AMD made the announcement Wednesday at Computex (Tuesday in the US – Computex is held in Taiwan) that they are upping their CPU game in the mainstream notebook and 2-in-1 market with their latest Advanced Processing Unit (APU) codenamed “Carizzo.” This APU boasts huge performance benefits compared to current competition. AMD will be targeting notebooks in the price range of $400 to $700 dollars with this new processor.
Per AMD’s website, below are some details they have shared about the new processor:
AMD’s upcoming A-Series Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) for notebooks and low-power desktops, codenamed “Carrizo,” will deliver a wealth of new, advanced power management technologies, in addition to new “Excavator” x86 CPU cores and a new generation of AMD Radeon™ GPU cores. Using a true System-on-Chip (SoC) design, AMD expects Carrizo to reduce the power consumed by the x86 cores alone by 40 percent, while also providing substantial gains in CPU, graphics, and multimedia performance over the prior generation APU.
This new chip combines the CPU and GPU cores into the same die which AMD boasts huge efficiency gains as a result. This follows suit of the custom X86 CPU GPU combos that AMD created for both the Xbox One and the Playstation 4 gaming consoles. However, Carizzo is the”first fully HSA compliant SOC. To learn more about HSA, click here.
Impressively enough, despite such improvements to its computational and graphical power, it offers an equally energy-efficient solution. According to eWeek, “The chips’ graphics performance and battery life are double that of the current “Kaveri” processors.”
AMD made the decision to create Carizzo after identifying that the needs of mainstream users has shifted. What was once surfing Myspace and email is now shifting to processor intensive 4k video, online gaming, and even video editing in many cases. As a result, the new processor is oriented towards strong graphical computing. According to the Australian, AMD claims the new chipset outdoes the “Intel 5500 graphics found on fifth-generation Core i5 processors”; an incredible feat!
In short, the new processor will help bring zippy and energy-efficient performance back to the mainstream user on budget laptops. This will hopefully prevent the following GIF from ever occurring again due to a slow notebook…
You can read more about Carizzo and view the full presentation on AMD’s website. Excited for the new processor? Let us know in the comments below.