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AMD Project Quantum PC may never come to market

by Mark Tyson on 4 August 2015, 14:57

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qacthq

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AMD's 'New Era of PC Gaming' presentation at E3 2015 was quite a barnstormer back in June. As well as the predicted Radeon 300 Series graphics cards the rumoured Fiji-based HBM packing graphics cards were more numerous than we had expected. To top it all off we got to see the first of the Project Quantum 'console sized' mini PC. At that time we heard that twin-Fiji packing Project Quantum PC was aimed at 4K and VR and would be made available this autumn.

In an update about Project Quantum in late June we first reported upon the slightly controversial decision by AMD to use an Intel Core i7-4790K 'Devil's Canyon' processor at the heart of the Quantum PC, as demonstrated by the Sunnyvale chipmaker. Explaining the Intel CPU decision, AMD told Tom's Hardware that customers "want to pick and choose the balance of components that they want," and the machine shown off at the E3 event was considered to be the pinnacle of desirability at that time. Fleshing out plans a little more than we had heard at E3, AMD was apparently designing Quantum PCs featuring both AMD and Intel CPU choices, to address the entire market. The release schedule remained as 'autumn'.

Today PCR published an article containing interview segments with AMD's gaming scientist Richard Huddy. From this new interview it sounds like there are currently absolutely no plans to manufacture the powerful eight litre PC.

Huddy said that the interest in Project Quantum from both the public and journalists was very high in the wake of E3. However he explained to PCR that "For us it was a concept PC and that's really important." Illustrating his point more clearly he drew parallels to the auto industry, "We built it as a concept PC, so like concept cars it's not usually practical to take it straight to market, that wouldn't make a great deal of sense." Throughout the interview he revisited the idea that Project Quantum was just a concept.

The commercial production of the Project Quantum was not ruled out by Huddy, but there appear to be absolutely no plans in place to make it a reality. On the topic of the mini PC's potential production Huddy told PCR that "I don't know whether we have an OEM who is committed to building something like it." AMD would need to have conversations with OEMs he said and then it "might well turn it into a real product". Making the project into a shipping product wouldn't be a great effort he thought, but if it was produced it would only be a low-volume "custom piece, not a high volume piece" he believed.

Update 05/08/15

AMD has since contacted HEXUS to issue a statement regarding the possibility of retail availability for the Project Quantum box, and we quote it verbatim:

"AMD hasn’t announced any partners or GTM plans at this stage, and remains fully committed to driving exciting new form factors like Project Quantum into the market."



HEXUS Forums :: 15 Comments

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Let hope next year we don't get the headline:

AMD Zen CPU may never come to market

“We built it as a concept CPU” so like concept cars, it may never be produced.

I still cannot help think it was because it needed an Intel CPU to shine and AMD were never going to go down that route. There aren't enough Mantle titles to get 2 Fury cards running full-pelt on an AMD chip.

Maybe when DX12/Vulkan games start to appear they can swing it but I guess by then they will have Zen out….AMDs timing has been pretty crappy lately.
AMD is really going down the ****ter….
No HDMI 2.0 killed it :p
They couldn't put an AMD CPU in there with available consumer parts. AMDs Motherboard manufacturers have not made ITX boards for the FX CPUs. It didn't need to shine beyond looking cool. Not like its been sent out for bench-marking and I don't think they showed scores or anything like that.

The star of the package was the dual fiji GPU anyway

shaithis
Let hope next year we don't get the headline:

AMD Zen CPU may never come to market

“We built it as a concept CPU” so like concept cars, it may never be produced.

I still cannot help think it was because it needed an Intel CPU to shine and AMD were never going to go down that route. There aren't enough Mantle titles to get 2 Fury cards running full-pelt on an AMD chip.

Maybe when DX12/Vulkan games start to appear they can swing it but I guess by then they will have Zen out….AMDs timing has been pretty crappy lately.
semitope
The star of the package was the dual fiji GPU anyway

You can put dual gpus in almost anything. It was about performance per litre! (Didn't think I would ever use that as a computer metric!)