AMD: APUs to get 25x more efficient by 2020

[hal9001]

From:

http://www.guru3d.com/news_story/amd_apus_to_get_25x_more_efficient_by_2020.html

"Bold claims, but we like goals like that. AMD states that by 2020 APUs will be 25x more efficient. Well, extrapolating that, efficient does not mean faster. And in fact they are talking about energy efficiency. AMD’s technology plans show every promise of yielding about a 25-fold improvement in typical-use energy efficiency for mobile devices over the next six years, a pace that substantially exceeds historical rates of growth in peak output energy efficiency.

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced its goal to deliver a 25x improvement in the energy efficiency of its Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) by 2020.1 Details, including innovations that will produce the expected efficiency gains, were presented today by AMD’s Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster during a keynote at the China International Software and Information Service Fair (CISIS) conference in Dalian, China. The “25X20” target is a substantial increase compared to the prior six years (2008 to 2014), during which time AMD improved the typical-use energy efficiency of its products more than 10x.

Worldwide, three billion personal computers use more than one percent of all energy consumed annually, and 30 million computer servers use an additional 1.5 percent of all electricity consumed at an annual cost of $14 billion to $18 billion USD. Expanded use of the Internet, mobile devices, and interest in cloud-based video and audio content in general is expected to result in all of those numbers increasing in future years.

“Creating differentiated low-power products is a key element of our business strategy, with an attending relentless focus on energy efficiency,” said Papermaster. “Through APU architectural enhancements and intelligent power efficient techniques, our customers can expect to see us dramatically improve the energy efficiency of our processors during the next several years. Setting a goal to improve the energy efficiency of our processors 25 times by 2020 is a measure of our commitment and confidence in our approach.”

“The energy efficiency of information technology has improved at a rapid pace since the beginning of the computer age, and innovations in semiconductor technologies continue to open up new possibilities for higher efficiency,” said Dr. Jonathan Koomey, research fellow at the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University. “AMD has steadily improved the energy efficiency of its mobile processors, having achieved greater than a 10-fold improvement over the last six years in typical-use energy efficiency. AMD’s focus on improving typical power efficiency will likely yield significant consumer benefits substantially improving real-world battery life and performance for mobile devices. This would be achieved through both performance gains and rapid reductions in the typical-use power of processors. In addition to the benefits of increased performance, the efficiency gains help to extend battery life, enable development of smaller and less material intensive devices, and limit the overall environmental impact of increased numbers of computing devices.”

Moore’s Law states that the number of transistors capable of being built in a given area doubles roughly every two years. Dr. Koomey’s research demonstrates that historically, energy efficiency of processors has closely tracked the rate of improvement predicted by Moore’s Law. Through intelligent power management and APU architectural advances, in tandem with semiconductor manufacturing process technology improvements and a focus on typical-use power, AMD expects its energy efficiency achievements to outpace the historical efficiency trend predicted by Moore’s Law by at least 70 percent between 2014 and 2020.

Architecting for Energy-Efficiency Leadership

Like advances in computing performance, advances in power efficiency have historically come along with new generations of silicon process technology that shrink the size of each individual transistor. AMD expects to outpace the power efficiency gains expected from process technology transitions through 2020 for typical use based on successfully executing three central pillars of the company’s energy efficient design strategy:

Heterogeneous-computing and power optimization: Through Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA), AMD combines CPU and GPU compute cores and special purpose accelerators such as digital signal processors and video encoders on the same chip in the form of APUs. This innovation from AMD saves energy by eliminating connections between discrete chips, reduces computing cycles by treating the CPU and GPU as peers, and enables the seamless shift of computing workloads to the optimal processing component. The result is improved energy efficiency and accelerated performance for common workloads, including standard office applications as well as emerging visually oriented and interactive workloads such as natural user interfaces and image and speech recognition. AMD provides APUs with HSA features to the embedded, server and client device markets, and its semi-custom APUs are inside the new generation of game consoles.

Intelligent, real-time power management: Most computing operation is characterized by idle time, the interval between keystrokes, touch inputs or time reviewing displayed content. Executing tasks as quickly as possible to hasten a return to idle, and then minimizing the power used at idle is extremely important for managing energy consumption. Most consumer-oriented tasks such as web browsing, office document editing, and photo editing benefit from this “race to idle” behavior. The latest AMD APUs perform real-time analysis on the workload and applications, dynamically adjusting clock speed to achieve optimal throughput rates. Similarly, AMD offers platform aware power management where the processor can overclock to quickly get the job done, then drop back into low-power idle mode.

Future innovations in power-efficiency: Improvements in efficiency require technology development that takes many years to complete. AMD recognized the need for energy efficiency years ago and made the research investments that have since led to high impact features. Going forward, many differentiating capabilities such as inter-frame power gating, per-part adaptive voltage, voltage islands, further integration of system components, and other techniques still in the development stage should yield accelerated gains.

