AMD Strix Point Silicon Pictured and Annotated

[btarunr]

The first die shot of AMD's new 4 nm "Strix Point" mobile processor surfaced, thanks to an enthusiast on Chinese social media. "Strix Point" is a significantly larger die than "Phoenix." It measures 12.06 mm x 18.71 mm (L x W), compared to the 9.06 mm x 15.01 mm of "Phoenix." Much of this die size increase comes from the larger CPU, iGPU, and NPU. The process has been improved from TSMC N4 on "Phoenix" and its derivative "Hawk Point," to the newer TSMC N4P node.

Nemez (GPUsAreMagic) annotated the die shot in great detail. The CPU now has 12 cores spread across two CCX, one of which contains four "Zen 5" cores sharing a 16 MB L3 cache; and the other with eight "Zen 5c" cores sharing an 8 MB L3 cache. The two CCXs connect to the rest of the chip over Infinity Fabric. The rather large iGPU takes up the central region of the die. It is based on the RDNA 3.5 graphics architecture, and features 8 workgroup processors (WGPs), or 16 compute units (CU) worth 1,024 stream processors. Other key components include four render backends worth 16 ROPs, and control logic. The GPU has its own 2 MB of L2 cache that cushions transfers to the Infinity Fabric.



Slightly separated from the iGPU are its allied components, the Media Engine, and the Display Engine. The Media Engine provides hardware acceleration for encoding and decoding of h.264, h.265, and AV1, besides several legacy video formats. The Display Engine is responsible for encoding the frame output of the iGPU to the various connector formats (such as DisplayPort, eDP, HDMI), including hardware-accelerated display stream compression; while the display PHYs handle the physical layer of the connectors.

The NPU is the third major logic component of "Strix Point." This second generation NPU by AMD is visibly larger than the one found in "Phoenix." It is based on the more advanced XDNA 2 architecture, and contains 32 AI engine tiles, talking to its own high-speed local memory, and a control logic that interfaces with Infinity Fabric. This NPU is designed to meet and exceed the hardware requirements of Microsoft Copilot+, and provides a throughput of 50 TOPS.

The memory controller supports dual-channel (160-bit) DDR5 with native DDR5-5600; and 128-bit LPDDR5 at speeds of up to LPDDR5-7500. The controller features an unspecified size of SRAM cache, which Nemez notes was also seen on the "Phoenix 2" and "Phoenix" dies, but not on the memory controller of the cIOD found in "Raphael" and "Dragon Range."

The "Strix Point" silicon has a smaller PCIe root complex than "Phoenix," which in turn has a smaller root complex than "Cezanne." AMD has been reducing the PCIe lane count by 4 over the past three generations. "Cezanne" features 24 PCIe Gen 3 lanes (x16 PEG + x4 NVMe + x4 chipset bus or GPP); while "Phoenix" truncates this to 20 PCIe Gen 4 lanes (x8 PEG + x4 NVMe + x4 chipset bus or GPP + x4 configured as USB4). The newer "Strix Point" cuts it down further to just 16 PCIe Gen 4 lanes (x8 PEG + x4 NVMe + x4 configured as USB4 or GPP).

The idea behind the PCIe lane reduction is that "Strix Point" is designed to square off against "Lunar Lake," which too only has x4 for PEG/GPP, and when "Arrow Lake-H" and "Arrow Lake-HX" eventually hit the scene, they'll be met with AMD's "Fire Range" chip that has a 28-lane PCIe Gen 5 interface and can be paired with even the fastest discrete mobile GPUs.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[wNotyarD]

4 PEG lanes? AMD better keep it off AM5, then. It'd make no sense for any desktop processor, APU it may be, to offer so few lanes limiting any upgradability on the graphics front.

 

[tabascosauz]

AMD please give us worthwhile thin-and-light designs, that aren't priced like halo products and actually arrive on time with real product supply. 4th straight generation of begging now.

You know what, forget the thin-and-lights since I know your partners won't make them before Q3 2025 rebranded parts. Just give us a Strix Flow X13 without a dGPU, and 32GB of RAM. Please. I don't give a shit about the AM5 incarnation that's gonna arrive 18 months late.

