AMD Begins Shipping "Llano" Accelerated Processor Unit Discussion

AMD has announced it has begun shipping its 32nm quad-core APU, which combines a processor and a graphics card into one chip.

Read the full content of this Article: AMD Begins Shipping "Llano" Accelerated Processor Unit

 

That's good news. Last I heard I believe they weren't supposed to start shipping until june or so.

 

This is to OEM's I believe, so a bit more waiting before the actual computers come out.

 

As an AMD fanboy I am very excited. I love the combination of power, battery life and price on my dm1z and if Llano can deliver on those platforms, but at a higher level, I will be sold.

 

This kicks butt! Intel watch out!

 

I really didn't like this video. The game benchmark score, extrapolated, won't even be able to run the game.

@the end of the game demo(in the video), a [email protected] with an Nvidia 285GTX will more than double that score. Meaning the ATI solution that was demo'd won't score high enough to play the game(meaningfully).

"Capable of running the game, but will experience considerable slowdown. Adjusting settings is unlikely to improve performance."

I realize it's a test to show the difference between ATI and Intel, I also realize it's an integrated graphics solution, but I think they should have chosen a game that we will actually be able to play.

 

hmmm maybe, maybe not, I'm waiting on bencies before I judge these chips... on paper they look good.

 

The real question is when will they be putting these APUs in tablets :O

 

Awesome, awesome. That vid is pretty old, or at least nothing new from the stuff in 2010. Llano will be amazing if it stays low watt through all that video. Because we all watch a ton of Flash vids and that's where a lot of battery life goes to die.

Unfortunately, I can almost guarantee that they will put this awesome APU into stupid looking clamshell designs from 2005.

 

Why does it matter what game they chose? The video is just meant to show that their integrated graphics are much better than Intel's, which it does.

 

It's also important to keep in mind that Llano is supposed to still support the use of a separate dedicated graphics card for serious gaming notebooks.

In other words, if you buy a notebook with a Llano APU and a discrete graphics card the GPU portion of the Llano APU will be used for typical multimedia stuff (keeping power consumption low) and the high-performance discrete/dedicated GPU would kick in when you start playing a serious game like Mass Effect 3 when it comes out later this year.

That isn't to say that the Lllano APU can't handle Mass Effect 3 by itself ... I'm just pointing out that the notebook OEMs have options in terms of what configurations they build to provide the best possible performance.

 

Exactly. I don't understand konceptz's post at all.

 

Only thing they can compete is in price, as the CPU part in Llano is not even up to c2d performance. Get a Sandy Bridge with an AMD video card, and you're much better off than getting a llano. Intel graphics in Sandy Bridge are fast enough for all of the non-gaming multimedia stuff.

 

It may not just be a switch between one or the other....rumors are the APU's integrated GPU could boost the performance by working together with some discrete GPU in a new version of Hybrid Crossfire.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/AMD-...logy-Similar-to-Hybrid-CrossFire-179740.shtml

 

Do you have any benchmarks to back this statement up?

 

I have to agree, even if the cpu isnt as bad as he saying it is still a definite proven fact that sandy bridge cpu's massively overpower the cpu side of the llano apu. So unless you are looking for a cheap laptop that has some ability to game. You are just way way way better off getting a sandy bridge laptop + Radeon 6770 or 6870 or 6970

 

Llano is a shrink of Athlon II with a GPU attached. It'll be slower than a similarly clocked C2D, never mind SB. That said, there will be quad core parts at acceptable TDP's and AMD might get a clock boost from the process shrink.

Llano is far better for the average user than Sandy Bridge though. Sandy Bridge graphics suck compared to anything but other GPU's by Intel. More and more things can be accelerated by the GPU, its performance will matter more than the CPU very soon.

 

Here you go, it's the same or slower than an athlon II at 2.2 ghz, which is slower than a c2d clock per clock.
Llano benchmarks and construction work at Globalfoundries - Patent based research regarding AMD's future MPUs

 

The average user depends much more on CPU power than GPU power, at least that's my definition of the average user. There are still tons of completely unoptimized web sites that require CPU power. There are tons of flash games that the average user is far more likely to play compared to Crysis 2, which use the CPU. There are tons of flash video players that don't properly use GPU acceleration.

