AMD Llano Fusion APU to Feature Radeon HD 6550 Graphics

[btarunr]

AMD's upcoming Llano line of accelerated processing units (APUs), to compete with Intel's Sandy Bridge LGA1155 processors, is said to embed what AMD will refer to as the Radeon HD 6550 graphics core. Unlike Sandy Bridge where a processor die is simply fused with a integrated graphics northbridge onto a single die, Llano will see the GPU part of the silicon integrated with the rest of the APU in many other levels, including assisting the x86 cores with serial processing loads.

Llano's embedded GPU carries the AMD Radeon SKU of HD 6550. It will feature on AMD's Fusion A8-3550 and A8-3550P APUs, is DirectX 11 compliant, has 400 stream processors, and a core clock speed of 594 MHz. It uses memory shared from the main memory, but in all likelihood, AMD might work on SidePort-based memory support. Further, the Radeon HD 6550 can work in tandem with discrete AMD Radeon HD 6570 and HD 6670 "Turks" based graphics cards in the same way as AMD's IGPs have been known to work with entry-level Radeon GPUs using Hybrid CrossFireX. When the HD 6550 iGPU is working in tandem with HD 6670 or HD 6570, the graphics hardware will be recognized as "Radeon HD 6690".



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Fourstaff]

Interesting, 400 stream processors able to crossfire for another 480 stream processors, that makes it almost as powerful as a 5770. This can be a winrar in the ultra low budget gaming segment. Since that they claim this is integrated "in many other levels", I want to see massive boosts in heavily multithreaded environments. I am not convinced that the processor is going to be powerful enough though to challenge Sandy Bridge though.

 

[cheesy999]

Interesting, 400 stream processors able to crossfire for another 480 stream processors, that makes it almost as powerful as a 5770. This can be a winrar in the ultra low budget gaming segment. Since that they claim this is integrated "in many other levels", I want to see massive boosts in heavily multithreaded environments. I am not convinced that the processor is going to be powerful enough though to challenge Sandy Bridge though.

cpu might not be as good, but the APU will help massively for video editing and i think if they put this in a laptop then we might have the first gaming laptops that don't cost a fortune

 

[enaher]

Real nice imagine a 2.2 Quad + 6690 for 700$ or less mmm good....

 

[Yukikaze]

This is excellent for the low/low-mid end of the spectrum. Something like this will run older games perfectly, and light games such as L4D2 will also run nicely. Not to mention the boost given to HTPCs and boring workstations which suddenly get a decent GPU for little extra cost.

 

[NC37]

So could you say...take one of these and Crossfire it with a 6670/6570 IGP then turn it into a laptop with a 6690 but can run off the Llano when in power save mode?

Wouldn't make the most exceptional gaming laptop but I'm just thinkin about all those NV laptops where they used dual GPUs. Ya know, 9400M+9600M. Cept those weren't in SLI. You could only use 1 GPU at a time. But if it was done in a Crossfire setup where you could turn on both GPUs when performance was needed...kinda like that idea. I know power consumption and such might be an issue.

 

[Melvis]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QS0q3mGPGg

 

[gumpty]

Integrated graphics just got interesting.

 

[Imsochobo]

Integrated graphics just got interesting.

for laptops, yeah definately!

 

[gumpty]

for laptops, yeah definately!

And HTPCs that might want to do a bit of gaming.

 

[Imsochobo]

And HTPCs that might want to do a bit of gaming.

I play nicely with my htpc! it's rather quiet, its powerfull, very powerfull in terms of how big it is.
It's my main gaming rig, I have it connected to the receiver, tv, a projector and a pc screen 5 meeters away with a usb extension to a usb hub where I do other gaming.
I have 1 rig that rules them all! and I've tried to have a PS3 for loan for 4 months, a 360 wii, media center, nothing really beats the pc, it just does everything, htpc's can be rather powerfull, a 5570 is just not enough, a 5670 in terms of performance can turn into a htpc fusion chip.

Just look at my specs for my htpc, rather impressive, it impresses me to this date, and its a year old already.!

Link to HT RACK

its a GD04B from silverstone.

Link to GD04


its:
2x 5850Crossfire
6 core 1055T
8gb 1866 mhz (for new sandy or bulldozer)
80gb ssd
1tb samsung spinpoint
hx750.

in movies i can't hear it, the crunching from popcorn is far far far louder, get a good gpx cooling on the gphx and cpu cooler (8700cnps) with noctua case fans and your on!

