Advanced Micro Devices has begun to send its next-generation development systems with new Fusion accelerated processing units to software developers. Some believe that the chipmaker started to prepare developers for the next-generation Jaguar low-power micro-architecture, other think that AMD initiated roll-out of its next-gen Steamroller high-performance architecture among game developers.
Johan Andersson, technical director of Frostbite at EA Digital Illusions CE (EA DICE), a Sweden-based computer game developer that is owned by Electronics Arts, has revealed a photo of a prototype PC board with installed microprocessor and a cooling solution, but without memory and storage. While the developer did not reveal what exactly the board was, he claimed that it was AMD’s “next generation APU” development system.
Since it is pretty late to send development samples of code-namedTrinity or Trinity 2.0 (Richland) accelerated processing units, the board probably features either code-named Kaveri (up to four high-performance Steamroller x86 cores, AMD Radeon HD 7000/GCN graphics core) or code-named Kabini (up to four low-power Jaguar x86 cores, AMD Radeon HD 7000/GCN graphics core) chips.
Since code-named Kabini chips are set to be launched in June, the probability that AMD started to send development systems to software designers is pretty high. However, some market observers believe that AMD has already started to provide game developers its next-gen Kaveri APUs so that to make them familiar with the next-generation high-performance x86 core. Since Kaveri chips are only supposed to hit the market in late 2013, it is unlikely that AMD already has products that feature enough performance to be sent to developers.
Keeping in mind that both Kaveri and Kabini feature a number of the so-called heterogeneous system architecture features (which enable x86 CPU cores and GPU cores to work more efficiently together), it is equally important for game developers to obtain both, especially keeping in mind the fact that HSA is heavily used in next-generation video game consoles, Sony PlayStation 4 “Orbis” and Xbox “Durango”.
AMD did not comment on the news-story.
Tags: AMD, Fusion, Kaveri, Kabini, Steamroller, Jaguar, x86, Playstation, Xbox Next, Orbis, Durango, Radeon, GCN
Comments currently:
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Discussion started: 03/04/13 07:49:52 PM
Latest comment: 03/06/13 07:27:37 AM
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AMD stated that it would have an important announcement on gaming later this year.... the plot thickens. I believe that Kaveri technology has already been well developed. I think that AMD are waiting to see Intel's Haswell offering before it fine tunes the final product and positions it in the market.
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Posted by: linuxlowdown
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Date: 03/04/13 07:49:52 PM]
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It certainly would be welcome news if it were Kaveri. It also wouldn't be surprising considering it and the ps4 cpu/gpu are all made on the same process and one would assume the same fab (GF 28nm fab 8 in NY.)
The disclosure that the ps4 APU uses GDDR5 for the entire system bus was such a huge revelation; AMD could be getting developers used to a myriad of possible scenarios wrt how they plan to transition a chip with similar functionality to other markets (desktop/laptop/tablet whatever).
AMD clearly has a radical design change coming (probably concerning HSA, aka it's not just more/newer cpu/gpu cores anymore but some kind of redefined spec) even if this does not pertain to it. While HSA is so incredibly lovely in theory, it will only work if the bandwidth is there and it will only be successful if supported by developers out of the gate (before nvidia or intel do something similar).
The PS4 shows there are ways to solve the bandwidth problem. While the implementation may be different for the pc ecosystem, this signifies good faith that they may actually pull this damn thing off...if they get enough support from developers. This may be the start of that.
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Posted by: turtle
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Date: 03/05/13 12:38:34 AM]
+ expand thread (3 answers)
- collapse thread
AMD's Kaveri onwards APU's is not the way most people thinks like executing normal x86 programs on the GPU, instead it basically solves the current bottlenecks in a GPGPU computing scenario like internal data sharing,CPU dependencies for GPU to compute etc. Next generation of AMD's kaveri can make a seamless execution of data on both the CPU and GPU but needs the application support to do so. The biggest market AMD immediately gets is on the GPGPU server business that companies gets a super powerful all in one chip(CPU + GPU) that can can execute over a teraflops of processing power consuming a little energy and companies don't need to source separate CPUs and GPUs, making the whole server simple,efficient and consumes very little power thanks to AMD's HSA. AMDs next genration true heterogeneous APU's is a big threat to both nVidia and Intel, especially nvidia because of there lack of a x86 CPU and they have to depend CPU's from AMD and intel for their GPU sales. Intel's problem is their lack of a compute oriented GPU and they are totally incomparably behind AMD GPUs when its comes to GPGPU compute.when more and more software developers optimises and develops apps for AMD's HSA concept architecture, slowly apps with HSA capability for destops and even tablets arrives. At that time it would be a totally different computing era. Change we need...
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Posted by: tks
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Date: 03/05/13 01:47:36 AM]
I understand that the progress of HSA in Steamroller is the unified memory between CPU and GPU. The next architectural update in 2014 - Excavator - should see the CPU offload some computation onto the GPU without requiring the special coding hooks to make it happen. You could imagine that it won't perform as well as having optimised code but nonetheless, every compute intense application should see a performance boost.
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Posted by: linuxlowdown
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Date: 03/05/13 03:14:53 AM]
you were right. News came out today the new APU will support GDDR5. Good call!
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Posted by: gamoniac
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Date: 03/05/13 10:02:26 AM]
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Software development is so far behind the current hardware that it's a disgrace. Even the Windoze O/Ss are lightyears behind the hardware. Most of the current software is poorly hacked 32-bit crap ported to 64-bit. Don't expect any serious system performance increases until the software developers get off their arses and start delivering decent software.
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Posted by: beenthere
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Date: 03/05/13 07:28:47 AM]
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Something like...PS4?
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Posted by: TAViX
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Date: 03/05/13 09:56:03 AM]
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Bolt is an STL inspired template library, abstracting and wrapping the OpenCL™ API and enabling you to program naturally in C++; in many cases without the need to write either OpenCL™ API code or OpenCL™ kernels!
http://blogs.amd.com/deve...n-for-your-c-application/
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Posted by: T9000
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Date: 03/05/13 04:15:40 PM]
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