 

[Apocalypsee]

AMD please give us worthwhile thin-and-light designs, that aren't priced like halo products and actually arrive on time with real product supply. 4th straight generation of begging now.

You know what, forget the thin-and-lights since I know your partners won't make them before Q3 2025 rebranded parts. Just give us a Strix Flow X13 without a dGPU, and 32GB of RAM. Please. I don't give a shit about the AM5 incarnation that's gonna arrive 18 months late.

We really need a competent manufacturer to made this. Without dGPU there is so much more space to put better cooling to cool the APU, and put the fastest LPDDR5 speeds on it. Though I don't like small screen laptop, put it on 15.6 inch and I'm all good.

 

[leezhiran]

So these cores don't share l3 cache and have huge freq. gaps, it won't be easy to schdule - at least as hard as intel's design.

 

[Carillon]

4 PEG lanes? AMD better keep it off AM5, then. It'd make no sense for any desktop processor, APU it may be, to offer so few lanes limiting any upgradability on the graphics front.

It says both 8 and 4, but I think 8 is correct. What I don't understand is the fat FPU, the news the other day said it was 256bit for strix point.

 

[Cheeseball]

AMD please give us worthwhile thin-and-light designs, that aren't priced like halo products and actually arrive on time with real product supply. 4th straight generation of begging now.

You know what, forget the thin-and-lights since I know your partners won't make them before Q3 2025 rebranded parts. Just give us a Strix Flow X13 without a dGPU, and 32GB of RAM. Please. I don't give a shit about the AM5 incarnation that's gonna arrive 18 months late.

They might be giving up on the XG Mobile port that the ROG Flow and ROG Ally (the X has a USB4 port instead) series use. All the current XG Mobile "docks" have gone on sale too at the moment, so not sure if its some clearance sale or what. But I did want my X13 (7940HS-only) to have 32GB of RAM instead of 16GB for sure.

It makes sense since the XG mobile port seems to be only on PCI-E 3.0 x8 (and 3.0 x4 on the Ally non-X). No clue if they have plans on upgrading it to PCI-E 4.0 since the CPU can support it, especially if it doesn't have a dGPU alongside.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

AMD please give us worthwhile thin-and-light designs, that aren't priced like halo products and actually arrive on time with real product supply. 4th straight generation of begging now.

You know what, forget the thin-and-lights since I know your partners won't make them before Q3 2025 rebranded parts. Just give us a Strix Flow X13 without a dGPU, and 32GB of RAM. Please. I don't give a shit about the AM5 incarnation that's gonna arrive 18 months late.

I have a 6000 series X13 with a DGPU it's pretty great actually battery life is vety good with the the dgpu disabled.

An updated Zen5 one would be awesome though but I keep my laptops for a long time usually 3-4 gens

 

[Apocalypsee]

So these cores don't share l3 cache and have huge freq. gaps, it won't be easy to schdule - at least as hard as intel's design.

Nah both core design is basically the same architecturally unlike E cores and P core on Intel

 

[Zubasa]

So these cores don't share l3 cache and have huge freq. gaps, it won't be easy to schdule - at least as hard as intel's design.

Nope, this is pretty much just CPPC2 like it is since Zen2 with dual CCX per die.
Intel has been using CPPC for years for laptops and since X299 HEDT. On the software side Windows pretty much just sees some core are clocked higher than others.
Intel's E-core not only has lower clocks but vastly different IPC compare to the P-cores, meaning instructions require different number of clock cycles to complete. This is what makes it differcult for scheduling.

 

[JustBenching]

I have a 6000 series X13 with a DGPU it's pretty great actually battery life is vety good with the the dgpu disabled.

An updated Zen5 one would be awesome though but I keep my laptops for a long time usually 3-4 gens

It has an nvidia gpu, right?

 

[tabascosauz]

I have a 6000 series X13 with a DGPU it's pretty great actually battery life is vety good with the the dgpu disabled.

An updated Zen5 one would be awesome though but I keep my laptops for a long time usually 3-4 gens

I'm on a 6900HS G14 myself and battery life is decent at 6-10W in Eco. But fact is MUX will still never allow it to approach real no-dGPU ultrabook territory. That 76Wh really is going to waste compared to if the RX6700S wasn't in there, and if it was LPDDR5(x) instead of half + a SO-DIMM slot. The benchmark for APU-only is usually under 5W.

