Pulse
AMD: Expanding the digital horizon for game developers
By William - 20 February 2020
AMD is bringing the same high-quality motion graphics and experiences seen in modern consumer gaming devices into their Embedded range designed for the international land-based gaming sector.
AMD’s ability to provide customers with high performance CPUs and GPUs that can power the video and graphics demanded by modern gaming has been showcased in recent months by new platforms basing their technology on the latest AMD Embedded processors.
Casino Technology have announced their support for the AMD Ryzen Embedded V1000 SoC, bringing discrete-GPU calibre graphics and multimedia processing to their slot machine customers.
Quixant are also supporting the AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000 SoC in their new generation of gaming controllers, the QXi-7000 LITE, to push their game design to the limit.
The V1000 brings CPU and SPU technology together in one place, capable of running up to four 4k displays from one system. The R1000 provides a power efficient option whilst
providing up to four times better CPU and graphics performance per dollar than the competition.
Beyond SoCs, AMD offer embedded GPUs to enable immersive visual experiences whilst also supporting efficient thermal design power profiles. AMD delivers three discrete GPU classes to customers; the AMD Embedded Radeon ultra-high-performance, high- performance and power-efficient embedded GPUs. These three classes enable a wide range of performance and power consumption, offering features the embedded industry demands including planned longevity, enhanced support and support for embedded operating systems.
AMD have launched two new versions of the AMD Embedded Radeon GPUs, the E9650 and the E9390. These two cards are in the PCle form factor, use 8GB of GDDR5 memory and support
4k high-speed video, 3D visualisations and other compute-intensive graphics applications seen in casino and arcade gaming. The E9560 delivers up to 11 per cent more performance compared to the existing E9550 with 36 compute units, a TDP of 130W or less and up to 5.7 theoretical TFLOPS of performance. The E9390 has a TDP of 75W or less with 28 compute units and provides up to 3.9 theoretical TFLOPS of performance for AMD customers looking for better power efficiency.
AMD have announced that the E9560 and E9390, as well as their existing Polaris architecture E-series GPUs, will have planned availability until 2022 in response to the memory used by GDDR5 graphics cards being phased out across the industry for the updated standard, GDDR6.
G3 spoke exclusively with Stephen Turnbull, Director of Product Management and Business Development, Embedded Solutions, about AMD’s plans for 2020.
What differentiates AMD’s embedded gaming solutions from its competitors?
Compared to competitors, AMD provides casino gaming customers with access to both high- performance embedded CPUs and high-performance embedded GPUs. This allows customers to work with one company to create casino gaming solutions that support high quality 4K graphics on multiple screens, creating the next generation of gaming.
How do you see the solutions space evolving over the next 12 months?
You’ll start to see digital casino gaming companies look to replicate the experiences from desktop and console gaming. We’ve heard from plenty of our digital casino gaming customers that they want to replicate the types of engaging graphics in the desktop and console gaming industries. To do that, they have to have more graphics and compute performance to support not just one, but multiple 4K displays.
You can also expect to see digital casino gaming companies look at how to utilise machine vision and image recognition to help enhance a player’s experience with the game and casino rewards programmes.
Could you tell us more about your plans for 2020 in digital casino gaming?
At AMD, we’re pushing the computing and graphics boundaries for digital casino gaming. Our AMD Ryzen Embedded V1000 and R1000 processors power numerous gaming platforms from companies like Advantech, IGT, Quixant Scientific Games, Sapphire and others. In 2020, we’re going to continue to providing our customers with high-performance CPUs and GPUs that make a difference in their businesses. More specifically you will see AMD work with customers to support a growing demand for power and cost-efficient CPU/GPU SoCs, like the Ryzen Embedded R1000, that will support the sport betting kiosk market.
What we’ve heard from these customers is they want to be power and cost sensitive, but they still need to support engaging and high-definition graphics.
We will also be working with customers to provide our AMD EPYC Embedded and AMD EPYC data centre CPUs into the data centres that support the growing online gaming market. You can imagine digital casino gaming solutions are looking more at connected gaming systems, allowing customers to play against each other within the same casino or even remotely. Those online experiences need to be powered by data centres and the AMD EPYC processors can support that.