 

[hat]

If we have graphics on the cpu wafer, then why do we need graphics on the motherboard? I can still see this being pretty awesome if board manufacturers deliberately continue to throw onboard graphics on for this purpose. I never was a fan of crossfire (or SLI for that matter), but getting it for free (in a way) is certainly worth a shot, especially if it turns out to be about as powerful as a 5770! I'd expect high gains from this too, since two low end gpus ought to scale well together.

 

[Imsochobo]

If we have graphics on the cpu wafer, then why do we need graphics on the motherboard? I can still see this being pretty awesome if board manufacturers deliberately continue to throw onboard graphics on for this purpose. I never was a fan of crossfire (or SLI for that matter), but getting it for free (in a way) is certainly worth a shot, especially if it turns out to be about as powerful as a 5770! I'd expect high gains from this too, since two low end gpus ought to scale well together.

not as multigpu currently work, unless they deliberately can force apu to ONLY use the dedicated graphics memory.
as it works now, if you pair whatever it is, lets say.
HD6550 GDDR5 and HD6550 GDDR3, (if they exist) you would throttle down the GDDR5 to the GDDR3 speeds (effectively) in the crossfire setup.
as if you do 6950 1gb and 2gb in crossfire you only get 1gb memory, this is where the problem is!

On the other side, opencl, and gpgpu, osx uses this quite alot for such a young tech to be already, you bring opencl to so many people, and games can utilize opencl's capability of running tasks on a gpu.

No matter if you use the gpu or not for graphics, it can be used, I hope they are going to utilize this possibility, we only need intel to support it now!
and I hope all cpu's will have a on core graphics controller, no matter how slow it is, when a gpu dies you can still surf the webs, I see hardly any cons as long as they can utilize gpu's more effectively in applications.

 

[hat]

I was thinking more on a gamer's point of view, but I can see applications for other gpu-accelerated things, but even onboard graphics should be enough for that. I take it this can offer more power though?

 

[Imsochobo]

I was thinking more on a gamer's point of view, but I can see applications for other gpu-accelerated things, but even onboard graphics should be enough for that. I take it this can offer more power though?

only with two graphics cards(6670 or HD 6570) is in the article., if you pair it with 67xx 68xx 69xx it will do nothing, either be disabled or be used for gpgpu.
display outputs should be usable, mine works (890GX) with HD5850 crossfire.

But in my post above you see limitations due to memory subsystem and how multigpu works with memory, unless lliano manages 28gb/sec as bulldozer will, I'll see very very memory bandwidth hungry 400 gpu cores. (hydra manages memory the smart way, but terrible scaling)

 

[HalfAHertz]

What kind of socket did this Llano use? Do we have any motherboard designs leaked yet? I have never liked the idea of shared memory and would definitely prefer some gddr5 side-port memory.

 

[Nesters]

I was thinking more on a gamer's point of view, but I can see applications for other gpu-accelerated things, but even onboard graphics should be enough for that. I take it this can offer more power though?

What APU can provide is CPU working together with GPU on the same task (which would otherwise be CPU heavy) and do it more effieciently and faster. We should see heavy load slowly being taken away from the CPU.

Apart from that, yes, this is definitely way more powerful than onboards.

What kind of socket did this Llano use? Do we have any motherboard designs leaked yet? I have never liked the idea of shared memory and would definitely prefer some gddr5 side-port memory.

Socket FM1
http://www.amdzone.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=532&t=138344

 

[Imsochobo]

What APU can provide is CPU working together with GPU on the same task (which would otherwise be CPU heavy) and do it more effieciently and faster. We should see heavy load slowly being taken away from the CPU.

Apart from that, yes, this is definitely way more powerful than onboards.

onboards are usually 80 stream processors... alltho probably as fast as a quad if gpgpu'd (dunno exact numbers)
imagine 400 cores

Limitations is that gpu's cant calculate all the things cpu's can, but when they can, they ROCK!
opencl, watch amd's video's, it involves the code, I know hardly any coding since I deal with servers, network, cisco cli, the closest is that i can make balls bounce in opengl and powershell scripting but I understood it.
dumbed down example.
opencl capable gpu present : use for this code.
if no opencl capable gpu present use cpu.

there, no requirement for gpu, can run on cpu, but will run on gpu if present, and all on 6 lines of code or something.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecYIsu83c0I

here's the links, its not AMD tech, it can be used by anyone, and I really hope it breaks through!
the video's are rather technical, but its worth a view if your interested.

