AMD Unveils Carrizo APU With Excavator Core Architecture

MojoKid writes: AMD just unveiled new details about their upcoming Carrizo APU architecture. The company is claiming the processor, which is still built on Global Foundries' 28nm 28SHP node like its predecessor, will nonetheless deliver big advances in both performance and efficiency. When it was first announced, AMD detailed support for next generation Radeon Graphics (DX12, Mantle, and Dual Graphics support), H.265 decoding, full HSA 1.0 support, and ARM Trustzone compatibility. But perhaps one of the biggest advantages of Carrizo is the fact that the APU and Southbridge are now incorporated into the same die; not just two separates dies built into and MCM package.

This not only improves performance, but also allows the Southbridge to take advantage of the 28SHP process rather than older, more power-hungry 45nm or 65nm process nodes. In addition, the Excavator cores used in Carrizo have switched from a High Performance Library (HPL) to a High Density Library (HDL) design. This allows for a reduction in the die area taken up by the processing cores (23 percent, according to AMD). This allows Carrizo to pack in 29 percent more transistors (3.1 billion versus 2.3 billion in Kaveri) in a die size that is only marginally larger (250mm2 for Carrizo versus 245mm2 for Kaveri). When all is said and done, AMD is claiming a 5 percent IPC boost for Carrizo and a 40 percent overall reduction in power usage.

Comments

Re:I hope they are also

[TsuruchiBrian]

They seem to be doing a pretty good job on the graphics front. Their open source driver is in better shape and has more momentum than the nvidia open source driver.

My impression is that Intel has better linux support for their IGP but the performance is about a generation behind.

Re:Operating at 20W gives zero improvement.

[Identifiable Coward]

An Intel Xeon E5-2690 V2, S 2011, 10 Core, 3.0GHz costs £1500. An AMD 3rd Gen. Opteron 6380 CPU, Abu Dhabi 16 Core, S G34 provides better performance and costs less to run yet only retails for £700. I'd say AMD have plenty of life left in the server market and if they can achieve similar price / performance numbers relative to Intel with these new desktop chips I'd say there is some life in them in the desktop arena too!

Re:HSA software environment

[shizzle]

There are some results from LibreOffice Calc at the bottom of this page.

Re:Not worth buying unless I can get it in 8S/12GP

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that is 4 computers in one box right? Like literally the equivalent of 4 1u servers with 2 CPU and 3 GPU but turned on their side. Also that it costs nearly 100k, which is approximately 50 times as much as an _entire_ computer based on this APU would cost.
Also, considering that with your computer you are getting 12 cores * 4 machines for $100k, where as with an APU based machine you are getting 4 cores * 50 machines, and each of those cores is clocked about twice as fast (4.3 vs 2.4ghz).

Re:Operating at 20W gives zero improvement.

[Billly Gates]

Do you have a link for that? It's not that I disbelieve you, I strongly suspect that Intel would do that crap. I'd like to read more about it however if you hae a link handy, then stash the link for the next time this benchmark comes up.

Personally, I like the Phoronix Linux benchmarks. They're more meaningful for me since I use Linux and they're all based on GCC which is trustworthy.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...

The i7 4770 ocasionally blows away the FX8350 by a factor of 2, but in many benchmarks they're close, and Intel loses a fair fraction. The 4770 is the best overall performer, but not by all that much. It seems that the choice of CPU is fairly workload dependent.

For servers, I still prefer the supermicro 4s opteron boxes. 64 cores, 512G RAM, 1U. Nice.

The i7 4770k is a fairly high end chip by Intel. I own one but I would not expect to find one in a sub 700. It is not a Xeon, but it is just 1 notch down from the $900 extreme edition so it is 2nd highest in consumer non server chips.

Well sites like tomshardware.com make it look like a Pentium or i3 can smoke the latest AMD black edition fresh out of the water. However, biased or not my real world experience says otherwise as many games are optimized for intel and use NVidia specific directX extensions with their studio software which boils a lot of AMD users blood but it is the truth.

In SWTOR I got a doubling of FPS from moving from a PhenomII black edition to an i7 4770k. True it has less cores but apps are optimized still for single tasking and I do have 4 real and 4 hyperthreaded cores for my VMs.

Reason being are games are crappy xbox ports. The 360 I think was single or dual core so games were single threaded. Therefore they kick ass on Intel. The only good news is the xboxONE is changing this with 8 cores with an AMD and forcing game makers to optimize more for ATI.

I expect the newer games to be more competitive as a result as they are more threaded and ATI optimized on tomshardware.com and other sites.

But damage is done and the power is much better with intel chips as they leave AMD further and further in the dust with lower chip nm sized dies since AMD sold their foundries. Global Foundaries only cares about ARM chips so sorry AMD stay in 2010 ... Intel is going 10nm next year and will finally put the last nail in the coffin. ... I pray NOT!

Re:Operating at 20W gives zero improvement.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because religious ranting and flailing is somehow going to make AMD competitive. Idiot.

Re:Operating at 20W gives zero improvement.

[Totenglocke]

Except if you bothered to watch the video linked above for actual in-game performance testing (NOT synthetic benchmarks), you'll see that most of the time Intel is neck and neck with AMD - not "smoking" them.

Re:Operating at 20W gives zero improvement.

[hairyfeet]

Thanks, and for the stupid retard ACs that can't fucking Google? Here ya go, Intel admits to rigging benchmark results by wadda ya know, Tek Syndicate. I really shouldn't be surprised as unlike Anand and Tom's the guys at Tek Syndicate aren't making their money from intel's ads. But there it is, straight from Intel's own lips...what more do ya want? Their CEO to get his pic taken doing the Cash double bird with "yeah we rig so fuck you!" as the tag line?