AMD Details Next-Gen Kaveri APU's Shared Memory Architecture

crookedvulture writes "AMD has revealed more details about the unified memory architecture of its next-generation Kaveri APU. The chip's CPU and GPU components will have a shared address space and will also share both physical and virtual memory. GPU compute applications should be able to share data between the processor's CPU cores and graphics ALUs, and the caches on those components will be fully coherent. This so-called heterogeneous uniform memory access, or hUMA, supports configurations with either DDR3 or GDDR5 memory. It's also based entirely in hardware and should work with any operating system. Kaveri is due later this year and will also have updated Steamroller CPU cores and a GPU based on the current Graphics Core Next architecture." bigwophh writes links to the Hot Hardware take on the story, and writes "AMD claims that programming for hUMA-enabled platforms should ease software development and potentially lower development costs as well. The technology is supported by mainstream programming languages like Python, C++, and Java, and should allow developers to more simply code for a particular compute resource with no need for special APIs."

Comments

The PS4

[MXPS]

will feature this technology. It will be interesting to see how it stacks up.

CPU - GPU - CPU latency

[Anonymous Coward]

This should really help round trip times trough the GPU. With most existing setups, doing a render to texture, and getting the results back CPU side is quite expensive, but this should help a lot. It should also work great for procedural editing/generating/swapping geometry that you are rendering. Getting all those high poly LODs onto the GPU will not longer be an issue with systems like this.

Interestingly enough, this is somewhat similar to what Intel has now for their integrated graphics, except it looks like the AMD GPU has access to the full address space and cache system, which Intel does not do. Also, its not an Intel GPU, so its likely better in other ways too, but I shouldn't need to point that out.

Intel's Haswell is moving in the opposite direction working to get some dedicated memory for the GPU, which is closer to the traditional GPU approach. Its nice to see companies exploring new areas; hopefully we will get some great hardware out of it, ideally with no broken drivers.

Re:Where's the fine print?

[skids]

Speaking as someone currently considering buying slightly behind the curve, I was all set to jump on an Intel-based fanless system because of the TDP figures. However, with the PowerVR versions of the Intel GPU c**k-blocking linux graphics, and with AMD finally open-sourcing UVD, I'm now back to considering a Brazos. Less choices for fanless pre-built systems, though. May have to skip on the pay-a-younger-geek-because-I-dont-enjoy-playing-legos-anymore part.

So no, for some markets, Intel has not yet realized the advantage that their IC processes should technically give them, and to the point of TFA, if they do not combine that advantage with architectural improvements, there will be ways for AMD to stay in this market for some time to come.