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AMD’s new Carrizo CPU to deliver more speed with longer battery life

AMD uncovers more details on their new laptop/notebook processor that uses several technologies to deliver more speed along with more efficient power consumption.

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AMD's Carrizo CPU: Higher speeds with lower power consumption | Image source: AMD
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At the recent ISSCC technical conference, AMD unveiled additional details on Carrizo: their upcoming processor targeted at laptop applications. Utilizing a range of developments, it will enable up to 10 percent greater power efficiency on its CPU and 20 percent with its GPU (Graphics Processing Unit).

Physically, this processor will pack in more transistors compared to its predecessor (3.1 billion compared to 2.8 billion) at the same fabricated size. Its CPU will have four cores, and will be fabricated on their existing 28nm process, and is designed to operate within a power envelope of 12 Watts to 35 Watts, with the sweet spot being at 15 Watts. This makes it an ideal candidate for use in ultra-portable laptops and convertible notebooks.

A key feature with this processor is Adaptive Voltage and Frequency Scaling (AVFS), which enables it to wring added performance and power efficiency from its architecture. By continuously monitoring operational parameters like power, frequency, temperature and voltage, the chip can near-instantly scale back the frequency when brief voltage drops tend to happen over the course of its operation. This allows fine-grained control of specific frequencies for each of the processor’s components, enabling them to be pushed to the highest possible limit within a given voltage. This is achieved by utilizing about 500 different frequency-sensing modules that are distributed throughout the chip. These sensors report voltage, frequency and temperature information to 10 different AVFS control modules in real time, enabling nanosecond-quick modifications to frequency and voltage for more efficient overall performance. The result: a faster-running processor that consumes lesser power. AMD claims savings of up to 10 percent in CPU power consumption and nearly 20 percent with the GPU.

Carrizo is also one of the first CPUs to fully support Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) 1.0, a standard that is designed to make it easier for software developers to more efficiently leverage the different types of processors in today’s chips. HSA results in more optimal flow of processing instructions between a CPU and a GPU or even a special purpose processor (image recognition or encryption, for example). With today’s mobile products increasingly having this kind of special-purpose processing hardware, efficient utilization of these components directly translate to real-world gains.

The GPU in this new chip has also been updated, now using 8 cores. It also supports the upcoming DirectX 12 and their own Mantle API, standards that upcoming games and graphics applications will use when released over the course of this year.

Also present is support for hardware-based H.265 video decoding, with the ability to transcode nine 1080p streams concurrently--key for playing back video streams that are encoded using this codec. Other improvements with Carrizo include better wake abilities, where the processor can move from sleep state to active state in under a second; a plus for quickly getting up and running in mobile applications.

AMD’s developments run parallel with the those happening with Intel’s upcoming mobile processor codenamed Broadwell, which promises to deliver up to 90 minutes of extra battery life compared to their current-generation Haswell processors. Stay tuned as we compare these parts as more information becomes available.

Expect laptops based on these new Carrizo-based AMD CPUs to hit the market during the Q2 timeframe this year.

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