AMD’s ‘Raven Ridge’ APU designer points to power as its next advantage

PCWorld sits down with Dan Bouvier, the creator behind its Raven Ridge integrated central processor, to seek out what is returning next.

AMD’s historical strength has been its fusion of central processor and graphics, combining its powerful Radeon graphics cores with CPUs that currently embrace the Ryzen generation. thus wherever area unit AMD’s integrated chips going next?

On Monday throughout the new Chips semiconductor conference in Cupertino, California, AMD’s Dan Bouvier, company VP and chief creator of shopper merchandise, given a post-mortem on Raven Ridge, the foremost recent integrated central processor associate degreed GPU—what AMD calls an APU.

Also referred to as the Ryzen three 2200G and Ryzen five 2400G APU, the Raven Ridge APUs performed amazingly well in PCWorld’s recent reviews as an alternate for budget recreation. (Remember, AMD’s APUs area unit designed for notebooks furthermore as desktops.)

When Bouvier weekday down with PCWorld following his speech, we tend to centre on AMD’s next generation of APUs. curiously, that’s one product phase we tend to don’t grasp an excessive amount of regarding. At Computex, AMD talked up its second-generation Threadripper two components (which we’ve currently reviewed), furthermore as a method shrink of its Vega GPU. however, we tend to don’t grasp a lot of regarding what the long run holds, on the far side the rumours that it would be code-named sculpturer, that it’ll use identical design and socket, and produce improved power and performance.

Below area unit four takeaways from our voice communication.

AMD’s next-generation APU can ship in 2019
AMD could have declared Raven Ridge in 2017, however, it began shipping in 2018. Expect its next APU to try and do identical, with associate degree announcement within the fall and shipments starting within the spring. “I assume we tend to area unit at the last wave of Raven [Ridge] machines rolling out currently, and that we have started future wave for next year,” Bouvier same.

The temporal arrangement synchronizes with product cycles for AMD’s customers. “With OEMs, particularly notebook OEMs, there are effectively 2 cycles,” Bouvier explained. “We attempt to intercept the autumn, late fall, thus we tend to catch up the primary a part of the year.”

Power headroom could supply some flexibility
Bouvier created the purpose that there’s still some headroom (or in Bouvier’s words, “some juice within the tank”) for managing power within the future APU generation. course into the long run, he said, there was a prospect that the APUs might call in power, so the APU would drop to a different TDP power tier to a lower place the separate Ryzen CPUs.

Put differently, a current Ryzen five 2600 processor consumes 65W—the same because of the 2500G APU. It looks like it’s potential that a next-next-gen APU might draw a bead on one thing a touch lower—which might open up the door for a small-form-factor play. “We’ve created some huge gains within the current generation, and there’s a lot to return,” Bouvier same.

It’s a subject that Bouvier came back to a couple of times. Bouvier noted that the impact of power savings by a processor has diminished as different computer elements, reminiscent of the show and SSD, consume proportionately a lot of power. once asked regarding the influence of Qualcomm’s flower on the market, Bouvier contrasted the 2 companies’ approaches.

“How do I preserve this performance, however, lie with loads less energy,” Bouvier same. “That’s the issue. They [Qualcomm] haven’t solved the performance downside, they’ve solved the energy downside. we tend to haven’t solved the energy aspect, however, we’ve solved the performance aspect.”

Good fanless notebooks might arrive with 7nm
Bouvier didn’t say what method technology its next APU would use, sadly. (2nd info Threadripper two can use 14nm, however, AMD is already talking regarding its Vega GPU design shipping at 7nm.) however, he did hold out hope that 7nm is the generation wherever fanless notebooks would finally begin to require off, with processors that consume regarding seven.5 watts.

“We checked out it,” Bouvier same. “But with all the overhead, it simply quenched the frequencies. The OEMs have worked out to feature regarding fifty % thermal system improvement, which is also enough, particularly if you come in 7nm, wherever you get a pleasant sweet spot that simply fits.”

More security mitigations area unit on the means
Though AMD has, for the most part, distanced itself from the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities that have troubled Intel, the corporation continues to be continued to create in protections. “It’s a time,” Bouvier same. “Each new chip can have a lot of levels of mitigations.”

AMD’s next priority seems to be creating vital enhancements within the computer memory system. “You’ll see that next,” Bouvier same.