AMD's three new low-power chips pose potent challenge to Intel

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"AMD is showing off its latest round of APUs – accelerated processing units that combine compute and graphics cores on the same slice o' silicon – that it hopes will be reinforcements in its battle for the consumer market against its main competitor, Intel, especially at the low-power end of the market.

"We're working to position ourselves to be the top provider, between the software and silicon capabilities, for a new generation of client devices," AMD VP of communications and industry marketing John Taylor told The Reg at a briefing last week in San Francisco.

A tall order, indeed, but one which AMD hopes its three new APUs help fill. AMD says the entry-level part code-named "Temash", in fact, is aimed at an entirely new type of device: the "Performance Tablet", for which AMD has rolled out a new branding term: "Elite Mobility".

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/23/and_apu_trio/

temash_v_clovertrail_large.jpg
 
First off, that looks like an amateur slide that is not made by AMD(possibly some fanboy serving cool aid, ~Jim Jones reference). Secondly it doesn't show benchmarks, IPC performance, power consumption and so on. DX11 on a low power chip is pretty pointless. I am not saying Temash won't be better. I am trying to point out the marketing slide doesn't really give us much in the way of an objective outlook. Temash will go up against Bay Trail anyway right?
 
Those "Elite" Temash chips are 3.9W to 25W*, and that chart is comparing against the sub-2W Atom Z27xx Clovertrail (heritage to 5 year old in order execution core, and gimped graphics to fit in the very low power budget).

It's a pattern AMD has fallen into: compare against something on the way out and win! :p

The problem for AMD isn't the 32nm Clovertrail Atom, it's the 22nm Silvermont/Bay Trail Atom with high clock speeds (2W SoC supposedly runs at 2.4GHz and has double the performance of the Clovertrail Atom Z2760, a problem since the *8W* Temash A6-1450 is only 20-50% faster than the Z2760). Bay Trail tablets are coming over a quarter later than Temash laptops, not sure when other Silvermont models are coming out.

Hopefully we'll get benchmarks head to head, but AMD still doesn't have a very low power SoC, even with the "Elite" Temash.

* low end:
A4-1200 HD 8180 2 cores 1GHz 1MB L2 128 GCN @ 225MHz 3.9W
high end:
A6-5200 HD 8400 4 cores 2GHz 2MB L2 128 GCN @ 600MHz 25W
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2013/05/23/amd-mobile-2013/1

The quad core A6-1450 128GCN @ 400MHz graphics performance was abysmal in the notebookcheck benchmarks (which estimated a 4EU "gen 7" Intel graphics would probably be competitive with), to put the figures above in perspective. A 2 core 1GHz A4-1200 would be mostly CPU performance competitive with the Atom Z2760, so maybe the comparison to Clovertrail is valid. ;)
 
pxc said:
Those "Elite" Temash chips are 3.9W to 25W*, and that chart is comparing against the sub-2W Atom Z27xx Clovertrail (heritage to 5 year old in order execution core, and gimped graphics to fit in the very low power budget).

It's a pattern AMD has fallen into: compare against something on the way out and win! :p

The problem for AMD isn't the 32nm Clovertrail Atom, it's the 22nm Silvermont/Bay Trail Atom with high clock speeds (2W SoC supposedly runs at 2.4GHz and has double the performance of the Clovertrail Atom Z2760, a problem since the *8W* Temash A6-1450 is only 20-50% faster than the Z2760). Bay Trail tablets are coming over a quarter later than Temash laptops, not sure when other Silvermont models are coming out.

Hopefully we'll get benchmarks head to head, but AMD still doesn't have a very low power SoC, even with the "Elite" Temash.

