AMD Radeon™ GPUs and Developer Tools Tapped for New Generation Gaming Platform, Google Stadia

Cloud-optimized AMD datacenter GPUs and robust software tools enable developers to create exceptional, scalable, high-performance game streaming experiences

SAN FRANCISCO, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Building on a close, long-term collaboration between the two companies, AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announced that Google selected high-performance, custom AMD Radeon datacenter GPUs for its Vulkan® and Linux®-based Google Stadia. Google announced the platform today at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, Calif. AMD also is supporting Google with its software development tools and Linux-based, open-source Vulkan driver to help game developers optimize future titles to run on the new GPU-powered platform.

“By combining our gaming DNA and datacenter technology leadership with a long-standing commitment to open platforms, AMD provides unique technologies and expertise to enable world-class cloud gaming experiences,” said Ogi Brkic, corporate vice president and general manager of the Datacenter GPU Business Unit at AMD. “AMD is delighted to work with Google in its effort to bring amazing gaming experiences to legions of gamers around the world with the reliability and no-compromises performance they expect.” 

“We’ve worked closely with AMD for years on this project, leading to the development of a custom GPU with leading-edge features and performance for Google Stadia,” said Dov Zimring, Google Stadia developer platform product lead. “Google and AMD share a commitment to open-source with expertise in Vulkan, open-source Vulkan GPU drivers, and open-source graphics optimization tools. We’re humbled by the spirit of innovation and collaboration that exists throughout the gaming industry and look forward to pioneering the future of graphics technology with game developers, in open-source.”

High-performance AMD Datacenter GPUs

Streaming graphics-rich games to millions of users on demand and from the cloud requires ultra high-performance processing capabilities to minimize latency and maximize game performance. It also requires advanced technologies to tackle unique datacenter challenges, including security, manageability, and scalability.

Custom AMD high-performance Radeon datacenter GPUs for Google Stadia include:

• Second-generation High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM2) to provide power savings
  in a compact footprint;
• Critical datacenter features such as Error Correcting Code (ECC)¹ protection to
  help ensure data integrity;
• Fast, predictable performance with security features for cloud-based gaming, via the industry’s first hardware-based GPU virtualization solution built on industry standard SR-IOV (Single-Root I/O Virtualization) technology.

The AMD graphics architecture supports a wide range of today’s gaming platforms – from PCs to major game consoles – enabling developers to optimize their games for a single GPU architecture and extend these benefits across multiple platforms which now include large-scale cloud gaming platforms.

Robust Developer Tools              

Powerful AMD software tools enable developers to optimize their games and other applications for AMD Radeon GPUs. AMD empowers developers with a range of options and broad flexibility to optimize the performance of GPU-based applications based on a long-standing commitment to open-source platforms, including Linux-based drivers and support for the low-level Vulkan API that provide broad control over the performance, efficiency and capabilities of AMD Radeon GPUs.

The open-source AMD Linux drivers allow Google and its development partners to inspect the code and understand exactly how the driver works, enabling them to better optimize their applications to interface with AMD Radeon GPUs. The driver also contains an application tracing component that, together with the AMD Radeon GPU Profiler (RGP), provides access to detailed, low-level information about how workloads run on AMD Radeon GPUs. Identifying timing issues that might suggest potential optimizations, this capability dramatically improves developers’ ability to create applications that deliver the best possible performance on AMD Radeon GPUs.

The AMD Radeon GPU Profiler allows game developers to visualize exactly how their application is utilizing the GPU, including how graphics and compute thread groups occupy the GPU. Developers are then able to track event timing and optimize their games for Google Stadia. RGP also interoperates with the popular open-source RenderDoc graphics debugging tool to give developers deeper real-time insights into the rendering of each frame, reducing the time required to debug and profile frames during the development process.

RGP operates the same way in a virtualized environment as it does when running on a dedicated PC client, making it easy for developers to optimize their applications for virtualized GPUs in large scale environments as they would for any other gaming platform.

For more information visit the Google Stadia website, here.

Supporting Resources

• Learn more about AMD cloud gaming solutions here
• Learn more about Radeon GPU Profiler here
• Learn more about RenderDoc here
• Discover AMD Open Software support on GPUOpen.com
• Become a fan of AMD on Facebook
• Follow AMD on Twitter
• Follow Radeon™ graphics on Twitter

About AMD
For 50 years AMD has driven innovation in high-performance computing, graphics and visualization technologies ― the building blocks for gaming, immersive platforms and the datacenter. Hundreds of millions of consumers, leading Fortune 500 businesses and cutting-edge scientific research facilities around the world rely on AMD technology daily to improve how they live, work and play. AMD employees around the world are focused on building great products that push the boundaries of what is possible. For more information about how AMD is enabling today and inspiring tomorrow, visit the AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) website, blog, Facebook and Twitter pages.

Cautionary Statement
This press release contains forward-looking statements concerning Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) including the features, functionality, availability, timing, deployment, benefits and expectations of AMD future products and the expected benefits of AMD’s collaboration with Google, which are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are commonly identified by words such as "would," "intends," "believes," "expects," "may," "will," "should," "seeks," "intends," "plans," "pro forma," "estimates," "anticipates," or the negative of these words and phrases, other variations of these words and phrases or comparable terminology. 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Material factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations include, without limitation, the following: Intel Corporation’s dominance of the microprocessor market and its aggressive business practices may limit AMD’s ability to compete effectively; AMD has a wafer supply agreement with GF with obligations to purchase all of its microprocessor and APU product requirements, and a certain portion of its GPU product requirements, from GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc. (GF) with limited exceptions. 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(WCH) of warrants to purchase 75 million shares of its common stock, if and when exercised, will dilute the ownership interests of its existing stockholders, and the conversion of the 2.125% Convertible Senior Notes due 2026 may dilute the ownership interest of its existing stockholders, or may otherwise depress the price of its common stock; uncertainties involving the ordering and shipment of AMD’s products could materially adversely affect it; the demand for AMD’s products depends in part on the market conditions in the industries into which they are sold. Fluctuations in demand for AMD’s products or a market decline in any of these industries could have a material adverse effect on its results of operations; AMD’s ability to design and introduce new products in a timely manner is dependent upon third-party intellectual property; AMD depends on third-party companies for the design, manufacture and supply of motherboards, software and other computer platform components to support its business; if AMD loses Microsoft Corporation’s support for its products or other software vendors do not design and develop software to run on AMD’s products, its ability to sell its products could be materially adversely affected; and AMD’s reliance on third-party distributors and AIB partners subjects it to certain risks.  Investors are urged to review in detail the risks and uncertainties in AMD's Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including but not limited to AMD's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 29, 2018.

©2019 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.  All rights reserved. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, Radeon, and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Vulkan and the Vulkan logo are trademarks of the Khronos Group Inc. Other product names used in this publication are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective companies.

¹ ECC support is limited to the HBM2 memory and ECC protection is not provided for internal GPU structures.

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Released March 19, 2019