AMD Launches Carrizo: The Laptop Leap of Efficiency and Architecture Updates
by Ian Cutress on June 2, 2015 9:00 PM ESTUnified Video Decoder and Playback Pathways
A typical consumer user experience revolves a lot around video, and AMD identified for Carrizo a big potential to decrease power consumption and increase performance in a couple of different ways. First up is adjusting the path by which data is moved around the system, particularly as not a lot of video matches up with the native resolution of the screen or is scaled 1:1.
When a video exhibits a form of scaling, either it is made full screen and scaled up or it is a higher resolution video that scales down, that scaling is typically performed by the GPU. The data leaves the decoder (either hardware or software), enters system memory, moves into the graphics memory, is processed by the GPU, moves back out to memory, and then is transferred to the display. This requires multiple read/write commands to memory, requires the GPU to be active but underutilized, and this happens for every frame. AMD’s solution to this is to provide some simple scaling IP in the display engine itself, allowing for scaled video to go from the decoder to the display engine, leaving the GPU in a low power state.
The video playback paths at the bottom of this side show the explanation graphically, and AMD is quoting a 4.8W down to 1.9W movement in power consumption for these tasks. Note that the 4.8W value is for Kaveri, so there are other enhancements in there is as well, but the overall picture is a positive one and AMD quotes a 500mW of APU power savings.
The Unified Video Decoder (UVD) has been built to support the above codecs, with HEVC decode on die as well as native 4K H.264 decode as well. I’ll come back to the 4K element in a second, but what is perhaps missing from this list is VP9, the codec used by Google for YouTube. YouTube is still the number one source for video content on the web, and as Google is transitioning more to VP9, as well as AMD’s competition advertising it as a perk on their latest hardware, it was perhaps confusing for AMD to miss it out. I did ask on this, and was told that they picked HEVC over VP9 as they believe it will be the more important codec going forward, particularly when you consider that the majority of the popular streaming services (NetFlix, Hulu, Amazon) will be using HEVC for their high definition titles.
Back onto the 4K equation, and this is possible because AMD has increased the decode bandwidth of the UVD from 1080p to 4K. This affords two opportunities – 4K video on the fly, or 1080p video decoded in a quarter of the time, allowing the race to sleep for both the UVD and DRAM. Despite a 75% reduction in work, as the UVD does not use that much power, it results in only 30 minutes of extra video playback time, but it is welcome and contributes to that often marketed ‘video playback’ number.
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D. Lister - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Calling an unlaunched product "bad" would be just as imprudent as calling it "good", but then what do I know, fortune-telling could be just another one of your super powers, along with mind-reading.Gigaplex - Thursday, June 4, 2015 - link
Why would they use an Intel chip to fake a bar graph? Just put fake numbers directly into a spread sheet, job done.Dirty_Punk - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Unfortunatelly, time to market, as always for AMD, will be probably 6 month or more... at that time there will be something better from intel. It seems a lot like Asus from this point of view, grat product and very bad supply chain.AMD has 3 problems ritght now:
1- with 28nm is difficult to compete against 14nm of intel
2- very slow from project design to mass production
3- no support from OEM and major system builders (HP & co.), as it seems always that Intel works to force system builder to forget about AMD like years ago...
jabber - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
Yep this time next year when you walk into a PC store you'll still see 25 Intel laptops and one cheap nasty AMD laptop on the shelves. OEMs don't care about AMD anymore. From what I see from customers is, that they only buy AMD if they are the cheapest machine in the shop. And then its a E1 chip and the customer really regrets it.haukionkannel - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
That problem 1 is the worst! AMD APUs are ok, but 28nm vs Intel 14nm is just a huge deal. When considering power and efficiency and how much they can put on the chip.jimjamjamie - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
HP is actually pretty good for offering a good selection of AMD-powered laptops, usually the cheaper models. Better than most other OEMs though.bloodypulp - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
The only decent laptops HP makes are the Elitebooks. And you will pay through the nose for them when you can get better quality from other brands for less. HP should just stop making PCs, period.UtilityMax - Wednesday, June 3, 2015 - link
HP has several models with AMD chips. It's one of them few laptop makers that allows you to configure an Envy laptop with say a 1080p screen, SSD, a A10 CPU, plus discrete graphics.jabber - Thursday, June 4, 2015 - link
And I bet they sell about 8 of those AMD based machines a year.watzupken - Thursday, June 11, 2015 - link
Point 2 is probably their killer to be honest. Point 1 is definitely puts AMD in a disadvantage, but considering that Intel don't seem to be interested in pushing performance since its Sandy Bridge days, it's giving AMD a chance to catch up in terms of performance.To be honest, I think I have to take my hat off AMD's efforts. At 28nm, they are forced to be as creative as they can to squeeze performance out, while keeping power requirements in check.