* low end:
A4-1200 HD 8180 2 cores 1GHz 1MB L2 128 GCN @ 225MHz 3.9W
high end:
A6-5200 HD 8400 4 cores 2GHz 2MB L2 128 GCN @ 600MHz 25W
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2013/05/23/amd-mobile-2013/1

The quad core A6-1450 128GCN @ 400MHz graphics performance was abysmal in the notebookcheck benchmarks (which estimated a 4EU "gen 7" Intel graphics would probably be competitive with), to put the figures above in perspective. A 2 core 1GHz A4-1200 would be mostly CPU performance competitive with the Atom Z2760, so maybe the comparison to Clovertrail is valid. ;)
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QFT

Bay Trail can go in phones(power consumption wise). Elite Temash is netbook battery territory. That being said they are different segments and Temash slides had to stack the deck against the older tech. By the same logic we could compare bulldozer to Core 2 Duo and AMD comes out on top back then. :p

I would but an Elite Temash driven netbook with a high resolution screen if the price was right. Lets hope they show up in inexpensive devices so they have a great bang per buck. Maybe we will see it show up in larger tablets and be an Apple killer. :D


Pieter3dnow said:
http://semiaccurate.com/2013/05/22/amd-announces-seven-new-mobile-richland-parts/

http://semiaccurate.com/2013/05/22/amd-releases-5-kabinis-and-3-temashes/

Forget about challenge just state obliterate :) .

Intel does not have anything that comes even close to Temash, Kabini and Richland ULV are not to bad either :) .
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Lets use grown up sources. Semiaccurate is pathetic. They feature AMD worship services 24/7. I like AMD for many things, but semiaccurate shouldn't be trusted for anything but propaganda. Just like MSNBC is liberal propaganda and Fox News/Sky News is conservative propaganda. Only trust impartial sources for analysis if you want to know the truth.
 
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DaedalusHelios said:
Lets use grown up sources. Semiaccurate is pathetic. They feature AMD worship services 24/7. I like AMD for many things, but semiaccurate shouldn't be trusted for anything but propaganda. Just like MSNBC is liberal propaganda and Fox News/Sky News is conservative propaganda. Only trust impartial sources for analysis if you want to know the truth.
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They only list what is being released by AMD there is no cheerleading and so on.
But there already been reviews and leaked benchmarks so my "obliterate" is justified and unless you been living in a cave SA is pretty good source for certain things.

They are critical of the industry as a whole even on AMD firings they had articles up there criticizing AMD.

You shoulda seen their Volcanic Island article god that was golden :) .
 
pxc said:
The quad core A6-1450 128GCN @ 400MHz graphics performance was abysmal in the notebookcheck benchmarks (which estimated a 4EU "gen 7" Intel graphics would probably be competitive with), to put the figures above in perspective. A 2 core 1GHz A4-1200 would be mostly CPU performance competitive with the Atom Z2760, so maybe the comparison to Clovertrail is valid. ;)
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So, going off of the figures in this anandtech review, which uses the A4-5000, if you halved the clockspeed to get to the 3.9W part level, you would still have performance approximately.... 5 to 10 times as fast as the Clovertrail? That's not even worth comparing. I think it's probably more comparable to Intel Pentium and Celeron processors, it's past the level of Clovertrail. CPU performance is usually around double of a Z7260 with the A4-5000, so lose 30% of the clockspeed and it is still receiving a solid trouncing, plus the Kabini would have dual channel memory.

I think Atom just gets trounced all over the board, so I'd wait until SilverMont comes out to compare for real... Clovertrail is just a bad joke. I want to see Kabini vs. Pentium and Celeron.

EDIT: Nevermind the CPU score comparison, the 3.9W part looks like it has different cache and less cores so it's not just 30% slower than the A4-5400.
 
If the price is right id buy an A6-1450 equipped tablet. I wonder how well world of warcraft plays on a touchscreen ;-P
 
xorbe said:
According to that AT review you linked on page 2, "Kabini only supports a single-channel interface"
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My bad, someone else on another forum mentioned dual channel and I took it for fact. Single channel it is, kinda lame :rolleyes:
 
sushiwarrior said:
My bad, someone else on another forum mentioned dual channel and I took it for fact. Single channel it is, kinda lame :rolleyes:
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That seems to cause some portion of the GPU bottleneck.

It's a bit strange to not offer dual channel. The package isn't ball limited or anything: http://photos.macnn.com/article_images/amd-1.jpg and a 3.8W chip isn't going into handhelds which need very tiny packages like Intel hoped Clovertrail would (CT = 14mm x 14mm, slightly larger than common FBGA DDR3 8mm x 14mm memory chips).

The real reason is AMD may believe it doesn't need dual channel in order to be competitive performance-wise.
 
pxc said:
That seems to cause some portion of the GPU bottleneck.

