AMD Prepares ‘Bristol Ridge’ APU (Carrizo) For Desktop

[Opcode]

Source

 

AMD is developing is code-named “Bristol Ridge” APU, which will sport four “Excavator” cores (two dual-core modules), AMD Radeon graphics processing unit with 512 stream processors (based on the GCN 1.2 or more advanced architecture), DDR4 memory controller and heterogeneous system architecture features. The chip is set to be made using 28nm fabrication process and will have up to 95W TDP. The accelerated processing unit is, basically, a new version of AMD’s “Carrizo” optimized for operation at high clock-rates. The “Bristol Ridge” APUs will offer considerably higher performance than “Carrizo” thanks to higher frequencies, improved memory bandwidth and other optimizations. Unfortunately, the new chips will become available only in the third quarter of 2016.

 

[TacticlTwinkie]

Q3 2016? Is that right? A year and a half away? That's an awful long time to wait.

[The Crazed Child]

Q3 2016? Is that right? A year and a half away? That's an awful long time to wait.

same, that's like the same time as Zen, way too long to wait especially considering they have the architecture at their fingertips

[qwertywarrior]

will become available only in the third quarter of 2016

 

 

.......................................LOL WUT

[Guest Kloaked]

Whether or not the date is correct, when are they going to actually up the ante in CPU performance? Ugh.

[nikohd]

Can;t wait Will be building a new PC this coming Feb.

[PortentousLad]

2016 and 28nm?

What's going on?

[ComradeHX]

2016 and 28nm?

What's going on?

[qwertywarrior]

2016 and 28nm?

What's going on?

by then intel will be using 10nm ... lol

there has to be something wrong here

[BobbyG2]

I have a suspicion 2016 was a mistake. 2015 is more believable.

[Guest Strangerbob]

ye, its def 2015...  its a mistake

[Khvarrioiren]

I really don't think AMD would waste perfectly good wafers on 28nm products in goddamn 2016.

[LukaP]

its definitely a mistake, or AMD just became one big mistake

[Mister Snow]

It can't be 2016. There is no reason to release a 28nm product that has Excavator cores while at the same time they will be releasing Zen on 14nm. In that time frame they should be using Zen for APUs, not ancient architecture that they are desperately trying to replace. 

[Opcode]

by then intel will be using 10nm ... lol

there has to be something wrong here

It depends on how you look at it. I think AMD is exhausting their resources into these bigger projects (Pirate Islands, Zen, K12) knowingly that it's not time yet for heterogeneous computing to take over the consumer market. Lisa Su knows this and thus why I think shes been light on her feet with talking about APU's. This refresh of Kaveri with existing Carrizo technologies could make up an alternative budget oriented chip for their Zen launch. The fact that it's on a mature process like 28nm will also help keep costs down. Undoubtedly APU's are what is keeping AMD afloat right now but I imagine most of that revenue comes from the custom and low power silicon industry (consoles, embedded, etc). Among desktop consumers I personally don't think they are all that popular. I get the feeling that Lisa Su knows this and is redirecting the company away from consumer APU's to go back to building straight performance consumer CPU's. I've spotted more evidence of AMD returning to the CPU market on one of their lead designers LinkedIn profile.

 

Currently, I am responsible for the RF-macros at Memory Controller and Instruction Fetch Unit for Bulldozer with AMD 14nm FIN-FET Technology.

 

Which also means they could be likely recycling Bulldozer for Zen (explains the speculation of their flagship being an 8 core).

[patrickjp93]

Which also means they could be likely recycling Bulldozer for Zen (explains the speculation of their flagship being an 8 core).

Alternatively it's AMD's chip for Nintendo's late 2015 console. If Keller is stupid enough to recycle Excavator for Zen, great improvement that it is, then no one will have faith in AMD any more.

[Opcode]

Alternatively it's AMD's chip for Nintendo's late 2015 console. If Keller is stupid enough to recycle Excavator for Zen, great improvement that it is, then no one will have faith in AMD any more.

Highly unlikely as Nintendo's APU is a new design win for AMD. So more than likely Skybridge or AMD's octa core Cortex-A57. Recycling the architecture design isn't necessarily a bad thing. Bulldozer had a lot potential and still does. It's just simply a horribly optimized architecture as it sits. Zen will likely be a much bigger core with them altering it to a SMT design (8 cores 16 threads). Bulldozer was something that needed Jim Keller to step in and fix. All we can do is hope under his leadership that he fixes all of the problems the architecture has meanwhile sprinkling on his Athlon 64 charm.

[patrickjp93]

Highly unlikely as Nintendo's APU is a new design win for AMD. So more than likely Skybridge or AMD's octa core Cortex-A57. Recycling the architecture design isn't necessarily a bad thing. Bulldozer had a lot potential and still does. It's just simply a horribly optimized architecture as it sits. Zen will likely be a much bigger core with them altering it to a SMT design (8 cores 16 threads). Bulldozer was something that needed Jim Keller to step in and fix. All we can do is hope under his leadership that he fixes all of the problems that the architecture has meanwhile sprinkling on his Athlon 64 charm.

Not to raise the already sky high expectations, but he also needs to now aim for IBM's Power 9s. Intel got caught with its pants down by the Power 8 chips. If they want server design wins, Power 8 is the current King of the hill for performance and perf/watt.

[Opcode]

Not to raise the already sky high expectations, but he also needs to now aim for IBM's Power 9s. Intel got caught with its pants down by the Power 8 chips. If they want server design wins, Power 8 is the current King of the hill for performance and perf/watt.

Zen I think would be slated for the consumer market and some servers. K12 is what will hit the server industry. Which is suppose to be miles faster than Zen. Tho we won't know specifics until we see it in action.

[vm'N]

Not to raise the already sky high expectations, but he also needs to now aim for IBM's Power 9s. Intel got caught with its pants down by the Power 8 chips. If they want server design wins, Power 8 is the current King of the hill for performance and perf/watt.

Does zen have to compete against the power8 architecture?

No, again it is two seperate architectures for seperate market-segments.

I doubt power8 hold the performance/watt in overall workloads.

[vm'N]

Zen I think would be slated for the consumer market and some servers. K12 is what will hit the server industry. Which is suppose to be miles faster than Zen. Tho we won't know specifics until we see it in action.

Zen will be a semi-costum design.

I haven't heard any rumours that K12 would be miles faster than zen, would you mind sharing your source?

[Opcode]

Zen will be a semi-costum design.

I haven't heard any rumours that K12 would be miles faster than zen, would you mind sharing your source?

You can probably Google about a million of them. K12 is being designed to take over the x86 server ecosystem or at least AMD hopes.

[patrickjp93]

Does zen have to compete against the power8 architecture?

No, again it is two seperate architectures for seperate market-segments.

I doubt power8 hold the performance/watt in overall workloads.

It's every workload from compute to transactions to processing. At 5GHz the 12-core Power 8 flagship consumes only 80 watts and has double the performance of the IB flagship E7 Xeon in almost all of these areas.

Also, Intel makes the same x86 architecture span every segment, and for all the hype about the custom ARM cores, I sorely doubt we're going to see such a massive performance jump as to threaten both Intel and Power 8/9 by the end of 2016.

[KamiKatze]

Yaaaaaay APUs... who cares, are there any news about their proper CPU comeback?

[LukaP]

Yaaaaaay APUs... who cares, are there any news about their proper CPU comeback?

2016, codename Zen, 14nm FinFET+, SMT, competes with intel, 8 core parts.