.
Usage.
Because of the low amount of memory and resultant higher speeds of 8-bit color images, 8-bit color was a common ground among computer graphics development until more memory and higher CPU speeds became readily available to consumers. 8-bit color was used in many different applications including:
Most notably, the VGA standard for graphical interface uses an 8-bit color. Developed in 1987 by IBM, the VGA interface supported a maximum resolution of 640x480 pixels. Many different image types such as GIF and TIFF use an 8-bit color system to store data.
Even though it is now outdated for most consumer applications, 8-bit color encoding can still be useful in imaging systems with limited data bandwidth or memory capacity. For example, both Mars Exploration Rovers used an 8-bit grayscale format for navigation imaging.
Issues.
Due to the nature of the 8-bit system, most images have different color maps. Since an 8-bit color display can't display two images with different color maps at the same time, it is usually impossible to display two different 8-bit images on the same such display at the same time. In practice, in order to avoid this problem, most images don't use the full range of 256 colors. Another problem comes when doing image processing: whenever two images with different color maps are added to each other, the resulting image has to have a new color map created, meaning another quantization operation has to occur, making the resulting image an imperfect version of the expected result.
8-bit color today.
Currently, most graphics hardware runs in 24-bit truecolor or 32-bit truecolor (24-bit truecolor and an 8-bit alpha channel). However, some remote desktop software (Virtual Network Computing, Remote Desktop Protocol) can switch to 8-bit color to conserve bandwidth. With the comparative low cost and high speeds of modern computers, some image editing is even done in a raw format with anywhere from 12 to 14 bits from each of the camera's image sensor pixels in order to avoid image quality reduction while editing.


Multiuser DOS Federation

The Multiuser DOS Federation (MDOS) was an industry alliance to promote the growth and acceptance of multi-user DOS-based solutions on 286, 386 and 486 computers. It was formed in July 1990. The idea was to reduce costs by allowing workgroups to run DOS applications from a shared PC while working on terminals or workstations.
On 18 February 1991, several members of the Multiuser DOS Federation issued a press release regarding their intentions to support DPMI (mostly DPMI 1.0) in their products including Alloy Computer Products Inc. (PC-PLUS), Bluebird Systems, Inc. (SuperDOS), Concurrent Controls, Inc. (CCI Multiuser DOS), Digital Research, Inc. (DR Multiuser DOS), S&H Computer Systems, Inc. (TSX-32), StarPath Systems, Inc. (Vmos/3), The Software Link (PC-MOS/386), THEOS Software Corporation (THEOS), Intelligent Graphics Corporation (VM/386).


