AMD Firms Up Deals With Phoenix, General Software

Advanced Micro Devices is having a busy week with the BIOS makers, announcing a new storage device kit designed with leading firmware developer General Software and playing catch-up with rival Intel in getting on board with the latest products from Phoenix Technologies.

AMD and General Software have teamed up on a low-cost, low-power Network Attached Storage (NAS) reference design kit aimed at OEMs and system builders serving small businesses and home users. In a separate announcement this week, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chipmaker and Phoenix Technologies committed to a technology partnership to optimize the firmware vendor's new HyperSpace platform with AMD processors and virtualization technology.

HyperSpace, a firmware platform for developing instant-on, purpose-built applications for Windows PCs, was launched by Phoenix Monday. The first available HyperSpace products are designed to work with Intel's Core 2 Duo processor line, vPro and Centrino Pro system management platforms and the chip giant's virtualization and security products.

AMD's Geode LX NAS Reference Design Kit for builders of NAS devices, codenamed Tsing Tao, is built on the chip maker's Geode LX 800 processor. General Software's role in the development of the platform was to enable a multi-method, optimized fast boot (less than one second from POST) on the devices, said Craig Husa, president and CEO of Seattle-based General Software.

Husa said his company's work in embedded systems makes General Software uniquely qualified amongst BIOS vendors to customize a quick-booting firmware solution for Tsing Tao.

"The x86 platform struggles in consumer electronic devices, because of the slow boot. But we work in arenas like the aerospace industry where you just can't tolerate that. With a plane headed to the ground, you want that thing to reboot quick. We've got the fastest boot around at less than a second," he said.

Because General Software builds firmware for so many different types of hardware, the company is able to customize solutions for system builders quickly, Husa said.

"We've had to deal with every type of equipment, all the way down to an animal fluid analyzer. So when a customer comes to us, we can talk about things really relevant to them. So for somebody who's building a device, we've been there, we reduce that risk, we cut time to market," he said.

"System builders in turn get to use actual hardware that's been optimized, really tuned to work with what they do. That translates to better products."

The firmware General Software developed for Tsing Tao was a turn-key solution for AMD's design center in China that included engineering and test services, said Kyle MacDonald, a corporate technologist at AMD.

"Working with General Software enables AMD to provide turn-key solutions to our partners. And it allows us to do this in a quick manner. General Software has really stepped up to the plate in working with AMD customers," said MacDonald, speaking to ChannelWeb via telephone from Singapore.

Tweet

   

More