The first details have emerged of AMD’s debut Zen architecture accelerated processing unit (APU). Targeted squarely at the high-performance computing (HPC) and server markets, the Zen APU will come packing a mammoth 16 x86 processing cores with a total of 32 threads.
AMD has been treading water in the processor market as of late, and its Zen micro-architecture is its first major release in years. Consumer processors built on Zen are expected in 2016, but AMD is kicking things off with this impressive 16-core HPC APU.
Each of the cores will be kitted out with 512KB of L2 cache, and each bunch of four will have an 8MB L3 cache to share. In the case of this 16-core processor, that equates to an 8MB L2 cache and 32MB of L3 cache - not bad at all.
Over the GPU side of the equation, the Zen APU comes equipped with the next-generation Greenland Graphics and Multimedia Engine, alongside support for 3D high bandwidth memory (HBM). Up to 16GB of the stuff in fact, with a maximum bandwidth of 512GB/s. There’s also support for four channels of 3200MHz DDR4 memory built in too of course, with a total capacity of 1TB.
AMD’s remaining pretty tight-lipped on the leaked slide, but we’d expect to hear a lot more about Zen once its next generation of graphics cards are out the door. If these specs are true then AMD has a bit of a monster on its hands, particularly with the use of 16GB HBM. We could have a little wait though until the Zen microarchitecture actually sees the light of day - AMD is planning a launch 12-18 months from now.
Tags:amd,amd apu, amd zen apu
0 comments:
Post a Comment