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

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."

Comments

What's the GPU for?

[rsilvergun]

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...

Re:What's the GPU for?

[Anonymous Coward]

> AMD is creaming Intel in this area. Intel's graphics SUCK. They are as fast as 2006 era graphics

Nope.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Iris-Pro-Graphics-5200.90965.0.html

"Thanks to the fast eDRAM memory, the average performance of the Iris Pro is only about 15 percent behind the dedicated mid-range cards GeForce GT 650M and GT 750M. This makes the Iris Pro even faster than AMDs Radeon HD 8650G and the fastest integrated GPU of 2013. Therefore, many current games can be played fluently in medium or high detail settings and a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. In some older or less demanding titels like Diablo III or Fifa 2013, even higher resolutions or quality settings may be possible."

Re:What's the GPU for?

[Rockoon]

Iris Pro is on par with the 650m for gaming and the 650m isn't even 2 years old.

The Iris pro is on a $500 part only made possible by bolting expensive eDRAM onto a processor that otherwise would cost $300.

The mind boggles at how people think that this is boasting material.

Re:Why all the polish namings?

[nikkipolya]

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

Re:Why all the polish namings?

[Luckyo]

"Kaveri" in finnish means "pal" as in a friend.

Which is actually pretty fitting for the chip that has CPU and GPU on one die.

Re:Once burnt, twice shy

[Heretic2]

Dunno about you, but I ain't gonna be excited by AMD's offerings anymore, after what they dished to us on their Bulldozer roll out

For more than a year before Bulldozer came into being they told us that the Bulldozer gonna be revolutionary - they hyped the Bulldozer so much that many forums were filled with people just couldn't wait to get their hands on it

Did you think the same thing about Intel after the Pentium4 too?

Re:Once burnt, twice shy

[Fjandr]

So did you stop believing in Intel after their bugged Pentiums rolled off the line? ARM only from now on, until they screw something up?

Just because a company has a product that flopped doesn't mean they won't ever produce anything good again. While it's fine to not be excited until it's actually hit shelves, writing them off for the end of time seems a bit premature.

Article is crap and misses biggest feature!

[DudemanX]

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.

Re:Article is crap and misses biggest feature!

[the_humeister]

Your history is rather off. The 386 never had an integrated FPU. 386 DX had a 32-bit bus. The 386 SX had a 16-bit bus for cost saving measures. The 486 DX was the one with the integrated FPU, and that was the first to include the FPU by default. The 486 SX had the FPU fused off.

Re:Phenom || instead of Bulldozer

[gagol]

It depends if the chip is running in a mac or a PC ;-D

Re:Phenom || instead of Bulldozer

[Lonewolf666]

I run a core 2 duo on a motherboard 8 years old, with a gtx460 (it was originally with an 8800GT, which I pensioned off) and I will guarantee you my PC outperforms most PCs sold today, gaming-wise.

The Core2Duo was a good chip for its time, but current Intels outperform it by a wide margin. I'm pretty sure that even current AMDs beat it, despite their Bulldozer mis-design. Likewise, the GTX460 will be beaten by modern cards.

If you are talking about Intel PCs that use only integrated graphics, your claim might be true. But gamers usually understand that they need a discrete GPU ;-)