Next Gen. Fusion Chips to Pack Bulldozer Modules and VLIW4 Stream Processors

[btarunr]

AMD is almost done releasing its first generation of Fusion accelerated processing units tageting almost every consumer segment, including ULPC, netbooks, nettops, notebooks, performance notebooks, and desktops. These chips combine x86-64 cores with Radeon GPU components, DDR3 memory contollers, and PCI-Express 2.0 hubs. At the Fusion Developer Summit, there is already talk about what the next generation of APUs will bring to the table.

The next generation Fusion platform, codenamed "Trinity", will combine two AMD's very latest in-house developments in the fields of x86 computing and consumer graphics: Bulldozer and VLIW4. Bulldozer is an x86 processor architecture built from ground up by AMD, that saw a large degree of reorganization within the processor core. A Bulldozer module is a closely-knit group of two cores that share some common resources, and end up with stellar inter-core bandwidth. Bulldozer packs support for the latest industry-standard instruction sets, including SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AVX, and AES. VLIW4, on the other hand, is a reorganization of the SIMD processing clusters of Radeon GPUs, introduced with Radeon HD 6900 series. With this reorganization, each stream processor is more capable than it was, and performance per mm2 die area is increased.



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[Bundy]

I am growing uneasy about this trend toward 1 chip does all. We all have very different needs and I am skeptical this approach is catering for this.

 

[AlienIsGOD]

now with the redone shaders, will it encroach on 5750/6750 territory? 480? VLIW4 vs 720 VLIW5. I think they will be close to that in performance cause it wont be 480 shaders exactly it will be some wierd number like the 6900 series.

 

[smartidiot89]

I am growing uneasy about this trend toward 1 chip does all. We all have very different needs and I am skeptical this approach is catering for this.

These chips are expected to be the bread and butter at AMD, but the "1 chip approach" won't rule all. As you said everyone has different needs and the APU's won't replace the ordinary CPU and GPU in a very very long time.

 

[MikeMurphy]

Excited!! K10.5 was mostly competitive in its day, but we've since moved on from the C2D era.

Bring on BD

 

[Over_Lord]

Wish they had given a time-frame when this would get released. Like Q1 2012 or something.

 

[1Kurgan1]

I am growing uneasy about this trend toward 1 chip does all. We all have very different needs and I am skeptical this approach is catering for this.

I think it's going to be great for more compact form factors, but as far as ATX, I doubt we will be seeing real use out of it for a long time.

 

[cesariuth]

AMD fusion on the real world.

The source and speculation of VLIW-4 is from here:

http://translate.google.com/transla...-la-union-de-llano-y-bulldozer/all/1/&act=url...

 

[bucketface]

AMD fusion on the real world.

The source and speculation of VLIW-4 is from here:

http://translate.google.com/transla...-la-union-de-llano-y-bulldozer/all/1/&act=url...

if that article is correct then trinity fGPU will be 640 stream processors, 160 shaders (640/4=160 shaders) in the vliw4 arcitecture. based on same number of shaders as 5770/6770 (800/5=160).
i think they'd more likely be between 300 & 500 stream processors mark. with the vliw4 arch that should give a good bump in gpu performance over Llano and use a similar die area for the fgpu
my guess is that trinity fgpu's will be A4 320sp's A6 400sp's and A8 480sp's in vliw4.
but yeh just speculation at the moment. still the real concern at the moment is whether or not bulldozer performs.

 

[yogurt_21]

I am growing uneasy about this trend toward 1 chip does all. We all have very different needs and I am skeptical this approach is catering for this.

I'm not so worried, either they used this for lowend/compact solutions and the big stuff goes all dedicated, or they start throwing 6970's on the same chip as the highend 8 core bulldozer and it doesn't matter.

Imagine the savings on cooling costs. Full coverage waterblocks are 100-120$ for gpu's CPU waterblocks typically are around half that.

 

[Imsochobo]

I am growing uneasy about this trend toward 1 chip does all. We all have very different needs and I am skeptical this approach is catering for this.

We're getting X86 and GPGPU working side by side more and more, look at OSX ( great example) they use opencl for many tasks, which use gpu.
We will only see fusion chips in the future, but games will most likely also take advantage of the gpu side even if a dedicated graphics is present.

I expect X86 to have a less important role, maybe amd will keep die space ratio the same, maybe not.
It's leaning towards gpu performance, the impressive feat is that its actually just 5% bigger than sandy, while packing a good gpu, and the low frequencies are due to TDP.
we might see 3 ghz desktop parts, that will be a winner for desktop computers, the chips are the same, just higher clocks.

Wonder how trinity will perform, only use for me is if opencl becomes better, then I can use them for desktops, and laptops ofc!

A fusion chip cannot replace 300W graphics cards, thats obvious.

