Who Controls the User Experience? AMD’s Carrizo Thoroughly Tested
by Ian Cutress on February 4, 2016 8:00 AM ESTAMD’s Industry Problem
A significant number of small form factor and portable devices have been sold since the start of the century - this includes smartphones, tablets, laptops, mini-PCs and custom embedded designs. Each of these markets is separated by numerous facets: price, performance, mobility, industrial design, application, power consumption, battery life, style, marketing and regional influences. At the heart of all these applications is the CPU that takes input, performs logic, and provides output dependent on both the nature of the device and the interactions made. Both the markets for the devices, and the effort placed into manufacturing the processors, is large and complicated. As a result we have several multi-national and worldwide companies hiring hundreds or thousands of engineers and investing billions of dollars each year into processor development, design, fabrication and implementation. These companies, either by developing their own intellectual property (IP) or licensing then modifying other IP, aim to make their own unique products with elements that differentiate them from everyone else. The goal is to then distribute and sell, so their products end up in billions of devices worldwide.
The market for these devices is several hundreds of billions of dollars every year, and thus to say competition is fierce is somewhat of an understatement. There are several layers between designing a processor and the final product, namely marketing the processor, integrating a relationship with an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to create a platform in which the processor is applicable, finding an entity that will sell the platform under their name, and then having the resources (distribution, marketing) to the end of the chain in order to get the devices into the hands of the end user (or enterprise client). This level of chain complexity is not unique to the technology industry and is a fairly well established route for many industries, although some take a more direct approach and keep each stage in house, designing the IP and device before distribution (Samsung smartphones) or handling distribution internally (Tesla motors).
In all the industries that use semiconductors however, the fate of the processor, especially in terms of perception and integration, is often a result of what happens at the end of the line. If a user, in this case either an end user or a corporate client investing millions into a platform, tries multiple products with the same processor but has a bad experience, they will typically relate the negativity and ultimately their purchase decision towards both the device manufacturer and the manufacturer of the processor. Thus it tends to be in the best interest of all parties concerned that they develop devices suitable for the end user in question and avoid negative feedback in order to develop market share, recoup investment in research and design, and then generate a profit for the company, the shareholders, and potential future platforms. Unfortunately, with many industries suffering a race-to-the-bottom, cheap designs often win due to budgetary constraints, which then provides a bad user experience, giving a negative feedback loop until the technology moves from ‘bearable’ to ‘suitable’.
Enter Carrizo
One such platform that was released in 2015 is that of AMDs Carrizo APU (accelerated processor unit). The Carrizo design is the fourth generation of the Bulldozer architecture, originally released in 2011. The base design of the microarchitecture is different to the classical design of a processor - at a high level, rather than one core having one logic pipeline sharing one scheduler, one integer calculation port and one floating point calculation port resulting in one thread per core, we get a compute module with two logic pipelines sharing two schedulers, two integer calculation ports and only one floating point pipeline for two threads per module (although the concept of a module has been migrated to that of a dual core segment). With the idea that the floating point pipeline is being used infrequently in modern software and compilers, sharing one between two aims to save die area, cost, and additional optimizations therein.
The deeper reasons for this design lie in typical operating system dynamics - the majority of logic operations involving non-mathematical interpretations are integer based, and thus an optimization of the classical core design can result in the resources and die area that would normally be used for a standard core design to be focused on other more critical operations. This is not new, as we have had IP blocks in both the desktop and mobile space that have shared silicon resources, such as video decode codecs sharing pipelines, or hybrid memory controllers covering two memory types, to save die area but enable both features in the market at once.
While interesting in the initial concept, the launch of Bulldozer was muted due to its single threaded performance compared to that of AMD’s previous generation product as well as AMD’s direct competitor, Intel, whose products could ultimately process a higher number of instructions per clock per thread. This was countered by AMD offering more cores for the same die area, improving multithreaded performance for high workload throughput, but other issues plagued the launch. AMD also ran at higher frequencies to narrow the performance deficit, and at higher frequencies, the voltage required to maintain those frequencies related in a higher power consumption compared to the competition. This was a problem for AMD as Intel started to pull ahead on processor manufacturing technology taking advantage of lower operating voltages, especially in mobile devices.