Game Boy Advance SP

The Game Boy Advance SP (GBA SP), released in February 2003, is a sixth-generation handheld game console developed, released, and marketed by Nintendo that served as an upgraded version of the original Game Boy Advance. The "SP" in the name stands for "Special". It is the penultimate console in the Game Boy Advance family before the Game Boy Micro, released in September 2005. The Game Boy Advance line was followed by the Nintendo DS family, starting with the release of the original Nintendo DS in November 2004.
Technical specifications.
Physical.
Hardware colors.
Onyx, Flame, Platinum Silver, Cobalt Blue, Pearl Pink, Pearl Blue, Graphite, Midnight Blue, Charizard Fire Red, Torchic Orange, Venusaur Leaf Green, NES classic design, and Pikachu Yellow. A limited gold edition with a Triforce and the Hyrule Royal Family crest was available in Europe which included a copy of "". In 2003, Toys "R" Us sold an exclusive gold edition (without any Zelda symbols) in the US starting on Black Friday of that year, initially with a "Super Mario Advance 4" game. In September 2005, a Blue edition was sold through Best Buy. A special "Pokémon Emerald" pack contained a limited edition Green Rayquaza SP and the "Emerald" game. A limited edition backlit edition exists. There is also an All Blacks edition. An orange and red version was made as a prize for a speed run competition for Metroid Zero Mission. A red SP with a circle with an M in it was created, modeled after Mario's cap; it also came in a bundle that included the game Mario Vs. Donkey Kong.
The GBA SP is slightly more than half the size of the GBA when closed and roughly the height of Nintendo's Game Boy Color when open. This model of the Game Boy can play all Game Boy cartridges including Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance carts. The clamshell (or laptop design) protects the screen from scratches and dust, reminiscent of two-screen Game & Watch units. However, the casing is made from a different material, making it more prone to scratches than previous Game Boy systems. The slot for cartridges has been moved to the bottom of the system, facing down. This makes using special cartridges, such as the Game Boy Camera and "Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble", more difficult. The GBA was Nintendo's first internationally-released handheld system to feature an integrated backlight. There was, however, a Japan-only system, the Game Boy Light, which was essentially a Game Boy Pocket with an electroluminescent display.
The GBA SP AC adapter comes with the package to recharge its lithium ion battery, something previous Game Boys did not have (they usually used commercially available batteries). This adapter is also compatible with the original version of the DS. The software library and general hardware specifications are identical to those of the Game Boy Advance.
In Japan it was released in a variety of standard colors and special packages. In most other regions it was released in Platinum Silver and Charcoal Black. Later, a Flame Red version was released. Six special editions have also been released: a NES Classics model with the same color scheme as a classic NES controller (and designed to resemble a NES deck when closed), a SpongeBob SquarePants model, a Pikachu model, and a silver model with a tattoo design printed on it, known as the 'Tribal Edition'. In other regions, such as Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, additional colors have been released, such as Pearl Green and Starlight Gold. Additionally, two new special versions have been released in Asia exclusive to that region.
Nintendo was planning to have the SP be 3D-compatible, but the resolution of LCD was too low, resulting in Nintendo scrapping it.
Headphone jack.
Nintendo removed the TRS headphone jack from the SP, which had been included on all previous Game Boy models. Headphones designed specifically for the GBA SP can be purchased, or standard headphones can be attached with an optional, stereophonic adapter that plugs into the same port as the AC adapter. Since the Nintendo DS used the same charging port as the GBA SP, the headphone adapter works with said console.
As both AC adapter and headphones use the same port, it is not possible to charge the SP and listen to headphones at the same time with the Nintendo brand adapter. There are, however, third-party adapters that "split" into two different cords; the power jack on one side, and a TS headphone jack on the other.
Backlit model (AGS-101).
In September 2005, around the time of the Game Boy Micro's release, Nintendo released an improved version of the Game Boy Advance SP in North America, featuring a brighter backlit screen instead of the previous version's frontlit screen.
The new model can be distinguished by the following features:
The North American backlit version comes in three standard colors: "Pearl Blue", "Pearl Pink" and "Graphite" (a greyer version of Onyx Black). There were also two Toys "R" Us exclusive backlit models; a "SpongeBob SquarePants" model and a "Limited Edition Pikachu" model.
In 2006, the AGS-101 backlit model also saw a very limited release in Europe. Few models made it to market, likely due to the release of the Game Boy Advance-compatible Nintendo DS one year prior. The European version was released in "Surf Blue" as well as re-issued in "Pink" and "Tribal" editions.
Unlike the North American release, the European box does not feature any prominent text to distinguish the backlit models from the older frontlit models. In addition, only the "Surf Blue" color was unique to the AGS-101, the other two colors "Pink" and "Tribal" had already been released as frontlit models - for these reasons it can be very difficult to identify a European backlit SP. Apart from the AGS-101 model number on the base of the unit, the only other obvious distinguishing feature of the European backlit model is the large picture of the Game Boy Advance SP featured on the front of the box. (The European frontlit models of "Pink" and "Tribal" only feature small pictures of the Game Boy Advance SP on the sides of the box and Flower/Tattoo patterns on the front respectively.)
It is also the final Nintendo handheld to have backwards compatibility with Game Boy and Game Boy Color games.
Unit colors.
The Game Boy Advance SP had numerous colors and limited editions.
Reception.
M. Wiley of IGN called the Game Boy Advance SP "a step in the right direction for Nintendo", praising the system's new redesign over the original GBA and highlighting its inclusion of a backlit screen and rechargeable battery, although minor criticism went towards the system's omission of a headphone jack.
Engadget gave it a global score of 84 out of 100, also praising the new features of the redesign while noting the system's lack of a headphone jack. Matthew D. Sarrel of PC Magazine suggested it to consumers as an improvement over the original model, praising the backlight and integration of a charger as well as improved visual quality, though he noted that players with larger hands may find difficulty with the system's design.
Sales.
As of June 30, 2009, the Game Boy Advance series has sold 81.48 million units worldwide, of which 43.52 million are Game Boy Advance SP units.


