AMD's newest APU promises discrete-class graphics performance on your next laptop

Intro and computing cores

After a series of teases, AMD has officially taken the veils off of Carrizo, launching the anticipated notebook A8 and A10 processors as part of the Sixth Generation A-Series APU, or accelerated processing unit. In a presentation in San Francisco, California ahead of the launch, AMD said that it is targeting Carrizo to the 63 million consumers who buy a mainstream laptop every year priced between $400 (£263, AU$524) and $700 (£560, AU$917).

With the Sixth Generation A-Series APU, AMD wants your notebook to be the ideal connected, versatile hub in your digital life, noting that the integrated processing and graphics core are designed for productivity, gaming and entertainment.

AMD says that its Sixth Generation APU will be available soon in notebooks from Lenovo, Asus, Acer, Toshiba and HP. For consumers, Carrizo promises to deliver discrete-class graphics at an affordable price. AMD says that in the past, users had to upgrade to a premium laptop if they needed more GPU power – even for light or moderate gaming – but Carrizo aims to satisfy the graphics needs of mainstream notebook users.

12 computing cores

The Sixth Generation A-Series comes with four Excavator CPU cores and eight third generation GCN graphics cores that are able to fully share system resources, like memory and RAM. AMD claims that the Sixth Generation chip is the first to use the Heterogeneous Systems Architecture (HSA) 1.0 design.

This gives the processor a total of 12 computing cores, and according to AMD, this setup is capable of delivering up to two times faster gaming performance compared to rival processors and more than twice the battery life from the prior generation APU.

The chip is also the first to support High Efficiency Video Coding (HVEC) decoding for mainstream notebooks. HEVC, or H.265 file formats, videos provide for uninterrupted, smooth video playback with full CPU offload at up to 60 fps. This means that videos will be smoother and notebook batteries will last twice as long while playing video content.

The HEVC format is supported by Amazon Prime videos and natively in Windows 10.

Performance and graphics

Performance comparison

AMD has squeezed out better performance and more battery life out of its APU with a 28nm chip design, DDR3 memory and HSA 1.0 specifications. This is quite impressive considering that rival Intel has transitioned over to a power efficient 14nm design, yet AMD claims its processor delivers stronger battery life.

General computing battery life has been improved from about 3.3 hours from the previous generation APU to 8.3 hours on the current model, according to specs released by AMD. What's even more impressive is that battery life while rendering video is also vastly superior compared to the competition. The AMD SoC is capable of 300 minutes of video playback compared to about 112 minutes on system utilizing Intel chips.

Because of HSA 1.0 compliance, graphics performance of Carrizo is superior to Intel's Core i3 CPU coupled with an Nvidia GeForce GT 740 GPU, according to Adam Kozak, AMD's product marketing manager.

In fact, Kozak claims that graphics performance is twice as powerful as the integrated graphics on Intel's Core i7 processor. AMD says that HSA 1.0 essentially gives everyone big data capabilities because of the processing power that is now available to mainstream users.

Graphics

Even though AMD is focusing on mainstream performance, gaming and entertainment at this time with the Sixth Generation A-Series, Kozak confirmed with TechRadar that the company is working to get its chips inside more mobile workstations. Mobile workstations today use either Intel's integrated graphics in a power-saving mode when not subjected to heavy workloads, with a discrete Nvidia GPU that kicks in whenever the system demands it.

To compete against these system, Kozak says that AMD's APU can work with a multi-GPU environment. With dual-graphics support, mobile workstations can be configured to take advantage of a secondary discrete AMD Radeon GPU for added performance. AMD says that it will release the APIs to give developers explicit control for more powerful multi-GPU performance. We'll have to see how this setup fares in benchmarks compared to systems utilizing Intel processors and Nvidia graphics.

Kozak says that the APU already comes with "discrete-class graphics," leveraging the power of an AMD Radeon R7 or R6 GPU inside the APU.

For business users who require a multi-monitor setup when at the office, the Sixth Generation A-Series can drive up to three simultaneous displays. In AMD's demo room comparing video performance of the A-Series to Intel's Core i-series, videos rendered with the AMD chipset appear far smoother. Videos rendered with Intel's mainstream Core i5 processor look more like a slideshow with very low framerates.

Additionally, with improved color compression on the APU for video and graphics, I found that pictures, videos and games appear brighter and more vibrant when rendered using an AMD processor compared to rival Intel's chipset at the demo station had set up.

The APU is also DirectX 12-ready.

Excavator Core

Kozak and his team says the reason the APU is able to deliver superior graphics performance is because of the chipset's low power target. This creates a virtuous cycle so the cooler the system runs, the less power it needs to cool down, which means that it can stay cool longer, while driving heavy loads. The company says this creates thermal headroom, so if needed, the chips can run use more power to run faster and exploit the thermal margin created.

The excavator core is also separated from the memory interface in AMD's thermal architecture to keep hot components away from each other.

AMD says that the Sixth Generation APU achieves a 23% area reduction in the same 28nm technology node as the prior generation APU. This leads to increased frequency for up to 39% more performance and IPC enhancements that deliver an additional 9-13% more performance.

The result is an increase in up to 55% more performance in key benchmarks, such as Cinebench, a tool that we use at TechRadar to test laptops and desktops.

Security and innovations

Security

The Sixth Generation A-Series also comes with its own dedicated 32-bit ARM A5 processor embedded inside. The capabilities of the ARM chipset will be extended to select third-party developers to keep things secure. The ARM core on the APU SoC creates a secure container.

The ARM chipset is like having a TPM inside the A-Series SoC, says Jason Bantam, AMD's director of mobility solutions. There is also a cryptographic co-processor that handles encryption.

When asked about mobile workstations with discrete and integrated AMD graphics, Bantam says that the company will be making those announcements at a later date.

AMD innovations

To showcase the power of its APU, AMD has also created software that takes advantage of the stronger processing performance. AMD Looking Glass is an application that recognizes faces inside videos, so you can search for specific faces of people inside videos. It's like image searches, but for video clips.

Additionally, the APU also supports gestures and Windows 10. Even though Kozak would not comment on Windows Hello support, he alluded that the APU will be able to handle Microsoft Passport and Windows Hello for added security.

The chipset will also support ARM Trustzone apps, Secure boot and resume, TPM, and drive key encryption for enterprise users.

We'll need to get our hands on final production units of laptops running AMD's Sixth Generation APU to see how they compare against their Intel counterparts before making any final verdicts, but the demos that AMD had set up show promise.

• Read our analysis on why smaller is better when it comes to CPU design

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