Also, AMD had an issue with operating system support. Due to the shared resource module design of the processor, Microsoft Windows 7 (the latest at the time) had trouble distinguishing between modules and threads, often failing to allocate resources to the most suitable module at runtime. In some situations, it would cause two threads would run on a single core, with the other cores being idle. This latter issue was fixed via an optional update and in future versions of Microsoft Windows but still resulted in multiple modules being on 'active duty', affecting power consumption.
As a result, despite the innovative design, AMDs level of success was determined by the ecosystem, which was rather unforgiving in both the short and long term. The obvious example is in platforms where power consumption is directly related to battery life, and maintaining a level of performance required for those platforms is always a balance in managing battery concerns. Ultimately the price of the platform is also a consideration, and along with historical trends from AMD, in order to function this space as a viable alternative, AMD had to use aggressive pricing and adjust the platforms focus, potentially reducing profit margins, affecting future developments and shareholder return, and subsequently investment.
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ncsaephanh - Monday, February 8, 2016 - link
Can you guys do a podcast on this article? Would love to hear you guys discuss it and also answer questions/comments on the article.ET - Monday, February 8, 2016 - link
Nice to see a Carrizo article finally, although it's rather disappointing, for example because only single channel was tested.You talked about solutions, here's how I see what AMD and publications like Anandtech need to do (I'm using Carrizo as an example, but it's a lesson for the future):
AMD: When Carrizo is available in a laptop, send one to Anandtech. Immediately. If you have a prototype before that, send that. We want to learn about the chip as quickly as possible, not have to wait months looking for nuggets of information on the web.
Anandtech: Benchmark the hell out of the laptop. If there's single channel with a dual channel option, show a comparative benchmark, but concentrate on dual. We're enthusiasts, we'll install a second DIMM to get better performance. For benchmarks, basic system performance and a plethora of games, and comparison to Intel, plus battery life. Deep dives are nice, but I'd rather have a quick overview of what the system is suitable for, and what kind of gaming it can achieve.
AMD: Desktop first! I know that laptops are where the money is, but desktop is where the enthusiasts are, and if your chip is worth anything, fans and publications like Anandtech will pair it with the fastest memory, configure it with the best TDP, and see what it's really capable of. OEM limitations will not get in the way.
AMD: Fans first! That's pretty much a repeat of the previous point, but AMD, you still have fans, and they are your best customers, not the OEM's or the clueless general public. If you make something that you think is good and you let your fans learn of it and get hold of it, they will tell you what they think and they will tell others. If you leave them in the dark, they will end up losing their enthusiasm.
Anandtech: Follow up on AMD stuff. It may be hard to get the latest AMD chips if AMD isn't helping, but at least let us know you're on it. An occasional news item telling us that you've tried to get some laptops for testing or whatnot will tell us that you're on it, and hopefully shame AMD and the OEM's enough to get a move on.
Personally, I would likely have bought a Carrizo system if there was one of similar size to my old Thinkpad X120e (which I still use, even if I'm not that happy with its speed). I might have bought a Carrizo for my HTPC if I could and I knew it provided decent enough performance.
sofocle10000 - Monday, February 8, 2016 - link
I just signed in to state that Asus had nice business/multimedia notebooks (I used N60DP/N56DP and I actually use an N551ZU - all based on AMD), and although my actual N551ZU is only based on the top of the line Kaveri, it is an exceptional machine for normal use/light gaming...Customers play a big part in the AMD problem, but if there were more incentives (take my current N551ZU, which is a great notebook for ~750-850 $, and if configured with an SSD, you could hardly tell it apart most of the time from the Intel i5H/i7QH + GTX 950M variants), not only a great price, but a better build quality, display, sound system the the market average, some of them would actually pay more attention to the AMD.
The OEM's should have a more defined bottom line for the AMD notebooks - were dual channel memory and a better display, a hybrid SSHD or a SSD are a must, especially for the models in the upper part of the price range 400-700 $...
dragosmp - Monday, February 8, 2016 - link
@Ian - great article, really a good example of investigative journalism. I'm happy this kind of articles are being revived, but being a reader of Tom's I see where this may be coming from.As the "guy that says what laptop/phone to buy" to my family and friends I have to say your findings and conclusions speak to me very clearly - AMD has a system-problem, not so much a CPU-problem (though some may argue differently). AMD chips are fed into cheap looking/feeling PCs with far too many corners cut, but this is how under 700$ market looks like. Could AMD's OEMs sell a 600$ 13" PC to compete with the CoreM UX305? I think not, simply because AMD's CPUs (who consume more) need thicker chassis with stronger cooling and a beefier battery and that costs money - so there's less available for the UX; even if the OEM accepted lower margins on the AMD PC, or AMD to sell the CPU at bargain prices, that design compared to the UX305 would be thicker and likely noisier.
