Exclusive Kaveri interview with Nicolas Thibieroz of AMD

1. Introduction2. Kaveri Hardware3. Kelveri for Developers4. The Future5. View All Pages

“Kaveri changes everything”, said Nic. “The level of flexibility and cooperation between the CPU and GPU areas within a system are now on a different level”.

He explained, “With the new APUs, we can offer up to 4 unlocked CPU cores, each of which have been designed to boost computational efficiency, feed the cores faster and improve single core execution – while at the same time providing up to 8 supercharged GPU cores, based on the latest GCN architecture, for maximum graphics performance”.

“AMD's Heterogeneous System Architecture offers amongst other things, accelerated media playback with UltraHD video encode/decode built into the GPU areas, which also allows up to improve video editing, while at the same time having enough power to offer next generation NUIs (Natural User Interfaces)”, Nic told us.

We asked if the improvements are localised at one price point, for example in the top of the range chips.

“Far from it”, said Nic. “While performance in PC Mark 8 v2 is 8% better when comparing the best Kaveri chips to the best Richland chips from the last generation, the improvement in the sub-45w area is much bigger – as much as 15% faster”.

That's in raw performance, but what about ‘Performance Per Watt'?

“When you measure system scores in 3DMark Fire Strike, you will see over 33% better performance per watt in the mid and high-end chips, but the low end increases by as much as 75%”, he told us.

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