ATI Wonder series

The ATI Wonder series represents some of the first graphics add on products for IBM PCs and compatibles introduced by ATI Technologies in the mid to late 1980s. These cards were unique at the time as they offered the end user a considerable amount of value by combining support for multiple graphics standards (and monitors) into a single card. The VGA Wonder series added additional value with the inclusion of a bus mouse port, which normally required the installation of a dedicated Microsoft Bus Mouse adapter.
The VGA Wonder series later merged with the ATI Mach series of cards in 1990. The ATI Graphics Ultra (VRAM) and ATI Graphics Vantage (DRAM) cards both featured independent VGA Wonder ASICs in addition to their Mach8 8514 compatible coprocessor chips. The Graphics Ultra was later renamed the VGA Wonder GT. In 1992, their following product line, the Mach32, integrated the VGA wonder core and coprocessor into a single IC. At this point the VGA Wonder line was cancelled and replaced with a cost reduced DRAM based version of Mach32 known as the "ATI Graphics Wonder".
MDA/CGA Cards.
"Release Date: 1986"
ATI Graphics Solution Rev 3
ATI Color Emulation Card
ATI Graphics Solution plus (1987)
Graphics Solution Plus SP
Graphics Solution SR
ATI Small Wonder Graphics Solution (1988)
Graphics Solution Single Chip or GS-SC with Game (1988)
EGA Cards.
"Release Date: 1987"
ATI EGA Wonder (March 1987)
ATI EGA Wonder 800
ATI EGA Wonder 800+
VGA Cards.
"Release Date: 1987"
ATI VIP or VGA Improved Performance (1987)
ATI VGA Wonder (1988)
ATI VGA Edge 8
ATI VGA Wonder 16 (1988)
ATI VGA Edge-16
ATI VGA Wonder+ (1990)
ATI VGA Integra (1990)
ATI VGA Basic-16 (1990)
ATI VGA Charger (1991)
ATI VGA Wonder XL (May 1991)
ATI VGA Stereo·F/X
ATI VGA Wonder XL24 (1992)
ATI VGA Wonder 1024


AFL Premiership 2007

AFL Premiership 2007 is a sports simulation game for the PlayStation 2 based on the Australian Football League. It is a follow up game to AFL Premiership 2006. It was developed by game developer, IR Gurus and published by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. It is the final game in the series to be developed by IR Gurus. The game was released, only in Australia, on 28 June 2007.
Gameplay.
Single match is the quickest way to play a game. On the single match summary screen you can set your favourite team and then randomise the other settings. Such as, home and away teams, stadium, weather, and rules (pre-season or home and away season rules). Mission Mode allows you to take up the challenge and feel the pressure with these historical matches. Each mission has a handicap that a team must overcome; from seemingly impossible score deficits, to slim leads with seconds left on the clock. Career Mode takes you from season to season, including a calendar view of the fixtures, training to guide your players’ development, season stats for all the players in the league, leaderboards for all stats categories, Brownlow, Coleman, Club best and fairest awards, Best on Ground awards for each match.
Eye toy.
The game includes support for the Cameo EyeToy and DigiMask that allows up to four players to put their heads into the game on top of one of the players. Four-player multiplayer is supported using the PS2 multitap.
Stadiums and features.
The game includes all 16 teams, more than 600 AFL players with updated stats and all of the major stadiums. Game modes include Single Match, Season Mode, Career Mode, Mission Mode and Training Mode.