But back to orginal subject again, for gaming this is a huge step forward, this design allows for smaller motherboards, removing northbrigde/igp alltogether, loosing a powerphase for it, and increasing performance for entry level computing while maintaining all the supports of the dedicated graphics, and the calculation power, the memory bandwidth for gaming is what worries me.

 

[Yukikaze]

onboards are usually 80 stream processors... alltho probably as fast as a quad if gpgpu'd (dunno exact numbers)
imagine 400 cores

Actually, a 400SP AMD GPU will have a hard time beating a quad core in most computational tasks. The 80SP ones are all but useless for computation.

There is a very interesting article called "Debunking the 100X GPU vs. CPU myth: An evaluation of throughput computing on CPU and GPU" (Google it, you might need academic access to read it though) which has a comparison between a Core i7 960 and a GTX280 (the article is a bit old by now). The average computational advantage for the GPU is around 3 times as much, with the maximum shown in the article around x11 or x12 times faster. The problem shown within is the fact that many studies earlier compared highly-optimized GPGPU libraries with unoptimized CPU code. Once both are well optimized, the results aren't as amazing as GPGPU advocates may lead us to believe. This is not to say that there aren't applications where GPUs are indeed x100 times faster, but these remain as relatively isolated cases.

The bonus here will be some additional computational power for free, not a huge amount of computational power to eclipse the CPU. This is the right path, though, and better coupling between the CPU and GPU parts may well be the future.

 

[blibba]

This is gunna be enough for more than just occasional light gaming. The 6570 on which it's based is an 8800GT-class chip.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

and its dx 11 too so its optimised better for dx 9, 10 and 11 games, wasnt it shown running a pleasently passable AVP? at 24+ frames per sec cant rem details now

 

[Imsochobo]

Actually, a 400SP AMD GPU will have a hard time beating a quad core in most computational tasks. The 80SP ones are all but useless for computation.

There is a very interesting article called "Debunking the 100X GPU vs. CPU myth: An evaluation of throughput computing on CPU and GPU" (Google it, you might need academic access to read it though) which has a comparison between a Core i7 960 and a GTX280 (the article is a bit old by now). The average computational advantage for the GPU is around 3 times as much, with the maximum shown in the article around x11 or x12 times faster. The problem shown within is the fact that many studies earlier compared highly-optimized GPGPU libraries with unoptimized CPU code. Once both are well optimized, the results aren't as amazing as GPGPU advocates may lead us to believe. This is not to say that there aren't applications where GPUs are indeed x100 times faster, but these remain as relatively isolated cases.

The bonus here will be some additional computational power for free, not a huge amount of computational power to eclipse the CPU. This is the right path, though, and better coupling between the CPU and GPU parts may well be the future.

always depending on tasks, some tasks where the gpu really is spectacular, we've been using cpu for it for 20-30 years, it gets improved all the time, where the gpu just did it quickly to begin with, there will always be tasks like that.
there is tasks the gpu is actually slower, and therefore is per task seperation of gpu/cpu selection a good thing in opencl.

but again, we do not have compute power problems, a 1055t hardly gets loaded, but here i am with a 1055t with 2x5850CF, I either use alot of cpu, or half of cpu and lots of gpu power(games)
so if apps could use my graphics cards and replaceing two-three cores then you've gotten alot more performance per mm^2 and per watt, the same goes for the apu's

But I think none of this will be seen this year, next year but I start to see things supporting use of gpu compute power.

This is gunna be enough for more than just occasional light gaming. The 6570 on which it's based is an 8800GT-class chip.

most screens are 1080P, but for 1680x1050 I see no issues, as long as memory bandwidth is there.

 

[Over_Lord]

^^ ya bro you got that right

Light gaming, on budget laptops, 1366x768 resolution, perfect

 

[blibba]

Even at 1080p, an 8800GT has no issues with most popular games. WoW, CoD, CS1.6, SC2, Portal 2...

Sure, Crysis will have issues, and BF3, and Metro 2033, but even then you'd get away with it on lowered settings (contrary to what some PC hardware reviews suggest, games are still fun on low graphics settings ).

 

[wolf]

this has massive potential. 400 sp's is already a decent amount of gaming grunt, as long as it is paired with dual channel DDR3 the memory subsystem should be ample. I'd love to see 4 - x86 cores too. then we would have something more than capable of great games like L4D, TF2, some light BC2.. many racing sims... the list goes on. I await this with great anticipation.