HSA 1.0 Specification Released

Opcode · March 18, 2015

Raw horsepower has always been important measuring stick for performance of mobile devices and PCs, but it’s also important to determine whether applications are written to exploit all the available hardware features.

Through a new specification announced on Monday, the Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) Foundation wants to provide a common framework through which developers can write an application once and then run it across servers, mobile devices, gaming consoles, appliances and PCs running on different processors.

The HSA 1.0 specification provides underlying guidelines so applications can also effectively harness the joint computing power of processing units available in computing devices. It is the first specification released by the HSA Foundation since it was established in 2012.

The goal of HSA 1.0 is to not only ensure programs run faster, but also more power-efficiently. Some applications, like graphics software, can consume a lot of power, and balancing processing across GPUs, CPUs and specialized chips could help extend battery life on devices.

Makes you wonder if Godavari will come with full HSA 1.0 support. Which seems like a logical reason to refresh Kaveri.

HalGameGuru · March 18, 2015

I've been wondering for a while if HSA was always in the back of AMD's mind for rationalizing the massive tradeoffs in the bulldozer architecture. How effective would even the APUs be, and how fast, if the iGPU could be integrated into what is notionally the weakest parts of the CPU architecture? All that GPU horsepower being siphoned directly into CPU performance. All that advanced and meticulous math being shunted on the fly between bespoke CPU cores and GPU pipelines. If HSA had come before bulldozer, how bad would it have seemed?

Dabombinable · March 18, 2015

If devices actually had decent batteries this standard would be even better. As it is my old Core Duo T2600 laptop has over 5 hours battery life, and that's without its secondary 6 cell. Though if HSA 1.0 works on old devices, I should see at least another half an hour added to the overall battery life.

Berkut99 · March 18, 2015

Source

Makes you wonder if Godavari will come with full HSA 1.0 support. Which seems like a logical reason to refresh Kaveri.

Wasn't Kaveri sold on the idea of full HSA support though? Or would there be something preventing an APU like the 7850 from meeting the HSA 1.0 specification via driver/BIOS updates? Admittedly HSA has been a long time coming, I just hope that there hasn't been too much of a revision on what clears as HSA-compliant hardware.