It's a bit strange to not offer dual channel. The package isn't ball limited or anything: http://photos.macnn.com/article_images/amd-1.jpg and a 3.8W chip isn't going into handhelds which need very tiny packages like Intel hoped Clovertrail would (CT = 14mm x 14mm, slightly larger than common FBGA DDR3 8mm x 14mm memory chips).

The real reason is AMD may believe it doesn't need dual channel in order to be competitive performance-wise.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's about pin space, I think it's about silicon space. Dual channel controllers are much bigger and therefore draw more power and drive the price of the chip up, guess the tradeoffs there aren't worth the performance gains.
 
I'm not sure I buy the silicon space and power arguments, especially on processors which aren't anywhere close to 2W. Clover Trail has a dual channel memory controller, and it's a very small (65mm^2) sub-2W processor. If sub-4W was critical, AMD could have disabled/gated off the second channel and left dual channel to the 8W and up models.

There's the other problem I forgot about: segmentation. Single channel memory is pretty effective as a performance brake.
 
pxc said:
I'm not sure I buy the silicon space and power arguments, especially on processors which aren't anywhere close to 2W. Clover Trail has a dual channel memory controller, and it's a very small (65mm^2) sub-2W processor. If sub-4W was critical, AMD could have disabled/gated off the second channel and left dual channel to the 8W and up models.

There's the other problem I forgot about: segmentation. Single channel memory is pretty effective as a performance brake.
Click to expand...

Disabling the second channel still takes up space on the die, you can get a lot more chips out of one wafer with just minimal space saving. Clover Trail has only 2 cores and less graphics power I think, so they have more room and power overhead?
 
sushiwarrior said:
So, going off of the figures in this anandtech review, which uses the A4-5000, if you halved the clockspeed to get to the 3.9W part level, you would still have performance approximately.... 5 to 10 times as fast as the Clovertrail? That's not even worth comparing. I think it's probably more comparable to Intel Pentium and Celeron processors, it's past the level of Clovertrail. CPU performance is usually around double of a Z7260 with the A4-5000, so lose 30% of the clockspeed and it is still receiving a solid trouncing, plus the Kabini would have dual channel memory.

I think Atom just gets trounced all over the board, so I'd wait until SilverMont comes out to compare for real... Clovertrail is just a bad joke. I want to see Kabini vs. Pentium and Celeron.

EDIT: Nevermind the CPU score comparison, the 3.9W part looks like it has different cache and less cores so it's not just 30% slower than the A4-5400.
Click to expand...

That review actually puts the A4-5000 in a worse light as well. Anandtech is doing the same thing they always do with AMD: comparing AMD's chip to something several times more expensive and in an entirely different product segment than AMD is targeting.

TechReport did a comparison with an i3 and Techspot compared it to Pentiums/Celerons, both make its virtues a lot clearer.

Notably the A4s are targeted against Pentiums and Celerons while the A6s are targeted against the i3s.
 
Runningflame570 said:
That review actually puts the A4-5000 in a worse light as well. Anandtech is doing the same thing they always do with AMD: comparing AMD's chip to something several times more expensive and in an entirely different product segment than AMD is targeting.

TechReport did a comparison with an i3 and Techspot compared it to Pentiums/Celerons, both make its virtues a lot clearer.

Notably the A4s are targeted against Pentiums and Celerons while the A6s are targeted against the i3s.
Click to expand...

Wow, no kidding eh! Just about the performance of the 2217u with much lower power consumption, smaller cost and packaging, and less heat! I'm expecting some super slim laptops at a really nice price point. Really good job this time from AMD, Jaguar is shaping up to be a major success which is what they really need. Now, to see some OEM's start putting them to work....
 
pxc said:
It's a pattern AMD has fallen into: compare against something on the way out and win!. ;)
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it would be very difficult to compare their chips to something they cant get their hands onto...

in january dodge pitted their brand new just released viper against the supercharged corvette which was 3 weeks from EOL at the factory....

It didnt matter because the new corvette didnt exist yet as a commercial product.
 
Sheppard said:
it would be very difficult to compare their chips to something they cant get their hands onto...

in january dodge pitted their brand new just released viper against the supercharged corvette which was 3 weeks from EOL at the factory....

