AMD's Graphics Core Next Preview: AMD's New GPU, Architected For Compute
by Ryan Smith on December 21, 2011 9:38 PM ESTWe’ve just returned from sunny Bellevue, Washington, where AMD held their first Fusion Developer Summit (AFDS). As with other technical conferences of this nature such as NVIDIA’s GTC and Intel’s IDF, AFDS is a chance for AMD to reach out to developers to prepare them for future products and to receive feedback in turn. While AMD can make powerful hardware it’s ultimately the software that runs on it that drives sales, so it’s important for them to reach out to developers to ensure that such software is being made.
AFDS 2011 served as a focal point for several different things going on at AMD. At its broadest, it was a launch event for Llano, AMD’s first mainstream Fusion APU that launched at the start of the week. AMD has invested the future of the company into APUs, and not just for graphical purposes but for compute purposes too. So Llano is a big deal for the company even though it’s only a taste of what’s to come.
The second purpose of course was to provide sessions for developers to learn more about how to utilize AMD’s GPUs for compute and graphics tasks. Microsoft, Acceleware, Adobe, academic researchers, and others were on hand to provide talks on how they’re using GPUs in current and future projects.
The final purpose – and what is going to be most interesting to most outside observers – was to prepare developers for what’s coming down the pipe. AMD has big plans for the future and it’s important to get developers involved as soon as is reasonably possible so that they’re ready to use AMD’s future technologies when they launch. Over the next few days we’ll talk about a couple of different things AMD is working on, and today we’ll start with the first and most exciting project: AMD Graphics Core Next.
Graphics Core Next (GCN) is the architectural basis for AMD’s future GPUs, both for discrete products and for GPUs integrated with CPUs as part of AMD’s APU products. AMD will be instituting a major overhaul of its traditional GPU architecture for future generation products in order to meet the direction of the market and where they want to go with their GPUs in the future.
While graphics performance and features have been and will continue to be important aspects of a GPU’s design, AMD and the rest of the market have been moving towards further exploiting the compute capabilities of GPUs, which in the right circumstances are capable of being utilized as massive parallel processors that can complete a number of tasks in the fraction of the time as a highly generalized CPU. Since the introduction of shader-capable GPUs in 2002, GPUs have slowly evolved to become more generalized so that their resources can be used for more than just graphics. AMD’s most recent shift was with their VLIW4 architecture with Cayman late last year; now they’re looking to make their biggest leap yet with GCN.
GCN at its core is the basis of a GPU that performs well at both graphical and computing tasks. AMD has stretched their traditional VLIW architecture as far as they reasonably can for computing purposes, and as more developers get on board for GPU computing a clean break is needed in order to build a better performing GPU to meet their needs. This is in essence AMD’s Fermi: a new architecture and a radical overhaul to make a GPU that is as monstrous at computing as it is at graphics. And this is the story of the architecture that AMD will be building to make it happen.
Finally, it should be noted that the theme of AFDS 2011 was heterogeneous computing, as it has become AMD’s focus to get developers to develop heterogeneous applications that effectively utilize both AMD’s CPUs and AMD’s GPUs. Ostensibly AFDS is a conference about GPU computing, but AMD’s true strength is not their CPU side or their GPU side, it’s the combination of the two. Bulldozer will be the first half of AMD’s future APUs, while GCN will be the other half.
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Targon - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
With Windows 7 having a 80 percent(or higher at this point) install base being 64 bit, it will take until late 2013 before we see the majority of the old 32 bit install base being phased out in the home computer market(as people replace their computers at the four-five year mark). Until then, application developers have to expect that they MUST support both 32 and 64 bit platforms. Lowest common denominator for your user base is what developers generally have to compile for.DanNeely - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
I assume you're using the steam hardware survey since they're showing 4:1. Unfortunately steam's not a good source for broad market stats since it excludes the low end boxes bought by non-gamers and corporate boxes. Surveys that capture these numbers only show a 2:1ish ratio for win7 64:32.Beyond that, it's the people with the low end 32bit boxes that will keep their old clunkers the longest. You're also underestimating how long support for legacy OSes will continue despite their very small market shares. Firefox 4 still runs on win2k, despite it's market share having been negligible for several years and being officially out of support for almost a year.
Excepting apps that actually can benefit from going 64bit I expect most to stay 32bit for at least the next 5 years.
swaaye - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
Indeed. In the non-gamer realm, I know of people happy with 2003 Pentium 4s and Athlon XPs yet. I have no doubt that there are many people with even older hardware. This stuff tends to stick around until the PCs die and the owner is told it's not worth the money to upgrade. Fear of change and the simple lack of a true need to upgrade is the reason.swaaye - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
Oops. I meant that the owner is told it's not worth the money to fix the dead old hardware. But they do also tend to ask about upgrading their ancient box too.Randomblame - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
I was at office max the other day and a guy was screaming at a sales rep because they didn't carry any serial mice that supported his rig. I don't mean ps2 either. He was carrying around a busted up brown serial mouse. He said his rig came with windows 95 but last year he upgraded it to windows 98. Seriously. This is the world we live in.EJ257 - Saturday, June 18, 2011 - link
I still have my Compaq (that came with Win95 which I upgraded to win98) running on a Pentium 133 with 32MB of EDO RAM and a 2.1GB HDD. Its sitting ilde in my basement collecting dust at the moment. :DOperandi - Sunday, June 19, 2011 - link
But Steam is good representation of those who could benefit from and will ultimately will be using these future technologies, professionals and enthusiasts. Such is always the way of high-end computing.softdrinkviking - Monday, June 20, 2011 - link
exactly. people still running XP are probably not the target market for developers because if they are so slow on the uptake of new technology, it would follow that they are also relatively uninterested in other new programs.Targon - Sunday, June 19, 2011 - link
Nope, I am going on what my customers have and are upgrading to. If you BUY a machine with Windows 7 on it, 9 out of 10 have Windows 7 64 bit on them. Those that have 32 bit are either the very low-end machines with only 1GB of RAM(yes, they still sell those), or they are the result of doing an upgrade from Windows Vista 32 bit.That is the thing about 64 bit, people don't "go to 64 bit" at this point, they get a new computer that comes with 64 bit Windows on it. The number of people who do an upgrade on an older machine has dropped, since those who would have done the upgrade did that back in 2009 and early 2010 when Windows 7 first came out.
Now, the real benefit to 64 bit isn't as much about the software as it is about how much RAM the machine comes with. If you get a machine with 4GB of RAM, you want 64 bit, just so you don't lose memory due to the 4GB limit on 32 bit Windows, and hardware mapping below the 4GB mark.
A part of this is also about the area you live in, and how much money there is going around. I live in an area where it is the norm to pay over $8 per person for lunch at a deli, and as a result, the value of the dollar isn't as high. Spending $20/day just on lunch and minor expenses is the norm, so with that in mind, replacing a computer every 4-5 years, even for the non-technical is NORMAL. The last time I encountered Windows 95 or 98 was around 6 years ago.
UrQuan3 - Thursday, June 23, 2011 - link
There is a little more benefit. A few of us were doing an internal benchmark of our software using VStudio 2010 and all the random hardware we have around. 32bit, 32bit + SSE2, and 64bit + SSE2. We found across the board, 64bit is about 5-10% than 32bit + SSE2 and 5-20% faster than basic x86.However, a 64bit OS gave no benefit (or penalty) for a 32bit program. The same 32bit software ran the same speed on XP32, XP64, Vista32, Vista64, and 7-64.