It's not just the base X13 (which would be PERFECT if it was sold outside the US, and came with 32GB). I'd buy the G14 again if they just yknow, removed the dGPU for a base spec. Even if it's chunky, that's insane battery life and unparalleled cooling perf for the APU there.

But as it stands there's no way I'm buying the G14 again. Asus is using even the shitty entry level dGPU options to push the G14's price point ever higher. I very rarely turn on the dGPU, and there's no point paying for what I don't actually use. I only bought it because the market for actually decent (decent design, decent screen, decent battery, decent availability) iGPU-only Rembrandt laptops was an utter wasteland, and there was no other option.

The single slot SO-DIMM also makes for some wack-ass upgrade paths so if the base Phoenix X13 was available here, I would've just gotten that instead. Even if it's 16GB.

They might be giving up on the XG Mobile port that the ROG Flow and ROG Ally (the X has a USB4 port instead) series use. All the current XG Mobile "docks" have gone on sale too at the moment, so not sure if its some clearance sale or what. But I did want my X13 (7940HS-only) to have 32GB of RAM instead of 16GB for sure.

It makes sense since the XG mobile port seems to be only on PCI-E 3.0 x8 (and 3.0 x4 on the Ally non-X). No clue if they have plans on upgrading it to PCI-E 4.0 since the CPU can support it, especially if it doesn't have a dGPU alongside.

I see AMD trying to wean laptop makers off their overdependence on the APU as a do-it-all CPU, and rightly so. But unless Fire Range makes a serious leap forward in terms of idle power (not happening without serious design changes), I don't see that happening anytime soon. Dragon Range is much better than desktop and is good enough for parity with Intel in the desktop replacement bricks where zero attention is paid to power optimization, but laptops like G14 are a different story.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

It has an nvidia gpu, right?

Yeah crappy 3050ti got it becuase it's small and can have good battery life for basic tasks.

I would have purchased it for the same price without the dgpu lol. I want to say at launch it was 1600 usd.

It's only for internet/youtube/email when I travel.

 

[JustBenching]

I'm on a 6900HS G14 myself and battery life is decent at 6-10W in Eco. But fact is MUX will still never allow it to approach real no-dGPU ultrabook territory. That 76Wh really is going to waste compared to if the RX6700S wasn't in there, and if it was LPDDR5(x) instead of half + a SO-DIMM slot. The benchmark for APU-only is usually under 5W.

We got the same laptop. It's the adrenaline software - some versions of it keep waking up the dGPU and it kills battery life even in eco mode. You have to go back to 2022 drivers or do a drivers only install

 

[tabascosauz]

We got the same laptop. It's the adrenaline software - some versions of it keep waking up the dGPU and it kills battery life even in eco mode. You have to go back to 2022 drivers or do a drivers only install

I've only ever used a drivers only install. The 5-6W mark is a hard wall for this laptop, and that's squeezing every possible bit of juice out of it (e.g. robbing a 144Hz screen of being 144Hz and all its brightness). dGPU-less designs just carry on as normal, MUX doesn't change that it's a losing battle.

 

[R0H1T]

Why don't some of you use hibernate? It's safe, tried and tested over decades & the best "power saving" mode outside full shutdown!

 

[kondamin]

Now that without the npu mess and an other set of wgu’s and 8MB of cache

 

[tabascosauz]

Why don't some of you use hibernate? It's safe, tried and tested over decades & the best "power saving" mode outside full shutdown!

You must be on another level to be using your laptop while it's in hibernate, because that's what we're talking about

Nope, this is pretty much just CPPC2 like it is since Zen2 with dual CCX per die.
Intel has been using CPPC for years for laptops and since X299 HEDT. On the software size Windows pretty much just sees some core are clocked higher than others.
Intel's E-core not only has lower clocks but vastly different IPC compare to the P-cores, meaning instructions require different number of clock cycles to complete. This is what makes it differcult for scheduling.

Okay but is Strix confirmed to be 12 cores and 24MB in 1 CCX though? Because physically the layout looks quite different from PHX-2, where 4 and 4c were clustered together around one L3 cluster, like it also is in ADL and RPL. That's the point, regardless of a heterogeneous core setup the entire large L3 pool is still accessible to any given [P-]core in one ringbus or CCX. So even if one regards 4c cores or E-cores as being otherwise E-waste, the L3 they bring contributes an important part to performance.

