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from the when-will-we-see-a-Raspberry^W-Ryzen-pi? dept.
AMD Launches Ultra-Low-Power Ryzen Embedded APUs: Starting at 6W
While it doesn't get the same attention as their high-profile mobile, desktop, or server CPU offerings, AMD's embedded division is an important fourth platform for the chipmaker. To that end, this week the company is revealing its lowest-power Ryzen processors ever, with a new series of embedded chips that are designed for use in ultra-compact commercial and industrial systems.
The chips in question are the AMD Ryzen Embedded R1102G and the AMD Ryzen Embedded R1305G SoCs. These parts feature a 6 W or a configurable 8 W - 10 W TDP, respectively. Both SoCs feature two Zen cores with or without simultaneous multithreading, AMD Radeon Vega 3 graphics, 1 MB L2 cache, 4 MB L3 cache, a single channel or a dual-channel memory controller, and two 10 GbE ports.
[...] Both ultra-low-power AMD Ryzen Embedded APUs will be available for the next 10 years, meaning availability will stretch all the way till 2030.
AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000 Series
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday February 28 2020, @09:31PM (13 children)
I've been disappointed with low power offerings featuring Intel chips. Neither the ASUS stick computer nor the Intel NUC computer have adequate cooling. You're okay as long as you don't strain the processor. The NUC I have can crunch numbers all day long, but exercise that 3D accelerated graphics, and it will overheat. The stick computer is even worse. Can't handle 3D accelerated graphics, and, it can't even display video. And I don't mean YouTube with the overhead of running a browser. Just playing a video in VLC or some other player will do it.. Seems the hardware accelerated MPEG4 decoding generates too much heat.
Here's hoping AMD does a better job.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Booga1 on Friday February 28 2020, @09:52PM (1 child)
Traditionally, AMD has run hotter and used more power, but this time they're ahead of Intel with regard to process node(7nm). Still, none of that matters if the actual system makers don't design things to handle the real world cooling needs.
Even Apple has released products that only work as advertised after you stick them in a fridge [soylentnews.org].
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @07:11PM
For the same process and same clockrate, AMD has not been hotter except for certain 'enthusiast' models of processors (primarily the hammer athlon64's and some of their early overclocked x86 (386/486/586) second source chips.) Having said that, they have been 1-2 generations behind in process technology basically forever and until they integrated a thermal probe on-die, they were much more prone to thermal runaway than Intel in the case of overclocking or fan failures (which may have been responsible for some of that misttated fact.) Intel's chips have be far more prone to thermal throttling in actual practice in my experience, the mid to late pentium 4 era being the worst when the memory bus got fast enough to keep the chip saturated and those stupid plastic pushpins made it difficult or impossible to have the heatsink evenly and securely fastened against the heat spreader across all thermal ranges. While the Core 2 and later chips much improved that, it was mostly by halving the clock rate and dramatically increasing the cache size, which gave more opportunities to microsleep while pulling data from memory into cache.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 28 2020, @10:18PM (4 children)
The stick computer is just a bad situation for thermals.
By the way, you are talking about VivoStick, right? Is the casing made of black plastic?
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(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday February 29 2020, @01:25AM (3 children)
Yes, that's the one. Black plastic case. Model # TS10 as I recall.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday February 29 2020, @01:39AM (2 children)
They should make those things out of aluminum. Watch them get 25% higher clocks or better sustained performance.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @03:37AM (1 child)
I've seen some very nice aluminum m.2 ssd > usb chassis that are aluminum and damn near a perfect match, it's such a questionable design decision to use plastic.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday February 29 2020, @03:48AM
https://www.rtl-sdr.com/buy-rtl-sdr-dvb-t-dongles/ [rtl-sdr.com]
This is of a similar size, with the same problem to deal with: heat. The solution is obviously not neato looking black plastic, unless you get the ASUS dongle just to stare at it.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Friday February 28 2020, @11:57PM (2 children)
This is also an odd definition of "ultra low power". It's ultra low power compared to Intel CPUs, but nothing else. At that power level it has the same consumption as the original 486/Pentium CPUs, and they certainly weren't known as low-power chips.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday February 29 2020, @12:45AM
5-10 Watts is low enough for various fanless form factors.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Monday March 02 2020, @05:50PM
The marketing department conveniently forgot that ARM exists.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Saturday February 29 2020, @01:31AM (2 children)
I suspect the Intel Cxx suite is also disappointed with their low power offerings. They know the competition, and they know they're getting their asses handed to them in that space.
Say what you will about Intel, they aren't stupid. Complacent, yes. Caught off guard by recent AMD offerings, yes. Stupid? no.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @03:43AM (1 child)
They've both been getting their asses handed to them by ARM in low-power-land, and it's only getting worse as ARM boards are getting more and more powerful.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday February 29 2020, @03:56AM
My MediaTek MT8173C put the N2840 in the grave.
Intel has been doing better at low TDPs than AMD at least, but that could change. Now that R1102G exists, maybe they will update the A6-9220C to use Zen.
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