:thumbsup:
Final Thoughts
Sometimes a name can inspire change. Carrizo isnt one of those names, and when hearing the words AMDs notebook processor, those words have not instilled much hope in the past, much to AMDs chagrin no doubt. Despite this, we come away from Carrizo with a significantly positive impression because this feels more than just another Bulldozer-based update.
If you can say in a sentence more performance, less power and less die area, it almost sounds like a holy trifecta of goals a processor designer can only hope to accomplish. Normally a processor engineer is all about performance, so it takes an adjustment in thinking to focus more so on power, but AMD is promising this with Carrizo. Part of this will be down to the effectiveness of the high density libraries (which according to the slides should also mean less power or more performance for less die area) but also the implementation of the higher bandwidth encoder, new video playback pathway and optimization of power through the frequency planes. Doubling the L1 data cache for no loss in latency will have definite impacts to IPC, as well as the better prefetch and branch prediction.
Technically, on paper, all the blocks in play look exciting and every little margin can help AMD build a better APU. It merely requires validation of the results we have been presented along with a killer device to go along with it, something which AMD has lacked in the past and reviewers have had trouble getting their hands on. We are in discussions with AMD to get the sufficient tools to test independently a number of the claims, and to see if AMDs Carrizo has potential.