Industry analyst firm TIRIAS Research recently reviewed AMD’s methodology for measuring its energy efficiency and the plans to achieve a 25x improvement by 2020 and produced a publicly-available white paper detailing their analysis. “The goal of an energy-efficient processor is to deliver more performance than the prior generation at the same or less power,” said Kevin Krewell, analyst at TIRIAS Research. “AMD’s plan to accelerate the energy-efficiency gains for its mobile-computing processors is impressive. We believe that AMD will achieve its energy efficiency goal, partially through process improvement but mostly by combining the savings from reducing idle power, the performance boost of heterogeneous system architecture, and through more intelligent power management. With this undertaking, AMD demonstrates leadership in the computing industry, driving innovations for a more energy-efficient future.”

I actually hope this is possible not only for the environmental impact, but with more efficient SOCs, AMD may be able to get into the mobile phone and tablet business. In addition, I would like AMD to catch up to INTEL so we can finally get some competition (innovation) in the CPU market. I think that Moore's law states that processing power will double every 18-24 months. It has nothing to do with efficiency. Go AMD!!!!!!

[Mo5]

Intel says XEON's performance will increase by 20x, AMD fires back

[Drown]

And in 2020, games will probably use a lot more advanced technology and resources, be more demanding, etc. (I hope ...)

 

GPUs will also be considerably faster, it's not as if the fact that APUs will get 25x faster/better means that it's going to be a better alternative than a seperate CPU/GPU. But meh we still have to wait 6 years for that, we'll see I guess.

[Vitalius]

And in 2020, games will probably use a lot more advanced technology and resources, be more demanding, etc. (I hope ...)

 

GPUs will also be considerably faster, it's not as if the fact that APUs will get 25x faster/better means that it's going to be a better alternative than a seperate CPU/GPU. But meh we still have to wait 6 years for that, we'll see I guess.

But think about it. That means in 2020, an APU would rival a high end GPU today (not necessarily a 290X/780Ti, but a 280x/770). It may play games on low that are released in 2020, but imagine all the games you will be able to max out from 2000-2015, on an APU. 

That's pretty crazy.

[Nineshadow]

25x more efficient,but not 25x more powerful.

 

But wait,then we could add 25 APU-s on one chip right?Hell no.

[juretrn]

"But can it play Crysis?"

[Misanthrope]

But think about it. That means in 2020, an APU would rival a high end GPU today (not necessarily a 290X/780Ti, but a 280x/770). It may play games on low that are released in 2020, but imagine all the games you will be able to max out from 2000-2015, on an APU. 

That's pretty crazy.

 

...Umm:

 

 

That's a game released on a similar timeframe (6 years ago) with the best APU AMD has to offer now, 1080p maxed out: 44FPS average. So if you look at THAT number for reference, what you're thinking about is not at all impressive.

Also the fact that AMD talks about the future is nice and good but can they survive for another 6 years without a good answer to Intel and Nvidia at the moment? On the GPU side they can at least still position their pricing structure better because of Nvidia's greed but if they don't have a REALLY fucking good answer to Maxwell which might come out for high end offerings as soon as 6 months from now, I don't even see that part of their business surviving 6 years.

[Vitalius]

-snip-

Oh. Well alrighty then. That's interesting and sad. They are basically saying "The APUs are going to keep up." 

Then again, all the shenanigans being played with graphical fidelity (say, if Ubisoft's "dumb down the PC version" becomes more wide spread) might mean that APU power could outpace graphical fidelity increases. That'd be interesting, but annoying and sad too. 

Then again, this is the 2nd, 3rd, & 4th sentence in the OP's quote: 

AMD states that by 2020 APUs will be 25x more efficient. Well, extrapolating that, efficient does not mean faster. And in fact they are talking about energy efficiency. 

So they could stay as powerful as they are now and just be more efficient, though being more energy efficient probably means they can shrink the die (as heat would then be less as well) which could lead to more performance by default.  So energy efficiency indirectly leads to performance boosts. Probably not 25x though. 

Oh well.

[TwistedDictator]

25x more efficient,but not 25x more powerful.

 

But wait,then we could add 25 APU-s on one chip right?Hell no.

 

This is the  stupidest thing I have heard. Making a APU 25x more efficient which will also mean increasing more power.

 

I have noticed a lot of people with 2K post or more but are completely beginners. It just mean they are super active, I guess.

[Ren]

This is referring to mobile APUs, which would probably have more to do with multithreading and on-die memory capabilities while maintaining battery life than actual performance.