Radeon

Radeon () is a brand of computer products, including graphics processing units, random-access memory, RAM disk software, and solid-state drives, produced by Radeon Technologies Group, a division of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). The brand was launched in 2000 by ATI Technologies, which was acquired by AMD in 2006 for US$5.4 billion.
Radeon Graphics.
Radeon Graphics is the successor to the Rage line. Three different families of microarchitectures can be roughly distinguished, the fixed-pipeline family, the unified shader model-families of TeraScale and Graphics Core Next. ATI/AMD have developed different technologies, such as TruForm, HyperMemory, HyperZ, XGP, Eyefinity for multi-monitor setups, PowerPlay for power-saving, CrossFire (for multi-GPU) or Hybrid Graphics. A range of SIP blocks is also to be found on certain models in the Radeon products line: Unified Video Decoder, Video Coding Engine and TrueAudio.
The brand was previously only known as "ATI Radeon" until August 2010, when it was renamed to increase AMD's brand awareness on a global scale. Products up to and including the HD 5000 series are branded as ATI Radeon, while the HD 6000 series and beyond use the new AMD Radeon branding.
On 11 September 2015, AMD's GPU business was split into a separate unit known as Radeon Technologies Group, with Raja Koduri as Senior Vice President and chief architect.
Radeon Graphics card brands.
AMD does not distribute Radeon cards directly to consumers (though some exceptions can be found). Instead, it sells Radeon GPUs to third-party manufacturers, who build and sell the Radeon-based video cards to the OEM and retail channels. Manufacturers of the Radeon cards—some of whom also make motherboards—include ASRock, Asus, Biostar, Club 3D, Diamond, Force3D, Gainward, Gigabyte, HIS, MSI, PowerColor, Sapphire, VisionTek, and XFX.
Graphics processor generations.
Early generations were identified with a number and major/minor alphabetic prefix. Later generations were assigned code names. New or heavily redesigned architectures have a prefix of "R" (e.g., "R300" or "R600") while slight modifications are indicated by the "RV" prefix (e.g., "RV370" or "RV635").
The first derivative architecture, "RV200", did not follow the scheme used by later parts.
Fixed-pipeline family.
R100/RV200.
The Radeon, first introduced in 2000, was ATI's first graphics processor to be fully DirectX 7 compliant. R100 brought with it large gains in bandwidth and fill-rate efficiency through the new HyperZ technology.
The RV200 was a die-shrink of the former R100 with some core logic tweaks for clockspeed, introduced in 2002. The only release in this generation was the Radeon 7500, which introduced little in the way of new features but offered substantial performance improvements over its predecessors.
R200.
ATI's second generation Radeon included a sophisticated pixel shader architecture. This chipset implemented Microsoft's pixel shader 1.4 specification for the first time.
Its performance relative to competitors was widely perceived as weak, and subsequent revisions of this generation were cancelled in order to focus on development of the next generation.
R300/R350.
The R300 was the first GPU to fully support Microsoft's DirectX 9.0 technology upon its release in 2001. It incorporated fully programmable pixel and vertex shaders.
About a year later, the architecture was revised to allow for higher frequencies, more efficient memory access, and several other improvements in the R350 family. A budget line of RV350 products was based on this refreshed design with some elements disabled or removed.
Models using the new PCI Express interface were introduced in 2004. Using 110-nm and 130-nm manufacturing technologies under the X300 and X600 names, respectively, the RV370 and RV380 graphics processors were used extensively by consumer PC manufacturers.
R420.
While heavily based upon the previous generation, this line included extensions to the Shader Model 2 feature-set. Shader Model 2b, the specification ATI and Microsoft defined with this generation, offered somewhat more shader program flexibility.
R520.
ATI's DirectX 9.0c series of graphics cards, with complete shader Model 3.0 support. Launched in October 2005, this series brought a number of enhancements including the floating point render target technology necessary for HDR rendering with anti-aliasing.
TeraScale-family.
R600.
ATI's first series of GPUs to replace the old fixed-pipeline and implement unified shader model. Subsequent revisions tuned the design for higher performance and energy efficiency, resulting in the ATI Mobility Radeon HD series for mobile computers.
R700.
Based on the R600 architecture. Mostly a bolstered with many more stream processors, with improvements to power consumption and GDDR5 support for the high-end RV770 and RV740(HD4770) chips. It arrived in late June 2008. The HD 4850 and HD 4870 have 800 stream processors and GDDR3 and GDDR5 memory, respectively. The 4890 was a refresh of 4870 with the same amount of stream processors yet higher clock rates due to refinements. The 4870x2 has 1600 stream processors and GDDR5 memory on an effective 512-bit memory bus with 230.4 Gbit/s video memory bandwidth available.
Evergreen.
