AMD's new APU Kaveri showcased, first with HUMA

jimbo45 · 14 Jun 2013

bobafetthotmail said:

AMD is demonstrating its fourth generation of APUs -- the Kaveri APUs -- at Computex 2013. The Kaveri APUs would be the first APUs to feature AMD's upcoming steamroller cores. The chips will be baked on a lithography of 28 nm, and the Steamroller cores would feature a 15 to 20 percent improvement in IPC (Instructions per Cycle).
The biggest new feature that we can expect to see in the new Kaveri APUs is the HUMA memory architecture that was announced earlier.
The demonstration of the Kaveri APU's performance is shown in a video below, with use of what appears to be Ruby: Project Phoenix.

The video in the link is filmed with a potato, but anyway, the thing features HUMA, that as the link above says allows both full access to the whole RAM to both GPU and CPU, but also allows easy dumping of multithreaded tasks on the GPU that smokes them, at least in theory.

It appears that the chip does have a GDDR5 memory interface as well (the BGA kinds anyway), among the more usual 16 lane PCIe 3.0 interface and 4 PCIe 2.0 lanes available for general purpose use. The PCIe 3.0 interface can be configured as two x8 interfaces. Four PCIe 2.0 lanes are used to connect the Southbridge or Fusion Controller Hub (FCH) as AMD calls it, so technically the total PCIe lanes would be 8

So AMD isn't dead yet after all.

Hi there

I still disagree.

The Haswell can be used on small mobile devices as well as conventional high end systems. It's OUT and not "Vapourware" and works. I believe the next lot of smart mobiles will also be powered by some Haswell chips -- although why on earth I'd need enough compute power to run the entire CIA on a small mobile --well some people might call that progress.

The AMD chip doesn't seem in any way geared for mobile device use. --Big error these days.

Cheers
jimbo

bobafetthotmail · 14 Jun 2013

The Haswell can be used on small mobile devices as well as conventional high end systems.

In a world without ARM, yes, but ARM processors keep anything x86-x64 out of smartphones and tablets pretty fiercely.
For example, Rockchip's RK3066 SoC (System on a Chip) is a dual-core ARM processor that can laugh at any task you can throw at a tablet-like or media-center-like device. It can easily stream and decode 1080p on a big TV, has HDMI , and operates any Android app or game without lag.
And does this with less than a USB 2.0 port's worth of power (when actually doing something, otherwise it's pretty close to 0% consumption).
It sells for less than 60 bucks (as you can find Android mini-pcs with it that cost 60 bucks or less and fully featured media centers for 100).

And even better ARM quadcores are rolling out like crazy. If it goes on like this Intel and AMD will get displaced from laptop markets as well.

So back in the laptop world where that thing being an APU has some more chances of slugging it out with an Haswell, while in the high-end there is only Intel for the moment (as I doubt the 5 GHz CPUs are going to do better), but depending on how their HUMA technology pans out could get there as well.

Ok it's still technically unreleased, but hey, seems promising.