AMD’s Carrizo-L APUs Unveiled: 12-25W Quad Core Puma+
by Ian Cutress on May 12, 2015 5:23 AM EST
One of the important press releases that came out as a result of the AMD Financial Analyst Day has been some insights into how AMD is approaching the Carrizo and Carrizo-L platform. Have a read of Ryan’s round up of the Financial Analyst Day, which included some broad details about Zen and the big x86 cores, but Carrizo and Carrizo-L focus on AMD’s mobile strategy as well as describing the next iterations of the Bulldozer architecture (Excavator) and the Cat family of low power SoCs (Puma+). We covered some of AMD’s releases on Carrizo back in February, but despite the similar name Carrizo-L functions for a slightly different market by virtue of the different architecture.
Carrizo-L features ‘Puma+’, which by virtue of the naming scheme suggests an updated version of Puma which was seen in Beema. What the ‘plus’ part of the name means has not been disclosed, as both Puma and Puma+ are reported to be 28nm, but chances are that the design has attacked the low hanging fruit in the processor design, rather than purely just a frequency bump. Carrizo-L will be advertised under the new ‘AMD 7000 Series’ APUs, featuring up to four low power separate cores up to 2.5GHz, up to 25W and up to DDR3-1866 support. These are aimed square at the Atom ecosystem within a similar power budget.
| AMD Carrizo-L | |||||
| A8-7410 | A6-7310 | A4-7210 | E2-7110 | E1-7010 | |
| Cores / Threads | 4 / 4 | 4 / 4 | 4 / 4 | 4 / 4 | 2 / 2 |
| CPU Frequency | Up to 2.5 GHz | Up to 2.4 GHz | Up to 2.2 GHz | Up to 1.8 GHz | Up to 1.5 GHz |
| TDP | 12-25W | 12-25W | 12-25W | 12-15W | 10W |
| L2 Cache | 2MB | 2MB | 2MB | 2MB | 1MB |
| DRAM Frequency | DDR3L-1866 | DDR3L-1600 | DDR3L-1600 | DDR3L-1600 | DDR3L-1333 |
| Radeon Graphics | R5 | R4 | R3 | 'Radeon' | 'Radeon' |
| Streaming Processors | 128 ? | 128 ? | 128 ? | 128 ? | 128 ? |
| GPU Frequency | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown |
AMD is stating that these APUs are currently available in Greater China already with a global rollout commencing in due course. All APUs are listed with AMD Radeon graphics, although the Rx number has no indication as to the streaming processors in the graphics part – a similar situation happened with Beema, and all those parts came with 128 SPs, differing only in frequency which is likely the case here. The SoC design also ensures all the IO is onboard, including an AMD Secure Processor, which for Puma was a Cortex-A5 supporting ARM TrustZone. It is likely that Carrizo-L also uses only a single memory channel, similar to Beema.
One of the more interesting elements is that Carrizo and Carrizo-L will share a socket, known as FP4. This means the processors are pin compatible, and what we know about Carrizo at this point suggests that both segments will play within the same sort of power budget (10-25W vs 15-35W). This allows OEMs to build two designs with almost identical hardware under the hood except for the SoC – would you prefer a single/dual Excavator design, or a faster frequency quad-core Puma+ design? There also leaves scope for differential integrated graphics performance, as mobile Kaveri up to 25W had up to 384 SPs or 3x what we are expecting with Carrizo-L. A lot of the performance metrics in this part will be down to binning the various designs, which adjusts the cost.
At some point we will source a Carrizo-L low-power notebook in order to test the hardware – it would be an interesting data point to get a corresponding Carrizo design as well.
Source: AMD
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Novacius - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
Carrizo (not Carrizo-L) will very likely have Delta Color Compression. It's GCN 1.2/v3.SleepyFE - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
I'm not gonna be back here, so listen well. I shall say this only once. You are part of the problem with public perception by nagging AMD for making low cost parts. As you describe in the end (i assume your view is the same). When someone buys a weak AMD CPU it's AMD's fault, but when they buy from Intel it's his/her own fault. How does that make sense? If you bought low end AMD CPU try a better one next time, it will cost less then an i5 from Intel. That's what i did, and it still runs without problems.yannigr2 - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
Not being back here again means that you would not realize how much you misunderstood what I posted. This is a nice way to throw BS all over the place and never realize it. A stupid and arrogant approach of the internet.I am really happy from my unlocked 445, my main 1055 and the 3850 in the HTPC, thank you very much.
When you buy the cheap firm's product and you are disappointed, you blame the cheap firm and you never buy again from the cheap firm. When you buy from the premium brand and you are not satisfied, there is a big chance you will buy again from the premium brand, this time a more expensive product, because most of the others will tell you that the premium brand in this case, cpu performance, is the only option you have.
JHS28677 - Tuesday, May 19, 2015 - link
It seems to me that he has a perfect understanding of what you said. Essentially what you said was:If I you buy from AMD and you are disappointed then you blame AMD and buy from Intel.
If you buy from Intel and you are disappointed the you blame yourself and buy from Intel again.
Personally, If I buy from AMD and I am disappointed, I buy a faster, more powerful chip from AMD. If I buy from Intel and I am disappointed, I buy from AMD. I then pocket the huge savings.
Intel braggs a lot as to how much better they are than AMD. I find that Intel is very expensive compared to AMD. So, if I am dissatisfied with intel, I just buy a faster, more powerful AMD processor and put the difference in my pocket.
I have been very happy with the AMD APU's and find that the Intel comparable products are lackluster and grossly more expensive.
lefty2 - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
Does anyone actually use the AMD Secure Processor feature? Just curious.eanazag - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
It allows them to compete in the business market for design wins, whereas before they were off the table. I am curious to see the implementation. At my job we encrypt all hard drives and leverage the TPM. Nothing enters our doors without a TPM that is running MS Windows.AMD has other hurdles now at 28nm designs.
R3MF - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
any hope of seeing these in socket AM1? they are listed as up to 25W, rather than carefully tiered in TDP as the bga products were...Novacius - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
They seem to be configurable by the vendor (12-25W).Spoelie - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
David Kanter made an interesting comment at the tech report:http://techreport.com/discussion/28246/the-tr-podc...
The cpu design team for the cat cores is supposedly gone from AMD, anyone know the back-story? Jaguar has been a huge success in the semi-custom (consoles, ...) business.
testbug00 - Tuesday, May 12, 2015 - link
Er, i watched that whole thing and never heard that part 0.o? Any time stamps or close to when he discussed it?