I seem to remember a news article last week that Strix is indeed segregating into 2CCX again. Which just means that we have basically made zero progress whatsoever (relative to chiplet parts) from improving APU gaming performance beyond 16MB L3, and also have essentially gone back to Zen 2 core-to-core latency.

The only other real comparison seems to be Bergamo, where the CCD is split into two with two clusters of 4c around 2 separate L3 clusters. And obviously that is a 2CCX affair.

And it's a valid point about scheduling. Apparently Zen 2 was so long ago that we don't remember anymore what it's like to be confined to a 4 core CCX.

 

[R0H1T]

I was talking about using hibernate (or hybrid sleep) as opposed to normal sleep modes, in part because a lot of background services or applications usually mess with them. As for idle/lowering power usage there's really only one way i.e. to stop all useless background processes.

On a normal out of the box fresh install I can easily turn off anywhere between 10~40 applications/services combined, or even higher in some cases.

 

[Chrispy_]

16CU is the most exciting thing here.

4C/8T may not be very exciting but it's enough to drive most casual computing without fuss, so your average person who uses web/email/CAD/media applications it's plenty. Even most gaming is still okay on 4C/8T if you're not trying to feed a fairly serious dGPU that can keep minimum FPS close to or in the triple-digit framerates (case in point, Steam Deck)

So yeah, this increased focus on the CPU-to-IGP ratio in favour of the IGP is welcoming. Fewer full-fat CPU cores, and more graphics compute is what APUs have needed for a very very long time. On the desktop, for the last decade or more, it has been absolutely fine to buy an entry-level i5 that satisfies the bare minimum needed to feed a discrete graphics card, and then spend all the remaining budget on a beefy graphics card, since so many games are GPU-limited even with this massive bias towards the GPU budget. It's certainly way more sensible for gaming than blowing most of the budget on a flagship CPU and then slapping a Geforce GT 710 in there!

Either way, that's how APUs have felt for ages - Their budget is obviously die area and shared power budget, but AMD have been putting 8 full-fat CPU cores on a mobile part that would struggle to feed those 8 cores enough power even if this was a CPU without an IGP, and then slap on an inadequate number of last-gen graphics cores as an afterthought. Less than three years ago, the best APU was the 5700G using 8 of the latest Zen3+CPU cores, but slapping a paltry 8CU of ancient Vega graphics into it, a stupid decision given that Vega was optimised for HBM and the shared DDR4 of on APU is the exact opposite of that!!

So yeah, AMD has finally started taking APU IGPs seriously. First we jumped from Vega to RDNA2 in the mobile space, and now we're getting RNDA 3.5 on this APU before seeing it in dGPUs. The CU count has also progressed upward again. I had Vega10 in my 2700U what feels like an eternity ago, and then mainstream models regressed to 6U or 8CU for half a decade - it was so bad that Intel caught up with AMD's IGPs :O

 

[Vya Domus]

Now we have another reason for iGPUs not getting faster, NPUs eating away the die space that could have been used for more CUs.

 

[sLowEnd]

AMD please give us worthwhile thin-and-light designs, that aren't priced like halo products and actually arrive on time with real product supply. 4th straight generation of begging now.

You know what, forget the thin-and-lights since I know your partners won't make them before Q3 2025 rebranded parts. Just give us a Strix Flow X13 without a dGPU, and 32GB of RAM. Please. I don't give a shit about the AM5 incarnation that's gonna arrive 18 months late.

I wish. But I fully expect Strix Halo to be mostly in weird expensive stuff like gaming NUCs. I'll eat a hat if I'm wrong.

 

[tabascosauz]

16CU is the most exciting thing here.

