AMD Confirms Kaveri APU Is a 512-GPU Core Integrated Processor 130
MojoKid writes "At APU13 today, AMD announced a full suite of new products and development tools as part of its push to improve HSA development. One of the most significant announcements to come out the sessions today-- albeit in a tacit, indirect fashion, is that Kaveri is going to pack a full 512 GPU cores. There's not much new to see on the CPU side of things — like Richland/Trinity, Steamroller is a pair of CPU modules with two cores per module. AMD also isn't talking about clock speeds yet, but the estimated 862 GFLOPS that the company is claiming for Kaveri points to GPU clock speeds between 700 — 800MHz. With 512 cores, Kaveri picks up a 33% boost over its predecessors, but memory bandwidth will be essential for the GPU to reach peak performance. For performance, AMD showed Kaveri up against the Intel 4770K running a low-end GeForce GT 630. In the intro scene to BF4's single-player campaign (1920x1080, Medium Details), the AMD Kaveri system (with no discrete GPU) consistently pushed frame rates in the 28-40 FPS range. The Intel system, in contrast, couldn't manage 15 FPS. Performance on that system was solidly in the 12-14 FPS range — meaning AMD is pulling 2x the frame rate, if not more."
Cut the crap. We all know what needs to be made. (Score:1, Interesting)
We need a CPU/GPU SoC based on the tech that's going in to the xbone and ps4. They both have multicore procs with a built in GPU that's capable of pushing next gen games at HD resolution.
We need that. A cheap PC built on a powerful single-chip solution. Not this wimpy shit.
Personally, I'd go for the the PS4 solution. 8 gigs of high speed GDDR5 that's both the main memory and graphics memory? Fuck yes. Give me that. I'd forgo the ability to expand memory if I could have GDDR5 as main memory. (The DDR3+128meg edram solution in the xbone is cheaper and clearly inferior)
The real advantage is the programming model (Score:5, Interesting)
These machines share the memory between CPUs and GPUs, and that's the advantage:
You can use the GPU cores to do otherwise forbiddingly expensive operations (such as detailed
physics, particle simulations, etc) very easily. Traditional systems need to copy data between vram and main memory over the bus system bus, which takes time.
Programming languages are already starting to support mixed CPU/GPU programming with through new language constructs. At the moment, mainly rendering and physics is done on the GPU, soon it will be easy to do anything that can be efficiently parallelized.
Re:Which GT630? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, I'm saying that the assertion that they doctored the test by using a GT 630 because it is slower than the iGPU in the 4770k is false. The post making this assertion bases it on the assumption that the iGPU that they disabled was the Iris Pro 5200 (which is faster than a 630) when in fact the reverse is true, the iGPU being disabled was the Intel HD 4600, which is slower than a 630.
I'm making no value judgements of AMD's APU whatsoever. Merely correcting a falsehood.