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AMD claims to have improved performance by about 5x while cutting power use to about 1/6th, when comparing 2014 "Kaveri" mobile APUs to 2020 "Renoir" mobile APUs. This exceeds a goal of improving efficiency by 25x by 2020:
The base value for AMD's goal is on its Kaveri mobile processors, which by the standards of today set a very low bar. As AMD moved to Carrizo, it implemented new power monitoring features on chip that allowed the system to offer a better distribution of power and ran closer to the true voltage needed, not wasting power. After Carrizo came Bristol Ridge, still based on the older cores, but used a new DDR4 controller as well as lower powered processors that were better optimized for efficiency.
A big leap came with Raven Ridge, with AMD combining its new highly efficient Zen x86 cores and Vega integrated graphics. This heralded a vast improvement in performance due to doubling the cores and improving the graphics, all within a similar power window as Bristol Ridge. This boosted up the important 25x20 metric and keeping it well above the 'linear' gain.
[...] The jump from Picasso to Renoir has been well documented. Our first use of the CPUs, reviewed in the ASUS Zephyrus G14, left us with our mouths open, almost literally. We called it a 'Mobile Revival', showcasing AMD's transition over from Zen+ to Zen2, from GF 12nm to TSMC 7nm, along with a lot of strong design and optimization on the graphics side. The changes from the 2019 to the 2020 chip include doubling the core count, from four to eight, improving the clock-for-clock performance by 15-20%, but also improving the graphics performance and frequencies despite moving down from an silicon design that had 11 compute units down to 8. This comes in line with a number of power updates, adhering to AHCI specifications, and as we discussed with Sam Naffziger, AMD Fellow, supporting the new S0ix low power states has helped tremendously. The reduction in the fabric power, along with additional memory bandwidth, offered large gains.
AMD accomplished this while using refined "7nm" Vega GPU cores in its APUs, instead of moving to a newer architecture such as RDNA2.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2020, @11:25PM (2 children)
That's because "kaveri" was garbage. That generation of AMD chips gave "APU" the bad name.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday June 26 2020, @09:35AM
Wasn't it faster than what came before it?
Actually, I have an older Llano (2011) APU, which was the last generation before Bulldozer/Piledriver based APUs came out. TDP for TDP, it's worse than Kaveri, and the 15 Watt Kaveri can *sort of* match the 35 Watt Llano.
In between Llano and Kaveri was Trinity and Richland, which were both Bulldozer/Piledriver.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2020, @04:10PM
I think that's a given - if Kaveri didn't suck, a 25x increase would have been a ludicrous goal. AMD wasn't nutty enough to set their target Renoir as 25x more efficient than 2014 Haswell.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2020, @11:29PM (1 child)
So he sent his only daughter, Dr Lisa Su, to smite Intel. And it was good.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2020, @11:48PM
You are a bad jew. How can you screw up genesis so bad?
Anyways, Taiwan Numbah Won.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by boltronics on Friday June 26 2020, @03:34AM (6 children)
I was seriously considering a GPD WIN Max gaming "laptop" handheld, mainly for JPRGs and other text-heavy games I have on Steam (until my wife shut that idea down...). But from the Indiegogo page [indiegogo.com]:
The laptop is not out yet, but it looks like the Ryzen 5 2500U they were comparing against is just a Raven Ridge APU that's close to 3 years old. I'm assuming they didn't really take that long to make this hardware... but did Intel really beat AMD APUs in graphics at any point? It's kinda hard to believe.
In any case, I wish a portable gaming machine such as this existed with an AMD APU (and a more sensible keyboard layout).
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2020, @06:08AM
You can get laptops with the Ryzen 4000 series APUs which are far superior to anything Intel has to offer. 8 core/8 thread CPU with Vega graphics in a 15W package. It beats desktop chips in multi thread applications. Though no such handheld devices exist yet.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday June 26 2020, @09:53AM (1 child)
Ice Lake was better than Picasso [anandtech.com], and it did come out before Renoir, although I'm not sure if availability was any good in September 2019. Renoir in turn, is better than Ice Lake. By far in the case of CPU performance.
Intel's successor to Ice Lake, "10nm" Tiger Lake, should beat AMD's Renoir graphics performance by about 20-30% this year. That's in part due to AMD not increasing graphics performance so much this year with Renoir, instead focusing on CPU performance (up to 8 cores). AMD going forward may have two separate lines of mobile APUs: ones meant for high performance laptops with discrete GPUs (Renoir w/ Zen 2 and Vega, Cezanne w/ Zen 3 and Vega), and ones better suited for small, low power devices (Rembrandt and Van Gogh?). You can check out some of the reasoning in this 25 minute video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMJZOjbsMeE [youtube.com]
I don't know how sensible a keyboard can get on an 8-inch device. Doesn't seem too bad from the Indiegogo page. You probably shouldn't buy a "laptop" through crowdfunding since your payment predates reviews and potential price drops.
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(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2020, @04:47PM
There is also a high risk of production delays with crowdfunding, so maybe the hardware that will be a reasonable value for its cost in June 2021 won't actually be in your hands until 2022 or 2023.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday June 26 2020, @03:13PM (1 child)
I'm thinking you'd be better off buying a small monitor and a minipc, then use your choice of input, keyboard/mouse,gamepad, etc. That indiegogo looks pretty gimicky. While it may deliver a product, I just got to wonder about the ergonomics of said device. I prefer keyboard/mouse or a comfortable gamepad. The first thing I did for my PSPs and DS Lite was to purchase something that gave them grips. In the case of the PSPs, it was battery packs that had nice controller grips. In the case of the DS Lite it was a case with fold out wing grips that made it fit more comfortably in the hand. I don't need arthritis 'cause I was too dumb to think about basic ergonomics on a device I plan to use a lot.
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 boltronics on Sunday June 28 2020, @06:45AM
Reviews so far say it's comfortable, with one reviewer claiming to have put ~150 hours into it IIRC. Probably because you hold it in your lap, hands wider apart and resting on each leg, instead of in the air and close together like a typical game controller.
Having said that, the paint on the sides of my 3DS XL has almost completely peeled off after many hundreds of hours playing the various Fire Emblem and Persona Q games, and I've never had the slightest hint of a problem.
OTOH, my wife complains about wrist pain after briefly using a Switch Pro controller, which is supposed to be one of the most comfortable modern controllers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2020, @10:21PM
Same. I would have preordered immediately if they were still using AMD. I think I'll stick with my Win 2 until their next iteration.