The series was launched on 23 September 2009. It featured a 40 nm fabrication process for the entire product line (only the HD4770 (RV740) was built on this process previously), with more stream cores and compatibility with the next major version of the DirectX API, DirectX 11, which launched on 22 October 2009 along with Microsoft Windows 7. The Rxxx/RVxxx codename scheme was scrapped entirely. The initial launch consisted of only the 5870 and 5850 models. ATI released beta drivers that introduced full OpenGL 4.0 support on all variants of this series in March 2010.
Northern Islands.
This is the first series to be marketed solely under the "AMD" brand. It features a 3rd generation 40 nm design, rebalancing the existing architecture with redesigned shaders to give it better performance. It was released first on October 22, 2010, in the form of the 6850 and 6870. 3D output is enabled with HDMI 1.4a and DisplayPort 1.2 outputs.
Graphics Core Next-family.
Southern Islands.
"Southern Islands" was the first series to feature the new compute microarchitecture known as "Graphics Core Next"(GCN). GCN was used among the higher end cards, while the VLIW5 architecture utilized in the previous generation was used in the lower end, OEM products. However, the "Radeon HD 7790" uses GCN 2, and was the first product in the series to be released by AMD on 9 January 2012.
Sea Islands.
The "Sea Islands" were OEM rebadges of the 7000 series, with only three products, code named Oland, available for general retail. The series, just like the "Southern Islands", used a mixture of VLIW5 models and GCN models for its desktop products.
Volcanic Islands.
"Volcanic Islands" GPUs were introduced with the AMD Radeon Rx 200 Series, and were first released in late 2013. The Radeon Rx 200 line is mainly based on AMD's GCN architecture, with the lower end, OEM cards still using VLIW5. The majority of desktop products use GCN 1, while the "R9 290x/290" & "R7 260X/260" use GCN 2, and with only the R9 285 using the new GCN 3.
Caribbean Islands.
GPUs codenamed "Caribbean Islands" were introduced with the AMD Radeon Rx 300 Series, released in 2015. This series was the first to solely use GCN based models, ranging from GCN 1st to GCN 3rd Gen, including the GCN 3-based Fiji-architecture models named Fury X, Fury, Nano and the Radeon Pro Duo.
Arctic Islands.
GPUs codenamed "Arctic Islands"were first introduced with the Radeon RX 400 Series in June 2016 with the announcement of the "RX 480". These cards were the first to use the new Polaris chips which implements GCN 4th Gen on the 14 nm fab process. The RX 500 Series released in April 2017 also uses Polaris chips.
RDNA-family.
Navi.
On 27 May 2019, at COMPUTEX 2019, AMD announced the new 'RDNA' graphics micro-architecture, which is to succeed the Graphics Core Next micro-architecture. This is the basis for the Radeon RX 5700-series graphics cards, the first to be built under the codename 'Navi'. These cards feature GDDR6 SGRAM and support for PCI Express 4.0.
RDNA 2.
On March 5, 2020, AMD publicly announced its plan to release a "refresh" of the RDNA micro-architecture. Dubbed as the RDNA 2 architecture, it was stated to succeed the first-gen RDNA micro-architecture and was initially scheduled for a release in Q4 2020. RDNA 2 was confirmed as the graphics microarchitecture featured in the Xbox Series X and Series S consoles from Microsoft, and PlayStation 5 from Sony, with proprietary tweaks and different GPU configurations in each systems' implementation.
AMD unveiled the Radeon RX 6000 series, its next-gen RDNA 2 graphics cards at an online event on October 28, 2020. The lineup consists of the RX 6800, RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT. The RX 6800 and 6800 XT launched on November 18, 2020, with the RX 6900 XT being released on December 8, 2020. Further variants including a Radeon RX 6700 (XT) series based on Navi 22, launched on March 18, 2021.
API overview.
Some generations vary from their predecessors predominantly due to architectural improvements, while others were adapted primarily to new manufacturing processes with fewer functional changes. The table below summarizes the APIs supported in each Radeon generation. Also see AMD FireStream and AMD FirePro branded products.
Graphics device drivers.
AMD's proprietary graphics device driver "Radeon Software" (Formerly Catalyst).
On 24 November 2015, AMD released a new version of their graphics driver following the formation of the Radeon Technologies Group (RTG) to provide extensive software support for their graphics cards. This driver, labelled Radeon Software Crimson Edition, overhauls the UI with Qt, resulting in better responsiveness from a design and system perspective. It includes a new interface featuring a game manager, clocking tools, and sections for different technologies.
Unofficial modifications such as Omega drivers and DNA drivers were available. These drivers typically consist of mixtures of various driver file versions with some registry variables altered and are advertised as offering superior performance or image quality. They are, of course, unsupported, and as such, are not guaranteed to function correctly. Some of them also provide modified system files for hardware enthusiasts to run specific graphics cards outside of their specifications.
On operating systems.