Sandy Bridge GPU is perfectly fine for the vast majority who don't play 3D games. The average user who surfs the net, uses MS Office, and plays facebook games is much better served with a SB.

 

Anonymously leaked benchmarks are always proven to be true.

 

The average user depends on having enough CPU power. They won't benefit in any way if you replace their computer with a 4P server.

Llano provides enough CPU power. I use an Athlon II X3 in my desktop, its fast enough to render all the websites I've tested in a reasonable amount of time. One can't tell that its slower than a friend's Core i7 quad core unless its a side by side comparison, even then its not really that noticeable. Llano is faster than my Athlon II X3 definitely.

Even though there are many things that don't utilize the GPU yet, more and more things will take advantage of the GPU. Internet browsers that use the GPU to help render are trickling out. Flash can be GPU accelerated and support for GPU acceleration is getting better every day. Video playback has had GPU acceleration for a while now. The future is the GPU.

 

I disagree with this. My current laptop is a 3+ year old machine with a 2.5GHz C2D and a dying 8600M GT. If I use anything except the Standard VGA drivers, the card fails and I have to wait for the memory to clear itself after which it recovers. When this happened to me last November, I thought it was time to buy a new laptop, but in fact, the only places where lack of GPU acceleration makes any difference at all are 3D gaming and Windows Aero (the latter is not going to be an issue with Sandy Bridge). YouTube, Skype (with a two-way video call), all manner of Flash games -- everything works perfectly fine.

I've seen the browser benchmarks and various other examples of GPU acceleration, but in my experience, they simply do not occur in real life. I suspect this is because most people are running Intel's old graphics anyway so nobody bothers to put anything GPU-heavy on the web because it would cost them more than half their audience. Maybe GPUs will become as important as CPUs some day, but today they're nowhere close and they won't be for years (not until most computers are running semi-decent graphics because nobody wants to alienate their users).

 

Enough CPU power at low power consumption and high battery life, which is what AMD fails at. I'd say more people run VM's or use other CPU-intensive applications (Excel can be a CPU hog) than play games, for which CPU power and memory are important.

If most people depend on having enough CPU power, then why are people replacing their C2D's, which are faster than Llano? There's no reason to have anything more than that, right?

The versions going into notebooks are going to have 2 cores for the most part. Doubt it will be any faster than your Athlon X3 since the CPU has to compete with the GPU over the same DDR3 memory bus. Mobile AMD chips are also slower than their desktop equivalents so you can't compare them.

GPU acceleration has been coming for 5 years yet there isn't much to show for it. There's a good reason for it, programming GPU's is hard and software development costs always outpace hardware costs by a large margin. That's why Java, with its slowness is so popular for example. I would not hold my breath to see anything much more than video acceleration done by the GPU for the average user outside of gaming.

 

It is not the same speed clock for clock as the Athlon II, it is faster. The ES, ignoring for a second that there is no source and it is an unconfirmed leak, is running at 1.8GHz while the Athlon II is at 2.2GHz. The ES in the result is 8-10% slower than the Athlon II but it is running at an 18% lower clock speed (1.8/2.2 ~= 82%). You can't compare the two clock for clock.

If you extrapolated the ES to 2.2 GHz; not saying they will have one running at that or that it works like like, just trying to make the comparison as valid as possible; it would score 3964/6921. The Athlon II at 2.2GHz scores 3520/6293, making the ES, clock for clock, faster by 10-12%. On average, C2Ds are around 10-15% faster, clock for clock, than Athlon IIs.

