AMD announced several new chips at CES 2013 today, in an effort to defend its turf from Intel on the one hand and ARM-based mobile processor manufacturers on the other.

Its most interesting announcement had to do with two new chips, known as accelerated processing units (APUs), which include graphics acceleration as well as basic computation and other functions. Codenamed “Temash” and “Kabini,” these “system-on-a-chip” (SoC) processors use the same x86 architecture as most desktop and notebook computers but with far lower power consumption, like the ARM chips used in many smartphones and tablets. Both will have four cores, making them roughly comparable to Nvidia’s quad-core Tegra 3 processor, an ARM chip. They’ll be available by the middle of this year.

(Nvidia, meanwhile, has leaped ahead to 72 cores with its Tegra 4 processor, also announced today.)

According to AMD:

• Temash is a high-performance, low-power processor for Windows 8 tablets and hybrids. It will be twice as fast as its precursor (dubbed “Hondo”) in terms of visual processing power.
• Kabini is meant for ultrathin notebooks and offers a balance of performance and battery consumption, with dual- and quad-core versions. It will be 50 percent faster in general processing power than the predecessor chip (“Brazos 2.0″).
• A third SoC, “Richland,” is shipping now and will offer visual processing performance increases of 20-40 percent. It will also be bundled with special software for gesture and facial recognition.
• A fourth chip, “Kaveri,” will succeed Richland and will be based on a new 28nm manufacturing process but won’t be available until the second half of the year.

In addition, AMD announced a pair of new graphics processing units (GPUs), the Radeon HD 8000 for desktops and the Radeon HD 8000M for notebooks. Both are based on AMD’s “Graphics Core Next” architecture, have support for DirectX 11.1, and include additional video acceleration and power management features.

Sorry, overclockers, the HD 8000 is only available to computer manufacturers for now.

AMD trotted out three manufacturing partners that will be using its chips and said others would be coming. Vizio’s new AMD devices will include an 11.6-inch APU-powered tablet, two high-performance ultrathin notebooks, and a 24-inch all-in-one computer. Asus will put an AMD A-Series APU into its Asus U38 device. And HP will use the A-Series chip in its TouchSmart SleekBook, a Windows 8 notebook.

Photo: Demonstration of AMD Face Login, one of AMD’s software tools that accompany the Richland chip. Source: AMD

Advanced Micro Devices is taking a shot at Intel today with a new family of combination graphics-microprocessor chips to drive cheaper and faster mid-range PCs.

The chips, code-named Trinity, are accelerated processing units (APUs) that combine graphics and computing functions on a single chip. With the new Trinity-based chip designs, AMD will refresh its entire line of A-series APUs for the first time since it launched the code-named Llano chips in 2011 and since it launched its first generation of Trinity chips earlier this spring. It goes up against Intel’s widely used Ivy Bridge combo chips, and it should hit the sweet spot for gamers who want PCs that have cool 3D graphics and an affordable price.

The chips have four cores based on AMD’s Piledriver core design, along with Radeon HD7000 graphics. The chips have a whopping 1.3 billion transistors, or tiny electrical switches. That enables the high-end quad-core A10 APU to run at a frequency of 4.2 gigahertz, compared to the similarly priced Intel Core i3 2120/3220 processor with two cores running at 3.3 gigahertz, said Adam Kozak, a product marketing manager at Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD, in a call with the media.

AMD is also introducing other versions dubbed the A8, A6, and A4 chips at difference performance levels and prices. AMD says the high-end APU can be overclocked, or run at faster than recommended specifications (at a risk of melting down) up to speeds of 6.5 gigahertz, gaining a 68 percent increase in processor performance. The APUs can run games at anywhere from 77 percent to 107 percent faster than the same games running on a system with an Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics chip set.

“This far exceeds the performance of our competitors’ similar chips,” Kozak said. “There’s a lot of graphics performance sitting inside our APUs.”

In another cool feat, the AMD A10 can run the PC game Torchlight II (pictured below) at 32 frames per second, even with all graphics settings turned on, across three connected screens. That’s pretty badass. The products will be available on Oct. 2.

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Sunnyvale Calif.-based AMD’s AMD Ventures division is investing in Nuvixa so that the startup can continue work on its StagePresence video presentation tool, which extracts a human presenter from any background and embeds him or her in a digital desktop or slide presentation. It’s as if the presenter has been pasted into a presentation when viewed via video.