 

[jpierce55]

I am growing uneasy about this trend toward 1 chip does all. We all have very different needs and I am skeptical this approach is catering for this.

I don't think this will replace high performance/gpu's until that far off day when they can make an IGP fast enough to play any game. I would not sweat it. I think this trend is going to highly benefit laptop and other mobile pc users.

 

[cheesy999]

so why do we have no reviews yet?

 

[Over_Lord]

I bet you all dogs Trinity will have 512 SPs on VL4W arrangement.

Remember this post.

 

[cheesy999]

I bet you all dogs Trinity will have 512 SPs on VL4W arrangement.

Remember this post.

it will go down in history

 

[xBruce88x]

i dunno amd's vliw processors usually equate to numbers like 120, 160, 320, 480, etc.. not numbers like 128 (512v4 / 4) but who knows.

as for an IGP being able to play any game out there... that'll probably be 4-5yrs after the release of the upcoming xbox and playstation since by then those consoles should be using full DX11 features and 5yrs would be plenty of time to pack that into an IGP, esp since they'll have 28nm or smaller by then.

on the flip side, we should see a great improvement in PC games in general since when the new consoles DO come out all the new console ports will have full DX11 and such. (and the latest openGL/CL stuff)

as for the recent news about AMD. I'm excited, its a great time to be a geek lol. Not bad for a company who's budget is a fraction of the competition. good news for amd though... this news seems to be affecting Intel... their stock is down 1.65% for today (as of 3:24ET)

 

[p3ngwin1]

so why do we have no reviews yet?

you're asking why there are no reviews of alpha silicon products that are almost year away from release ?

 

[Dbiggs9]

as for the recent news about AMD. I'm excited, its a great time to be a geek lol. Not bad for a company who's budget is a fraction of the competition. good news for amd though... this news seems to be affecting Intel... their stock is down 1.65% for today (as of 3:24ET)

Market is down

 

[bostonbuddy]

A next gen fusion w/ bulldozer and 7xxx series IGP "crossfired" w/ two more 79xx gpu's would be beastly.

 

[NC37]

I could see AMD eventually going to all APU chips for most consumer lines, maybe even server chips in GPU clusters. Exception being the enthusiast market. But to be successful with it, they'd have to get crossfire working better on it.

At the very least, they'd merge more of the tech together. GPUs have been getting used as CPUs for years now. Plus if devs learn to start taking more advantage of the GPU on die, could see performance increase much more. But will AMD walk that route? I don't see how they couldn't if they wanted to beat Intel again. Intel just has the greater R&D power but its like steering a giant cruise ship vs a tug boat. AMD goes Fusion, Intel answers with a tacked on approach. Eventually Intel could catch up but if AMD can't exploit it, they're doomed. Nows the time to really strike hard with Fusion.

 

[Over_Lord]

Well, AMD has to do something about the bandwidth, like they can use eDRAM or something.

Would do a lotta good to the GPU.

 

[Over_Lord]

Well, AMD has to do something about the bandwidth, like they can use eDRAM or something.

Would do a lotta good to the GPU.

 

[kaneda]

I am growing uneasy about this trend toward 1 chip does all. We all have very different needs and I am sceptical this approach is catering for this.

I see what you mean, but we're entering an age where having more processing power regardless of where it is isn't a bad thing.

At the moment software needs to play catch up, I would love to see the stream processors on the APU be tasked not with gaming, but for background tasks and the such which benefit from parallel processing while relying on heavier number crunching chips (dedicated GPUs) only when they're required. Then again I would also like to see games move to Linux and for Linux to move more towards KolibriOS .

One can dream~

 

[Thatguy]

I am growing uneasy about this trend toward 1 chip does all. We all have very different needs and I am skeptical this approach is catering for this.

I am actually looking forward to it, the bulldozer deisng is actually poised to become a complete hybrid of cpu/gpu creating a whole new type of processor for the future, which is where workloads are going anyways.

 

[Thatguy]

I see what you mean, but we're entering an age where having more processing power regardless of where it is isn't a bad thing.

At the moment software needs to play catch up, I would love to see the stream processors on the APU be tasked not with gaming, but for background tasks and the such which benefit from parallel processing while relying on heavier number crunching chips (dedicated GPUs) only when they're required. Then again I would also like to see games move to Linux and for Linux to move more towards KolibriOS .

One can dream~

We are about 2 design generation away from where they cpu becomes a whole new animal IMHO. Think of the fpu replaced with shaders, and then think of the INT being integrated into the stream processors, the cpu is going to become more gpu like, but the cpu needs alot of the core logic to work properly. BD is poised and ready to go in that direction. The software will definatively be the problem, but more then the software, most of the Operating system will need massive overhauls or straight out rewrites to take advantage of this.

the hardware isn't ready for the software, yet.