4C/8T may not be very exciting but it's enough to drive most casual computing without fuss, so your average person who uses web/email/CAD/media applications it's plenty. Even most gaming is still okay on 4C/8T if you're not trying to feed a fairly serious dGPU that can keep minimum FPS close to or in the triple-digit framerates (case in point, Steam Deck)

So yeah, this increased focus on the CPU-to-IGP ratio in favour of the IGP is welcoming. Fewer full-fat CPU cores, and more graphics compute is what APUs have needed for a very very long time. On the desktop, for the last decade or more, it has been absolutely fine to buy an entry-level i5 that satisfies the bare minimum needed to feed a discrete graphics card, and then spend all the remaining budget on a beefy graphics card, since so many games are GPU-limited even with this massive bias towards the GPU budget. It's certainly way more sensible for gaming than blowing most of the budget on a flagship CPU and then slapping a Geforce GT 710 in there!

Either way, that's how APUs have felt for ages - Their budget is obviously die area and shared power budget, but AMD have been putting 8 full-fat CPU cores on a mobile part that would struggle to feed those 8 cores enough power even if this was a CPU without an IGP, and then slap on an inadequate number of last-gen graphics cores as an afterthought. Less than three years ago, the best APU was the 5700G using 8 of the latest Zen3+CPU cores, but slapping a paltry 8CU of ancient Vega graphics into it, a stupid decision given that Vega was optimised for HBM and the shared DDR4 of on APU is the exact opposite of that!!

So yeah, AMD has finally started taking APU IGPs seriously. First we jumped from Vega to RDNA2 in the mobile space, and now we're getting RNDA 3.5 on this APU before seeing it in dGPUs. The CU count has also progressed upward again. I had Vega10 in my 2700U what feels like an eternity ago, and then mainstream models regressed to 6U or 8CU for half a decade - it was so bad that Intel caught up with AMD's IGPs :O

Except it's not a 4C/8T part. It's a 12C/24T that will apparently be constrained like a 4C/8T in some tasks. Pretty pointless to say that it strikes a good balance when a regular 16MB 8C/16T would have taken up less space than whatever this weird contraption is. And floorplan wise it's not all that different from Phoenix and Hawk. Visually pretty balanced between CPU and GPU. It hasn't been super unbalanced looking since Cezanne.

And as much as I hate to admit it, you know exactly why less cores is not the answer. More cores at lower all core clock is the way to go for efficiency.

I can really only think of two possible explanations for this thing existing:

• They want 12 cores to keep up with core counts but don't have a big enough ring for them all
• They went super low effort in order to rush a Copilot ready product to market, and just glued an enterprise 5c CCX into half of a consumer CCX

Now we have another reason for iGPUs not getting faster, NPUs eating away the die space that could have been used for more CUs.

Kinda hard to put more WGPs in there if the memory controller only just barely managed to get enough bandwidth to fully feed 12CUs

I wish. But I fully expect Strix Halo to be mostly in weird expensive stuff like gaming NUCs. I'll eat a hat if I'm wrong.

Need Strix to be in a design that will most likely only ever exist if Strix Halo comes to fruition. sadge

 

[Chrispy_]

Now we have another reason for iGPUs not getting faster, NPUs eating away the die space that could have been used for more CUs.

If AMD can start using NPUs for upscaling/frame-gen functionality, it's not a waste.
That is still an *if* though...

Except it's not a 4C/8T part. Pretty pointless to say that it strikes a good balance when a regular 16MB 8C/16T would have taken up less space than whatever this weird contraption is.

That was me saying that even 4C/8T is enough for the vast majority of casual users, not a reflection on Strix Point's 4C+8c configuration. And you're saying 8C would have taken up less space, but in this generation Dragon range dedicated mobile parts are coming in with 16C, so only 4C+8c is MUCH smaller than it could have been from a CPU-core perspective.

 

[tabascosauz]

If AMD can start using NPUs for upscaling/frame-gen functionality, it's not a waste.
That is still an *if* though...

That was me saying that even 4C/8T is enough for the vast majority of casual users, not a reflection on Strix Point's 4C+8c configuration. And you're saying 8C would have taken up less space, but in this generation Dragon range dedicated mobile parts are coming in with 16C, so only 4C+8c is MUCH smaller than it could have been from a CPU-core perspective.

No, it's definitely quite a bit smaller lol, 5c is not an E-core and takes up quite some space. At least in this iteration where unlike PHX-2 they haven't even slightly bothered to space optimize cores n cache a bit.

APU die got quite a bit bigger at 232 vs 178mm^2. Can't just pin that on the iGPU. Not sure where Dragon/Fire Range factors into this, it's a huge package and not the same segment.