AMD will be able to run the Nuvixa software better on its microprocessors because the software will be optimized to take advantage of the OpenCL standard and AMD’s accelerated processing units, which combine graphics and processing on a single chip.

Champaign, Ill.-based Nuvixa’s StagePresence technology is an example of taking something that was designed for motion-sensing video games and converting it so that it can spice up normally boring presentations, training sessions, educational videos or any other video communications. Nuvixa uses a 3D depth camera, such as that used in Microsoft’s Kinect motion sensor, to capture a 3D image of the speaker. Then it inserts the speaker’s image into the presentation.

The company has created a technology that it calls UserExtraction, which snips a person’s image out of any background in a kind of virtual “green screen” effect similar to film editing techniques.

Using Z-Definition Technology developed by Nuvixa, you can capture a video of someone speaking and then insert that video into the content or presentation. You can also use it to bring a video conference to life, placing participants in a shared virtual space.

The company was founded in 2009. The founders include Sanjay Patel, former chief technology officer of Ageia Technologies, a physics technology firm that was bought by Nvidia; Minh Do, chief technology officer; computer scientist Dennis Lin; and video expert Quang Nguyen. All are faculty or students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“Nuvixa is on the cutting edge of video processing technology and exemplifies why we created AMD Ventures; to foster an ecosystem that enhances the consumer and commercial computing experience,” said Manju Hegde (former CEO of Ageia), corporate vice president of content, applications and solutions at AMD. “The uniquely powerful compute capabilities of AMD APUs coupled with software solutions from companies like Nuvixa are bringing gesture-based computing and immersive video experiences beyond the conference room and into today’s notebook and desktop PCs, tablets and other consumer electronic devices.”

By optimizing Nuvixa’s technology, the company can get 96 percent better performance.

Advanced Micro Devices will compete with the world’s biggest chip maker by coming out with high-performance laptop chips that are a lot less expensive for consumers.

“We like the idea of Ultrabooks as thin and powerful computers, but we think they should be for everybody,” said Rory Read, chief executive of AMD, in comments made to VentureBeat after Thursday’s analyst meeting.

Lisa Su, senior vice president for global products at AMD, said in an interview that a number of the Ultrabooks — some 7o to 75 models are coming out this year — are going to be priced at around $900.

But Su said that thin laptops based on AMD’s upcoming chips will likely hit the market priced as low as $599. AMD plans to introduce a series of chips code-named Trinity, which will be its second generation of accelerated processing units, or APUs. The APUs combine a microprocessor and graphics processor on a single chip, much like Intel does with its Sandy Bridge chips. But Su said AMD has loaded its combo chips with much more graphics capability than Intel does. So the AMD-based $599 laptops may actually perform as well as or better than many of the Ultrabooks.

Intel, of course, begs to differ. And it plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars starting in the spring promoting all of the great things people will be able to do with its Ultrabooks, which are no more than 18 millimeters thick, can be turned on instantly, and have enough processing power to run full-fledged PC applications. There is no reason that these Ultrabooks have to carry a higher price, and Intel says it fully intends to get Ultrabooks in the hands of everyone.

When Intel last launched a major advertising campaign in 2003, it sold consumers on its Centrino chips, which made it easier for laptops to get on the Internet. Intel also designed low-power chips and captured a much larger market share in laptops than it had in the general market. Now it wants to steamroll the market again.

“We have to play our playbook,” Su said. “We think you’ll see $600, $700, $800 AMD-based laptops, and they will be under the comparable Intel prices.”

The Ultrabook campaign thus represents a big threat to AMD, even if AMD’s chips might be better. Su believes that computer makers will be able to discern the true performance of the upcoming chips and create superior, low-cost laptops for consumers that don’t have the Ultrabook prices.

“I’d expect AMD to message better graphics performance, better battery life, good enough general compute, at a lower price enabled by lower priced silicon,” said Patrick Moorhead, analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, and a former AMD executive. “By leveraging Intel’s investment in thin chassis and Windows 8 fast start, they have a chance of getting some business. One element AMD has not addressed yet is advanced security, a feature that Intel has invested in heavily. This play is a reasonably simple one which AMD has run before with a twist.”

Su said that the timing of Trinity is good for the summer, since Microsoft will be launching the Windows 8 operating system later in the year and computer makers will be launching a huge number of new computers later this year.

“We’re going to a lot better on power and performance trade-offs,” Su said.

Phone credit: Dean Takahashi