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AMD A10 Kaveri APU Details Emerge, Combining Steamroller and Graphics Core Next

Posted by Soulskill on from the onward-and-upward dept.

MojoKid writes "There's a great deal riding on the launch of AMD's next-generation Kaveri APU. The new chip will be the first processor from AMD to incorporate significant architectural changes to the Bulldozer core AMD launched two years ago and the first chip to use a graphics core derived from AMD's GCN (Graphics Core Next) architecture. A strong Kaveri launch could give AMD back some momentum in the enthusiast business. Details are emerging that point to a Kaveri APU that's coming in hot — possibly a little hotter than some of us anticipated. Kaveri's Steamroller CPU core separates some of the core functions that Bulldozer unified and should substantially improve the chip's front-end execution. Unlike Piledriver, which could only decode four instructions per module per cycle (and topped out at eight instructions for a quad-core APU), Steamroller can decode four instructions per core or 16 instructions per quad-core module. The A10-7850K will offer a 512-core GPU while the A10-7700K will be a 384-core part. Again, GPU clock speeds have come down, from 844MHz on the A10-6800K to 720MHz on the new A10-7850K but should be offset by the gains from moving to AMD's GCN architecture."

4 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. What's the GPU for? by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Laptops? While I'd love to see a nice, low cost CPU/GPU combo that can hang with my (rather meager) Athlon X2 6000+ and GT 240, I'm still running pretty low end gear. If this is targeted at enthusiasts they're just going to replace it with a card...

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    1. Re:What's the GPU for? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

      For everyone that doesn't play games. Every Intel CPU for years has included a GPU which is perfectly good for HD Video, web, even CAD. The higher end versions actually work quite well on modelling and games that are a few years old.

      Every new release means less and less need for a discrete GPU at all (look up Iris Pro). AMD have to try to keep up with Intel or they will be sunk. Nvidia will loose either way.

  2. Re:Why all the polish namings? by nikkipolya · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If "Kaveri" is what you are referring to, it also happens to be the name of a river in South India.

  3. Article is crap and misses biggest feature! by DudemanX · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is the chip that unites the CPU and GPU into one programing model with unified memory addressing. Heterogeneous System Architecture(HSA) and Heterogeneous Uniform Memory Access(HUMA) are the nice buzzword acronyms that AMD came up with but it basically removes the latency from accessing GPU resources and makes memory sharing between the CPU cores and GPU cores copy free. You can now dispatch instructions to the GPU cores almost as easily and as quickly as you do to the basic ALU/FPU/SSE units of the CPU.

    Will software be written to take advantage of this though?

    Will Intel eventually support it on their stuff?

    Ars article on the new architecture.

    Anandtech article on the Kaveri release.