 

We won't see anything serious come out of this for desktop APUs, but AMD definitely is trying their hardest to make energy-efficient products from now on, regardless of how good they perform. Look at the Athlon 5350, their best chip on the new AM1 socket. That thing is less powerful than Pentium processors from 2011. It's saddening to think about it like that but maybe it'll pay off. I just hope they don't ditch the midrange consumer and enthusiast market (seems like they already have..).

[cubercaleb]

APU's aren't that impressive. But they don't have any competition from Intel, well real competition.

 

Intel logic: Hey guys! You know those high end flagship $300-400 CPU's that professionals and gamers buy and pair up with high end gpu's? Lets throw on high end graphics to go with them that will never get used ever! hurr durr! It's a fantastic Idea!

 

Intel, why do you have to be so stupid....

[Nineshadow]

This is the  stupidest thing I have heard. Making a APU 25x more efficient which will also mean increasing more power.

 

I have noticed a lot of people with 2K post or more but are completely beginners. It just mean they are super active, I guess.

...

It's not even worth arguing...

OF COURSE THEY WILL GET MORE POWERFUL.But not 25x more powerful,oh no way that will happen.

So you pretty much said the same thing I said and you made me stupid for it.

Grats.

[deviant88]

"APU will be more efficient in six years" 

 

"Each 2-3 years a new smaller fabrication process should appear"

 

"Smaller fab proccess alongside new arhitecture allows better eficiency,less power,more performance"

 

AMD plays Mr.Obvious in this one.

 

TLDR: In 2020 you will choose that GeForce GTX 3900 or Radeon R9 990x series and a beefy cpu that can run 4K Ultra smooth or APU that still struggles to deliver 1080p@60fps medium-high?

 

Longer bla bla nonesense:

Why doesnt everyone face the truth,they will never be able to stick a high end gpu with 5-6 billion transitors alongside a high end CPU with another 1-2billion(proably double both numbers by 2020) in order to have SoC system on chip for gaming and other high performance demand.Unless they invent something else than silicon chips,or a new method to cool 4 square inch area of silicon chips running at high HZ and also reduce power while at it(mind blown).If such tech will exist my imagination alone tells me the competition will surely have too something up their sleeve which could again make APU's irrelevant.

 

APU are pretty pointless,unless we want our PC's in the future to be like consoles SoC that cant even run 1080p 30fps in the 4K era... id say id rather bash them for not release proper cpu's instead,and bash intel for their forced gpu's onto consumer that no one wants.I think they are good for the low end,mobile and HTPC style PC's.At best they would eat a small chunk of mid range hardware market cpu/gpu.I just dont understand why it feels like everyone is all over them apu's,they are weak,and have still old bulldozer cores a bit redisigned as far as i know.When they come up with something awesome <22nm new efficient ahitecture that performs a lot better ill give em credit.As far as ive seen its same old 32/28nm reinvented bulldozer chips with a few radeon cores.

 

Most interested im in "FreeSync" maybe my next GPU will be AMD,and looking forward for their new desktop cpu,other than that they are wasting their time with APU's,like everyone nowadays is intel CPu + whatever GPU choice for gaming and above.I hope they got themselves togheter and start design new cpu lol.

 

At least this is how i see the whole APU drama.

[Misanthrope]

Actually you do bring an interesting point: Why doesn't AMD just create a HUGE sized die for it's next socket? We've come pretty far in miniaturization for those itx boards and such so why not make a die size like double the size or more and fit truly great performing CPU along side GPU?

[Xorbot]

Daring claim: since AMD has to last until 2020.

[matin94]

Daring claim: since AMD has to last until 2020.

they probably will. we're not that far off 2020.

[Sonefiler]

 

"At AMD, new technology means opportunities for innovation, for new ways to improve energy efficiency and conservation. As a leader in the industry, AMD is commited to accelerating energy improvements in our processors."

 

"We've improved our processors' energy efficiency 10x since 2008, with a 60% reduction for energy consumption in mobile processing, and we're still going. Our goal is to accelerate APU energy efficiency 20x by 2020."

 

Looks like we're looking at a lot more efficient chips from AMD in the future? Thoughts?

[SeanBond]

Yeah well whatever you are aiming for please aim higher as nvidia is giving you a good spanking in that department right now. 

[Speedbird]

HAR HAR HAR!

Wait, you're serious?

HAR HAR HAR!

[LemonSpice]

from the company responsible for the FX-9590 and r9 290x

[Scouten]

good on them for trying atleast

[Bogica]

HAHAHAHAHHA AMD talking about consumption, that's a laugh (*cough* FX CPU *cough*)

[Enderman]

..........no.

[Kherm]

 

from the company responsible for the 9590 and r9 290x

Don't forget the R9 295X2

[LemonSpice]

Don't forget the R9 295X2

actually that was a much better card than the 290