So, clock for clock, Llano should be just as fast as C2Ds. Sure, that gets destroyed by SB and even Arrandale, but that is more than enough for most people. Combine that with integrated graphics that blow Intel's out of the water, the integrated graphics being able to work with a discrete graphics card, possibly similar battery life and likely a lower price. Personally, I need the graphics power more than the processing power and if it comes at a lower price then AMD has a winner in my book. If given the choice between,

$1000
i7-2630qm
Radeon 6770/ Intel HD 3000 switchable

$850
Llano quad core
Radeon 6770/6620(which is supposed to be at least around the Mobility 5650 in performance) Hybrid graphics

I would take the AMD system every time, all other things equal.

 

1. People replace their computers since they buy consumer quality computers that break. Then they go and buy a new computer, that will obviously have a newer CPU in it.

I know people that use old business laptops as their primary laptop. Why? It hasn't broke yet, and they don't need any more power. Looking at people who use old business laptops as their primary laptop that are used, I would say, the typical user doesn't need more than a Core 2 Duo at about 2GHz. Thinkpad T60 era mobile CPU's are where I would draw the line of fast enough.

2. The bottle neck most of the time is not the CPU. While it may not always be the GPU, there are still better things to spend one's money on than a faster CPU, like an SSD. The only reason I wish I had a faster CPU really is compiling, maybe more intensive stuff in Excel. There are many more times that I was wishing I had a faster GPU, more/faster RAM, or an SSD.

3. Llano mobile parts will have quad core skus. At reasonable TDP's too supposedly. I heard something about 35-55 watts for quad core models, 25 - 35 watt for dual core. The ultraportable CPU's are the domain of Bobcat (Zacate+Brazos). They should also do a better job at keeping idl power/etc lower than previous generation AMD CPU's, which is really what is key to battery life, especially since AMD hopes that as much work as possible will be offloaded to the GPU.

4. Mobile AMD chips vs Desktop AMD chips as of now. All mobile AMD CPU's lack L3. I'm fairly sure that current mobile AMD CPU's are just low TDP binned, underclocked desktop Athlon II's, regardless of whether it is a mobile Turion II, Athlon II, or Phenom II. Though there is a loss in clockspeed, I don't feel anything getting noticeably slower underclocking my CPU to more laptop like frequencies. Llano is also going to be an improved and shrunken core, which should lead to faster per clock and higher clocks.

5. GPU acceleration for web browsing is a thing for web browsers to handle, not the websites themselves. Sure there are things that are accelerated more or less effectively than others, but every major browser intends on supporting GPU acceleration very soon or already does.

The above 5 points are why I would recommend the average user a Llano based system over a Sandy Bridge based one. The only thing I would be worried about is a memory bottleneck since both the CPU and GPU are using it, but I trust that AMD engineers have considered that and worked around it.

 

You seem fairly pro-Intel justified on a dead metric. Let's unpack your statement:

1. Excel can be a CPU hog.
Absolutely. "Can" means any infinitesimal number out of a sample size of billions. For most people though, an Excel worksheet means adding 5 cells together.

2. More people use CPU-intensive apps (Excel, VM) than they play games.
I doubt you have credible numbers for this. But for the sake of argument let's just say you're right. Let's say some people do whatever more than some other people. But not just some, rather, virtually all of the people watch flash video on YouTube, Hulu, ESPN3, etc. Guess who does that at high frame rates, without discrete card, at low watts and low cost?

Look, Intel is the hands down, undisputed CPU king. The salient point, however, is that nobody really gives a crap, either.

 

You've failed to take into account the shared GPU/CPU memory bus. It won't be as fast as a C2D in situations where the GPU is being heavily used. Also, a 1.8Ghz C2D is not really that fast anymore. Not to mention hybrid crossfire and other stuff are pipe dreams, not officially announced or hinted at by AMD. There's no guarantee that asynchronous crossfire is going to be efficient at all.

 

honestly i like sandy bridge better regardless of what gpu numbers amd throws out there. they can't beat intel in performance per clock, i don't know how they expect to win performance per energy.

 

So most people buying Arrandale and Sandy Bridge laptops, are only moving up because their existing laptop is broken?

I know people who still use Pentium 4's too, doesn't mean a thing.

Agree with you on the SSD/RAM. However, most computers are bought for business and they have no need for GPU. Even most consumers don't need any GPU power.