It didnt matter because the new corvette didnt exist yet as a commercial product.
Click to expand...

Automotive and IT move at different speeds. If Automotive moved at the speed IT does they wouldn't be using reciprocating engines right now. So what dodge did made a more sound comparison.

Bay Trail fine details for AMD's feature comparison have been available for months with articles like this: http://www.techpowerup.com/178189/intel-bay-trail-platform-and-valleyview-atom-soc-detailed.html
 
Sheppard said:
it would be very difficult to compare their chips to something they cant get their hands onto...
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True, but AMD has done this before even after competitor's new products have been released.

Also, Clover Trail (2012) has been superseded by Clover Trail+, with 8x faster GPU and > 10% higher clock speed compared to the older Clover Trail.
 
pxc said:
I'm not sure I buy the silicon space and power arguments,
Click to expand...
"Pad limited" is the phrase you're looking for. Honestly no one outside of AMD has anyway of knowing for sure if they were pad limited with these new CPU's. Its quite possible though. I think the cores just by themselves are now competitive with ARM A15 in terms of silicon die space which is pretty damn small.
 
Runningflame570 said:
TechReport did a comparison with an i3 and Techspot compared it to Pentiums/Celerons, both make its virtues a lot clearer.
Click to expand...
The problem, as THG also pointed out, is that i3-3217U laptops are available for $360* and up on Newegg. AMD is choosing which Intel processors it wants to compete against, but what's available at each price point is what AMD will actually be competing against.

*THG also compares the provided A4-5000 laptop against a $350 Pentium B960 laptop, but a savvy buyer who is going to choose a laptop based on performance would easily choose the faster i3-3217U model for only $10 more than the B960 model. A picture shows this nicely:

UuA3gbd.png


The B960 is what AMD wants to compare against, and the i3-3217U is what it will likely be competing against. The 3217U kills the A4-5000 in both CPU and gaming performance. The B960 is an old Sandy Bridge based model which is probably going to disappear from retail very soon. Like I posted earlier, AMD picks something on the way out to show it #winning. Pretty disingenuous.
 
pxc said:
The problem, as THG also pointed out, is that i3-3217U laptops are available for $360* and up on Newegg. AMD is choosing which Intel processors it wants to compete against, but what's available at each price point is what AMD will actually be competing against.
Click to expand...

All of the laptops less than $520 are on sale, but I suppose you think OEMs never run sales for AMD laptops?
 
Runningflame570 said:
All of the laptops less than $520 are on sale, but I suppose you think OEMs never run sales for AMD laptops?
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They tend to not want to do this on newly-released stock. That's not how you make a profit.

The 17w Core i3 with HD 4000 will remain discounted for the next few months, and then it will be replaced in short order with either GT2 or GT3 graphics, both of which will destroy Kabini. Even GT1 parts (Pentium and Celeron) will see almost a doubling of performance over HD Graphics/2000/2500!
 
pxc said:
The problem, as THG also pointed out, is that i3-3217U laptops are available for $360* and up on Newegg. AMD is choosing which Intel processors it wants to compete against, but what's available at each price point is what AMD will actually be competing against.
Click to expand...

Sure, the Intel laptops themselves may be cheap, but I guarantee you the tray price of Kabini is MUCH lower than i3 or Pentium models. AMD can't price the laptops, they can give super cheap processors however.

defaultluser said:
The 17w Core i3 with HD 4000 will remain discounted for the next few months, and then it will be replaced in short order with either GT2 or GT3 graphics, both of which will destroy Kabini. Even GT1 parts (Pentium and Celeron) will see almost a doubling of performance over HD Graphics/2000/2500!
Click to expand...

