AMD Reveals Architecture Details of “Carrizo” System-on-Chip

AMD revealed at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) that the upcoming A-Series Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), codenamed “Carrizo”, for notebooks and low-power desktops will deliver a new, advanced power management technologies while achieving substantial performance through new “Excavator” x86 CPU cores and a new generation of AMD Radeon™ GPU cores. Using a true System-on-Chip (SoC) design, AMD expects Carrizo to reduce the power consumed by the x86 cores alone by 40 percent, while also providing substantial gains in CPU, graphics, and multimedia performance vs. the prior generation APU.

New Carrizo Disclosures:

•  29% more transistors in nearly the same die size as its predecessor, “Kaveri”;
•  New “Excavator” x86 cores provide an uplift in instructions-per-clock at 40% less power;
•  New Radeon GPU cores with dedicated power supply;
•  Dedicated, on-chip H.265 video decode;
•  Double digit percentage increases in both performance and battery life;
•  Integrated Southbridge for the first time on an AMD high-performance APU.

“As a part of our continued focus on building great products, the advanced power and performance optimizations we have designed into our upcoming ‘Carrizo’ APU will deliver the largest generational performance-per-watt gain ever for a mainstream AMD APU,” said Sam Naffziger, AMD Corporate Fellow and co-author of the AMD presentation at ISSCC