It's all speculation, but if we look at the past, AMD has been unable to offer high performance and low power consumption combined. Not to mention, speed of each core is still very important. There is a lot of software that's licensed per core.

That's all that will be, hope. GPU's are not good at many tasks the CPU's do. Not to mention nothing beats the compatibility of the x86 architecture and people surely won't take upon the monumentally time consuming task of writing their software to use GPU acceleration when few people have the GPU power.

So just like a C2D with a GPU that steals from its bandwidth. I'm sure it'll do well in the budget notebook segment, which is what I said before. The only way Llano will compete is price. Add $100 to Brazos pricing and I could be tempted if it's not a power hog.

When there are flash videos that are not in H.264 format and therefore not accelerated aplenty, you need the CPU power. There is very little support for doing anything by GPU except for games.

How do they work around 2x64-bit DDR3 buses, which is the same they're using for the Athlon II? The only way would be to make the bus bigger, but they haven't done that on the Llano, possibly due to cost and complexity.

I see you don't have much experience in the business world, which represents most of the CPU sales. Excel is used religiously in the Finance world, for example. I've personally used massive spreadsheets that took 2 minutes to update on a C2D. There are also other common tasks used in the business world such as compiling code and running virtual machines. All of which are CPU-dependent.

Most CPU sales are business, and they don't play games there, is that enough of a proof of most people using CPU-intensive apps for you? Besides, Sandy Bridge GPU decodes (and encodes) any kind of video just as efficiently as any AMD GPU, so what's your point?

For most consumers and businesses, Sandy Bridge is a better choice. It will have better general performance and better battery life, and it'll do all of the "casual" tasks that use GPU such as video decoding/encoding very efficiently. Llano will only make sense for for people who use GPU-intensive apps and who are not willing to spend extra to get a discrete GPU.

 

hybrid xfire works half decently if older version say anything. I wouldn't bet on it returning for Llano though, and it wasn't stellar anyways.

1.8GHz C2D isn't that fast anymore, but its fast enough.

performance per clock, performance per watt, and performance aren't linked.

1. Laptops break. Windows gets slow and people think they need new hardware instead of a reformat of the Windows install. People are convinced into buying things they don't need. etc. Very few upgrade because a faster CPU will actually help them.
If someone still uses an old computer, its fast enough. If a P4 is fast enough, its fast enough. I'm saying, from my observations of people will old laptops, I think that a 2GHz C2D is fast enough.

2. GPU acceleration is happening now. Its not coming up, but web browsers are out now that use the GPU to accelerate things. The tasks accelerated by the GPU will grow. You know what I just stuck into my grandparent's computer a while ago, a new graphics card. They don't game. They browse the web and watch videos. The GPU has made their system quieter and allows them to play HD YouTube videos smoothly.

3. Do you happen to have a lot of shares in Intel or something? What application would an average consumer run on a laptop thats licensed per core? Server and Workstation, I see the argument, but that's not Llano's target. That's Bulldozer's.

4. C2D's had horrible bandwidth if I remember correctly. Intel sucked at memory bandwidth until Nehalem due to not having the IMC on the CPU, but rather the NorthBridge. Its an Athlon II with a GPU stealing from its bandwidth, not a C2D.

5. Web browsers can use the GPU to help render. GPU acceleration exists for other codecs.

Llano will support higher clocked DDR3 than Athlon II, that should help compensate for the lost bandwidth due to the GPU. How much, or even if the lost bandwidth needs to be compensated at all remains to be seen.

1. Excel can be a CPU hog, for some people, like you.
Password cracking uses the GPU a lot, who does this concern? A friend that makes a living off of pentesting. Does it concern the average consumer a lot? No. Do huge Excel spreadsheets like those that you use concern the average consumer a lot? No.

Llano is better for the average consumer. Maybe for some business people too as it seems a PowerPoint 2010 has GPU acceleration for many features.

btw, the CPU of my next primary laptop is probably going to be a Sandy Bridge or an Ivy Bridge. I need the CPU performance. The average consumer doesn't.