I think it's clear that those parts are in a different TDP/cost segment. I'd rather see a higher rated chip compared to those (and, to be clear, Intel TDP's are clearly not congruent to AMD TDP's. Look at power consumption of 2 equally rated models, Intel almost always consumes MUCH more power).
 
pxc said:
LOL, no. That's not a concern of FC-PGA chips, introduced way back in the Pentium 3 era (~1999). :p I would say nice try, but I don't want to fib.
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When you're talking about 100+ pads necessary for another memory channel on a chip as small as Temash or Kabini it sure is, even with FCPGA's. Do you think they want their GPU's bandwidth constrained or what?
 
defaultluser said:
The 17w Core i3 with HD 4000 will remain discounted for the next few months, and then it will be replaced in short order with either GT2 or GT3 graphics, both of which will destroy Kabini. Even GT1 parts (Pentium and Celeron) will see almost a doubling of performance over HD Graphics/2000/2500!
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Haswell based ULV laptops/sleekbooks will end up costing lots more than a Kabini/Temash based version. Intel will be selling their new chip for a premium + their chipset too.
 
mesyn191 said:
When you're talking about 100+ pads necessary for another memory channel on a chip as small as Temash or Kabini it sure is, even with FCPGA's. Do you think they want their GPU's bandwidth constrained or what?
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I've already covered that: the Atom Z2650 is an smaller chip than Temash and has dual channel memory support. Yes, I do think this is AMD's attempt at market segmentation, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that.
 
You guys do realize that 98% of consumers don't split hairs like this right? And the other 2% are tech nerds who have three or four devices for different purposes.

Most people I know just buy the cheapest thing they can find that is on sale that weekend. A small percentage actually try to buy a higher res screen or maybe quickly glance at a gaming benchmark or something.
 
pxc said:
I've already covered that: the Atom Z2650 is an smaller chip than Temash and has dual channel memory support. Yes, I do think this is AMD's attempt at market segmentation, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that.
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That chip has less integrated on die than Temash/Kabini, that is a apples to oranges comparison. Also there are no variants of Temash/Kabini with dual channel memory forthcoming and the chip isn't fast enough to take market share from AMD's slower APU's so the idea of product segmentation makes no sense.
 
lordsegan said:
You guys do realize that 98% of consumers don't split hairs like this right? And the other 2% are tech nerds who have three or four devices for different purposes.

Most people I know just buy the cheapest thing they can find that is on sale that weekend. A small percentage actually try to buy a higher res screen or maybe quickly glance at a gaming benchmark or something.
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Of course but the people here aren't like most people and it is a tech forum so expect quibbling over stuff no one else cares about.
 
Well no one here cares either :) since there is no topic " AMD WILL CRUSH IINTEL AND YOU ARE BUYING AMD FROM NOW ON" yes in caps ;) .

It is a nice change of pace the problem is that people would have to buy a new pc or tablet for it to work. Current economic situation isn't great but lets hope that America wil lead in sales.
 
Well everybody even here knows that there is no way AMD will be CRUSHING INTEL anytime soon. The best hope for that is probably with Excavator which is supposedly coming in 2014. If they can get close or match Intel in performance without losing too badly in terms of TDP and are willing to sell for 10-20% less than Intel then they can do well I think.
 
mesyn191 said:
Well everybody even here knows that there is no way AMD will be CRUSHING INTEL anytime soon. The best hope for that is probably with Excavator which is supposedly coming in 2014. If they can get close or match Intel in performance without losing too badly in terms of TDP and are willing to sell for 10-20% less than Intel then they can do well I think.
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If they can do this for a profit then they have a chance. Doing it at a loss will not help the current situation.
 
mesyn191 said:
That chip has less integrated on die than Temash/Kabini, that is a apples to oranges comparison.
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Temash has a narrow PCIe interface and SATA, but Atom has other interfaces Temash doesn't have. It's pretty close to a draw pin-wise, but that's irrelevant anyways. Temash is around 33% larger than Atom and there is space to connect a second memory channel to the package if AMD wanted to do that.
 
drescherjm said:
If they can do this for a profit then they have a chance. Doing it at a loss will not help the current situation.
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Just because they sell for 10-20% less than Intel doesn't mean they sell for a loss. Especially if Intel is charging a premium for the products.
 
pxc said:
Temash has a narrow PCIe interface and SATA, but Atom has other interfaces Temash doesn't have.
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Sure LPC buses and such for diagnostic purposes and such. Huge difference between that a memory channel.

pxc said:
Temash is around 33% larger than Atom and there is space to connect a second memory channel to the package if AMD wanted to do that.
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You're still comparing apples to oranges and making assumptions on top of that. Intel has a more compact packaging tech than AMD for some of their chips apparently and due to process differences one company's pads will be larger or smaller than the other on top of that.
 
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