Radeon Software is being developed for Microsoft Windows and Linux. , other operating systems are not officially supported. This may be different for the AMD FirePro brand, which is based on identical hardware but features OpenGL-certified graphics device drivers.
ATI previously offered driver updates for their retail and integrated Macintosh video cards and chipsets. ATI stopped support for Mac OS 9 after the Radeon R200 cards, making the last officially supported card the Radeon 9250. The Radeon R100 cards up to the Radeon 7200 can still be used with even older classic Mac OS versions such as System 7, although not all features are taken advantage of by the older operating system.
Ever since ATI's acquisition by AMD, ATI no longer supplies or supports drivers for classic Mac OS nor macOS. macOS drivers can be downloaded from Apple's support website, while classic Mac OS drivers can be obtained from 3rd party websites that host the older drivers for users to download. ATI used to provide a preference panel for use in macOS called ATI Displays which can be used both with retail and OEM versions of its cards. Though it gives more control over advanced features of the graphics chipset, ATI Displays has limited functionality compared to Catalyst for Windows or Linux.
Free and open-source graphics device driver "Radeon".
The free and open-source for Direct Rendering Infrastructure has been under constant development by the Linux kernel developers, by 3rd party programming enthusiasts and by AMD employees. It is composed out of five parts:
Supported features.
The free and open-source driver supports many of the features available in Radeon-branded cards and APUs, such as multi-monitor or hybrid graphics.
Linux.
The free and open-source drivers are primarily developed on Linux and for Linux.
Other operating systems.
Being entirely free and open-source software, the free and open-source drivers can be ported to any existing operating system. Whether they have been, and to what extent depends entirely on the man-power available. Available support shall be referenced here.
FreeBSD adopted DRI, and since Mesa 3D is not programmed for Linux, it should have identical support.
MorphOS supports 2D and 3D acceleration for Radeon R100, R200 and R300 chipsets.
AmigaOS 4 supports Radeon R100, R200, R300, R520 (X1000 Series), R700 (HD 4000 Series), HD 5000 (Evergreen) series, HD 6000 (Northern Islands) series and HD 7000 (Southern Islands) series. The RadeonHD AmigaOS 4 driver has been developed by Hans de Ruiter funded and owned by A-EON Technology Ltd. The older R100 and R200 "ATIRadeon" driver for AmigaOS, originally developed Forefront Technologies has been acquired by A-EON Technology Ltd in 2015.
In the past ATI provided hardware and technical documentation to the Haiku Project to produce drivers with full 2D and video in/out support on older Radeon chipsets (up to R500) for Haiku. A new Radeon HD driver was developed with the unofficial and indirect guidance of AMD open source engineers and currently exists in recent Haiku versions. The new Radeon HD driver supports native mode setting on R600 through Southern Islands GPU's.
Embedded GPU products.
AMD (and its predecessor ATI) have released a series of embedded GPUs targeted toward medical, entertainment, and display devices.
Radeon Memory.
In August 2011, AMD expanded the Radeon name to include random access memory modules under the AMD Memory line. The initial releases included 3 types of 2GiB DDR3 SDRAM modules: Entertainment (1333 MHz, CL9 9-9), UltraPro Gaming (1600 MHz, CL11 11-11) and Enterprise (specs to be determined).
In 2013-05-08, AMD announced the release of Radeon RG2133 Gamer Series Memory.
Radeon R9 2400 Gamer Series Memory was released in 2014-01-16.
Production.
Dataram Corporation is manufacturing RAM for AMD.
Radeon RAMDisk.
In 2012-09-06, Dataram Corporation announced it has entered into a formal agreement with AMD to develop an AMD-branded version of Dataram's RAMDisk software under the name Radeon RAMDisk, targeting gaming enthusiasts seeking exponential improvements in game load times leading to an enhanced gaming experience. The freeware version of Radeon RAMDisk software supports Windows Vista and later with minimum 4GiB memory, and supports maximum of 4GiB RAM disk (6GiB if AMD Radeon Value, Entertainment, Performance Edition or Products installed, and Radeon RAMDisk is activated between 2012-10-10 and 2013-10-10). Retail version supports RAM disk size between 5MiB to 64GiB.
Version history.
Version 4.1 was released in 2013-05-08.
Production.
In 2014-04-02, Dataram Corporation announced it has signed an Agreement with Elysium Europe Ltd. to expand sales penetration in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Under this Agreement, Elysium is authorized to sell AMD Radeon RAMDisk software. Elysium is focusing on etailers, retailers, system builders and distributors.
Radeon SSD.
AMD planned to enter solid state drive market with the introduction of R7 models powered by Indilinx Barefoot 3 controller and Toshiba 19 nm MLC flash memory, and initially available in 120G, 240G, 480G capacities. The R7 Series SSD was released on 2014-08-09, which included Toshiba's A19 MLC NAND flash memory, Indilinx Barefoot 3 M00 controller. These components are the same as in the SSD OCZ Vector 150 model.