If Zen is good, I could see it in a Mac as Apple has a history of doing good software. Or AMD should build their own surface line and set an example of what can be done.
Gunbuster - Monday, February 8, 2016 - link
People buy the cheapest $300 laptop they can get or something premium. Who are they targeting with these mid-rangers?farmergann - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
Wife uses her Y700 for school and a few hours of photo editing every week. Exactly what she wanted. This article did a worthless job of representing the actual Y700 w/fx8800p you can pick up at Best Buy for $665-830. Everything is fantastic about it save for the TB HDD which I immediately replaced with a Samsung 850 Pro I had laying around.Somehow, this "investigative" nonsense missed the fact the U.S. Y700 has a superb little IPS screen with Freesync to go along with a surprisingly (truly) good sound system and -despite the author's claim- dual channel ram. Just for grins I've played BF3 and a few other games - none of which had issues. Great low/mid-range laptop with plenty of chops.
every1hasaids - Tuesday, February 9, 2016 - link
Nope, the US model is absolute garbage. They skimped on the VRMs and the laptop subsequently throttles in moderately intensive CPU tasks. Example, try running Cities: Skylines with a decent sized city and tell me that it doesn't stutter after about 20 seconds of play and every 5 seconds or so after that. The stutters which coincide with the CPU being utilized near 100% and the frequency dropping per resource monitor and Afterburner all the way down to 1.6ghz... Also I don't know what you're talking about with the Freesync capability, I could not get it to work after reading elsewhere that it may be possible.The main issue with a product like the Y700 is that the intel variant is only a couple hundred bucks more and you get a genuine quad core with HT, dual channel DDR4-2133 and comparable discreet graphics. Oh, and it has no trouble with voltage supply. Not to mention that the m.2 interface is PCI-E as opposed to SATA on the AMD model. It just doesn't make sense to purchase a far inferior product for only $200 less at the price point these models occupy.
farmergann - Thursday, February 11, 2016 - link
Cities: Skylines? LOL, that's about as rich as whining about Starcraft 2 performance on an FX Octacore - what were you expecting exactly? For people not looking to shove a laughably CPU bound title down a 35W laptop's throat, the FX8800p with user installed SSD is a far better choice, sorry guy.Peichen - Monday, February 8, 2016 - link
Wow, that's wasting a lot of time and words reviewing a product no one will buy. AMD needs to exist to keep the cheap Intel stuff dirt cheap but I don't feel anyone should waste time reviewing AMD CPU products. 10 years of marketing hype and under-delivery means AMD is actually slower than ever compares with Intel.I bought 2 AMD CPU over the last 6/7 years and frankly I wish I spend more buying Intel because I wouldn't have to spend time and money as often upgrading the CPU.
Danvelopment - Monday, February 8, 2016 - link
The way I see it, AMD needs to stop comparing themselves with themselves and needs to compare themselves with the competition. People don't understand the improvements if they aren't involved with the predecessor.They produce a reasonable product that performs at 60-80% of the competition at 50% of the price.
Good designs are produced for the competition, that could fundamentally have their parts, and they're losing on the design front.
And strangely, for similar products the AMD machines are the same cost, even though the difference is the chip (at halfish the price).
Can they not work to develop an easier transition method for OEM's to produce this-or-that designs that allow end users to pick AMD or Intel during the selection process. Tier them like Dell does for the various Intel processors but have them consistently show up as the cheapest option $100 off a $500 laptop is a decent drop and if the chip and PCB is $150 cheaper to produce the OEM still wins).
Differentiating the product creates too many variables people don't understand, and creates the issue above, CPU brand aversion on entire product stacks with no common ground.
I'd say take a long, hard look at current machines, and develop a method of getting their chips into them as an option, without OEMs designing a product from the ground up.
I'd certainly consider AMD if I could just select it as an option that knocks $100 off on the low cost tier laptop in my workplace.