 

I'm not indulging fanboys who refuse prima facie evidence. If you want to participate in team think, we have sports, twilight and Justin Bieber. Those seem far more appropriate than the merits of computational power measured in giga flops.

It's like trying to impress me with A's on your math test while AMD is out here with clear heels pole dancing. Move on with you life, dawg.

 

As I see it, Lllano is aimed at budget-mainstream laptops; if you want high performance, go for Intel. As for myself, I find a 1.2 Ghz CULV sufficient fast for day to day needs, and if it wasn't for the abysmal graphics card (cough Intel cough), I would not be looking at purchasing a Llano system.

 

What I meant by my post(on page 1), and what others are saying is that this solution by AMD is meant to fill a hole in the integrated CPU/GPU market.

Where I think it falls short is that even in their own demo video, the game itself will be unplayable. This means that a less educated consumer may purchase one and think he/she will be playing some FFXIV online, when in reality they can't.

I imagine that AMD is looking for a homerun on three fronts. IGP graphics, Power(consumption) and Price/Performance.

I'm sure they will win on at least one front, and my guess would be their IGP solution will be nice.

 

The really interesting one is power consumption. For most people, the performance difference between Llano and Sandy Bridge will be entirely theoretical, but the contrast between 3 and 5 hours of battery life is rather stark. Compared to Sandy Bridge, the 45nm iteration of 10.5K is a power hog, but AMD must have made a lot of improvements in the transition to 32nm and we do not have any realistic estimate of the impact of these.

 

Not for the business user. Especially when the power consumption is higher. You're forgetting that Windows and Office aren't extremely well optimized programs and each bit of CPU power counts. I migrated from a 1.73 Ghz C2D to Sandy bridge because the C2D was bogging me down on VM's and web pages with heavy javascript. It also failed to play back non H264-HD flash videos, because guess what, there is no GPU acceleration there!

I have firefox 4 on my system, which is supposed to be GPU accelerated. Outside of flash videos, I don't see anything different from 3.6, except for faster javascript, that still runs on the CPU. Besides, you could have gotten an Arrandale or SandyBridge for your parents and it'd play youtube HD videos just as quietly and smoothly. Mainstream users have absolutely no need for anything more than that in their GPU's and the new Intel integrated graphics are good enough for that. No need to devote half the chip area to graphics, since anyone who needs that much GPU power will just go discrete.

I prefer the best products from companies. Intel makes the best CPU's and AMD (currently) makes the best mobile GPU's. Thus, that's what I have. Bulldozer also has no chance to match Sandy Bridge or its successor. Failure in the high margin server market effects the company overall.

Untrue, C2D's with DDR3-1066 are not bandwidth starved at all. C2D was and has always been a better processor than Athlon 2, in all aspects, maybe except for value, since they are more expensive.

Render what exactly? There are so many different video codecs, flash players, etc that you'll hit some that won't use the GPU. I'm buying a CPU for the programs of today, not 10 years down the road. You're still missing the fact that Intel GPU's are perfectly capable of rendering anything the mainstream user will likely use.

You know what is a much better idea than a Llano? It's a Llano with the small 80SP GPU from Bobcat, sold at 1/3rd of the price of Sandy Bridge. Face it, that's all the GPU power the average user needs.

 

A 1.8GHz C2D is still plenty fast for most users but that is not what we are comparing the ES given to. The ES is a 1.8 quad core, which is more than fast enough for most everyone. The dual core versions will undoubtedly be higher clocked than 1.8GHz. For the average user, a C2D running at even 2GHz is more than enough and I am sure Llano will have a dual core running at at least that.

IIRC, didn't AMD confirm hybrid crossfire already? I know they mentioned something about Turbo Core on Llano and I am pretty sure they mentioned crossfire capability as well.

 

Will Sager use this APU with GT 555M in their budget laptops?

 

No, because that wouldn't make any sense. The CPU is inferior to Sandy Bridge and there is no synergy between the AMD and Nvidia graphics.