Caldera Network Desktop


UNDEL


Journaling block device

JBD, or journaling block device, is a generic block device journaling layer in the Linux kernel written by Stephen Tweedie from Red Hat. JBD is filesystem-independent. ext3, ext4 and OCFS2 are known to use JBD.
JBD exists in two versions, JBD and JBD2. JBD was created with ext3 in 1998. JBD2 was forked from JBD in 2006 with ext4, with the goal of supporting a 64-bit (as opposed to 32-bit-only in JBD) block number. As a result, the maximum volume size in ext4 is increased to 1 EiB compared to 16 TiB in ext3 (assuming 4 KiB blocks). JBD2 is backward-compatible. OCFS2 starting from Linux 2.6.28 uses JBD2. The old JBD was removed with the dedicated ext3 driver in Linux 4.3 (2015).
JBD structures.
Atomic handle.
An atomic handle is basically a collection of all the low-level changes that occur during a single high-level atomic update to the file system. The atomic handle guarantees that the high-level update either happens or not, because the actual changes to the file system are flushed only after logging the atomic handle in the journal.
Transaction.
For the sake of efficiency and performance, JBD groups several atomic handles into a single transaction, which is written to the journal after a fixed amount of time elapses or there is no free space left on the journal to fit it.
The transaction has several states:
Recovery.
Based on the transaction states, the JBD is able to determine which transactions need to be replayed (or reapplied) to the file system.


Mojo (microconsole)

MOJO, stylized as M.O.J.O., is an Android-based video game microconsole manufactured by Mad Catz.
The system runs unmodified Android and connects directly to the Google Play online store. As such, it can play any game designed or previously purchased for Android instead of those specifically designed for the console. The console was released on December 10, 2013, in the United States and United Kingdom.
Development.
The console was announced as "Project Mojo" in a Mad Catz's June 6, 2013, investor release. The company revealed the system and its new name, MOJO, at E3 2013. Mad Catz CEO Darren Richardson described the console as the "keystone product" in their GameSmart initiative, a series of mobile gaming accessories for smartphones that can work with a variety of devices and platforms with Bluetooth. The announcement stressed hardware performance and an open platform. Mad Catz said that the console would be released in holiday 2013. In early October 2013, they announced that the console would be released on December 10, 2013, and would be available for 249 USD although it would be available only in limited quantities at launch. They also revealed the hardware specifications of the console.
Post-release development.
In January 2014, rooting the console was made available by MoDaCo mod and rooting the console was supported by Mad Catz. In March 2014, Mad Catz announced a price drop for the console after which the console cost $199.99 in USA and £179 in UK. Additionally, as part of the "Ouya Everywhere" deal, Mad Catz announced that all of Ouya's gaming content would be available in spring 2014. In June 2014, streaming OnLive games was made available through an app that allowed players to stream OnLive's games and their own games using the OnLive's CloudLift feature. On June 30, 2014, an update added the "Ouya Everywhere" feature allowing players to play OUYA games on MOJO. The update also added 4K UHD output for games and videos. On January 22, 2015, the price of the console was further dropped to $149.99 in USA, £119 in UK and €149 across Europe.
The M.O.J.O. Game Store was shut down on June 25th, 2019.


SYS.COM


IBMDOS.DOS