 

It would make sense.

Gaming isn't CPU intensive. The budget gaming rig consists of a CPU that won't bottleneck the system, enough RAM to not bottleneck the system, a fast enough HDD to not bottleneck the system, and the fastest GPU available that won't turn another component into a major bottleneck.

 

they may not be linked in abstraction, but in the real world engineering has goals. when the goal is making powerful but power efficient mobile computing, advantage in architecture is just going to translate to power efficiency, because that's what people work on.

what makes a better chip is a holistic judgment, but one that is guided by distinct areas of concern as dictated by market. without real technological advantage, i don't really value amd's efforts. they look like gimmicks.

 

How do you know this?

 

Even in instances where Llano has competitive CPU performance with Sandy Bridge it would still never make sense to pair it with a mid-range discrete Nvidia GPU.

 

Doesn't NP5160 come with option of CPU upto 28xxqm and GPU of GT 540?

 

on the topic of Bulldozer vs Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge. Interlagos will be about 50% faster than MagnyCours. I would expect this to apply to Bulldozer Desktop and Laptop vs current chips and Bulldozer Fusion vs Llano.

Take a benchmark, multiply it by 1.5, compare. This isn't the most accurate way, but it should give a rough image of Bulldozer performance.

I'll give you that

 

Depends on the game. Starcraft 2 and Civilization 5 would disagree on that.

Bulldozer will not be competitive in per-core performance, so AMD packed 2 (fp) cores into one and called it a single core. Of course this means increased size, power consumption, etc. BD might be competitive with SB only on heavily multithreaded apps thet scale linearly with number of cores, and because they're using twice as many cores as Intel to do the same result. A lot of stuff just can't be parallelized effectively, and even Intel, with their superior process technology to everyone else, has problems getting more than 2 cores on a laptop CPU, so BD in laptops does not look very promising either.

 

Bulldozer isn't going to be competitive in per core performance. I don't really know where I said that. Bulldozer is designed primarily for servers where per core performance doesn't really matter if you can squeeze enough cores in. I doubt Bulldozer can compete for average users on anything but price because average users don't run heavily multithreaded applications, I see it being very competitive in Workstation and Server though.

One point you are forgetting though, about fitting more cores on chips is that Bulldozer cores are designed to be small. Though Intel has the process advantage for squeezing cores into chips, AMD has the uArch advantage for doing so. I think its very possible for us to see:
-Eight core Bulldozer laptop CPUs in mobile workstations where having eight slow cores can compete effectively with four or even six fast ones due to multithreaded workloads. I'm not sure if this is too niche a market for OEMs to bother though, as workstation tasks on average aren't as multithreaded as server tasks and they are sometimes licensed per core which may tilt price over performance to favor Intel in some cases.
-Quad core Bulldozer laptop CPUs at 25 and 35 watt TDP. AMD is planning to have quad core Llano at 35 watts. Llano per core eats more energy than Bulldozer, and a GPU is attached.

 

No, it would not make sense. First, gaming can be CPU intensive depending on the game -- I don't recall Sager selling even budget laptops with third rate CPUs. But more importantly, even if they decide to break with that tradition, they'd be insane to do it by combining the pitiful CPU with a discreet GPU that gains nothing from the integrated one.

What they might do it is make a laptop with Llano and a mid range AMD discreet option like one of the 6600M cards and run the two in hybrid cross-fire. I don't know how well that would work (among other things, the memory bandwidth between the two cards will be radically different), but at least it would make sense to try.

Not until 2012 at the very earliest. Bulldozer is a server architecture that will also be used for some desktops, but not for laptops.

 

Since server software (such as Oracle) is licensed on a per-core basis, per-core performance is absolutely vital on Servers.

 

I wouldn't call it "absolutely vital"

There are many points where per core licensing of software will tip the balance to favor less fast cores vs more slow cores, but there are many cases where it doesn't.

 

I just knew, and now we have the benchmarks to prove it.
AMD high-end CPU performance continues to disappoint, they haven't been competitive after K8.

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