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Power AMD Hardware Technology

AMD Delivers a Major Mobile Efficiency Milestone (thurrott.com) 56

Posted by BeauHD from the energy-efficiency dept.
AMD has exceeded its goal to improve the energy efficiency of its mobile processors by 25 times by 2020. According to Thurrott, " The new AMD Ryzen 7 4800H mobile processor improves on the energy efficiency of the 2014 baseline measurement by 31.7 times, the firm says, while offering 'leadership performance' for portable PCs." From the report: "We have always focused on energy efficiency in our processors, but in 2014 we decided to put even greater emphasis on this capability," AMD CTO Mark Papermaster says in a prepared statement. "Our engineering team rallied around the challenge and charted a path to reach our stretch goal of 25 times greater energy efficiency by 2020. We were able to far surpass our objective, achieving 31.7 times improvement leading to gaming and ultrathin laptops with unmatched performance, graphics and long battery life. I could not be prouder of our engineering and business teams."

As AMD notes, greater energy efficiency leads to significant real-world benefits, including improved battery life, better performance, lower energy costs, and reduced environmental impact from computing. And with the focus in mobile computing hardware switching to performance-per-watt these days, AMD is trying to position itself as the traditional PC chipmaker that can rise to the ARM challenge.
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AMD Delivers a Major Mobile Efficiency Milestone More

AMD Delivers a Major Mobile Efficiency Milestone

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  • Hope the OEM's get on this (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Thursday June 25, 2020 @02:46PM (#60227842)

    I would love to have my next laptop be AMD derived. It's downright criminal that Intel HD integrated is still on machines in 2020. Intel even did the hard work on developing Iris graphics, which by all measure are pretty good and then just kept it on only the highest end chips for some reason. Maybe they couldn't integrate it cheaply but a good mobile GPU/CPU combo is long overdue.

    • Lenovo is, the next ThinkPads due at the end of the month are AMD-based.

      • I just got a Lenovo Ideapad 5 with the 4500U. I am fairly impressed with the machine. The graphics drivers are still not the best in linux, but I am running productivity apps, not playing AAA games. The machine is quite snappy in normal use, and the fan doesn't run unless I am compiling for a couple minutes solid.

    • You might want to check out Tiger Lake if you're that worried about integrated graphics.

  • Easy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mobby_6kl ( 668092 ) on Thursday June 25, 2020 @02:57PM (#60227874)

    That's easy if your starting point is Bulldozer!

    • Re:Easy (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MachineShedFred ( 621896 ) on Thursday June 25, 2020 @03:48PM (#60228106) Journal

      When I read the quote that AMD "have always focused on energy efficiency in our processor" I just about fell out of my chair laughing, specifically because of the Bulldozer Athlon FX chips. I wonder if it was said in a "prepared statement" because nobody could actually say it into a microphone without laughing hilariously.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Xenx ( 2211586 )
        Focusing on it, and being good at implementing it, are two very different things. This is especially true when it comes to public statements.

      • I had a first gen Phenom from 2008 that I somehow managed to stretch out to last me until last year. (That was actually an upgrade to that machine, it originally had an Athlon FX-62, because it did well in Oblivion benchmarks...)

        People say "it doubles as a space heater" as a joke, but no, this one REALLY doubled as a space heater. It's too bad winter only lasts 2 months here, because it was really great to turn it on in January. I could keep the central heat quite a bit lower, and just deal with cold toes w

        • Last year I upgraded my missus' work PC to an Athlon II X2 that I bought on eBay*. Dual core, and a drop to 45 Watts TDP over the previous chip.

          Single thread Passmark is 1080, which is quite competitive with today's low/mid range chips and plenty for office work.

          I also added some RAM and an SSD. It's 15 years old and it runs Windows 10 like a champ.

          • Office? Hell, I was running games on the Phenom. Fallout 4 didn't have any issues. Some games like GTA 5 would run smoothly most of the time but run into weird stuttering issues on occasion, not consistently low FPS but seemingly it'd just stick on one frame for half a second. I'm guessing that was due to memory bottlenecks more than to the actual logic being slow. DDR2-800 was as far as that board went.

  • in the Footnotes... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Thursday June 25, 2020 @03:21PM (#60227986) Homepage Journal

    The normalized performance increase, based on a 50:50 weighted metric for Cinebench R15 and 3DMark11, is 5x higher from AMDâ(TM)s 2014 notebook processor to the 2020 design. This equates to one-fifth the average compute time for a given task. Annual processor electricity use (kwh), based on ENERGY STAR typical use energy consumption (TEC), in 2020 is 84% less than the 2014 amount. RM3H-42

    Check my math, but I think they're saying the new chip uses 1/6th as much energy as the old chip(s?). So, about 5x more work cycles per joule.

    What buyers really want to know is how much longer a laptop battery will last. Heck, I'd underclock one for an 18-hour laptop. This question seems to be well avoided - which seems funny given the potential power budget reduction of an SoC.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by NaCh0 ( 6124 )

      That gets at one of the major image problems with AMD.

      Let's say the CPU technology is as good as their press release claims. Since only low end manufacturers use their parts, this new tech is going to be seen as a way to pair a grossly weak battery with the new lower power chips so the end result is that AMD will still feel like the second place vendor.

      In other words, the benchmark will remain the 4 hour mark and the engineers will be tasked with finding the cheapest as possible battery to get 4 hours of li

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Xenx ( 2211586 )

        Since only low end manufacturers use their parts

        This was correct in the past, but is not currently correct. Name brands are already using AMD CPUs in high end products now that AMD has a solid performer.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        There are plenty of big battery laptops using AMD parts. The limit is what you can take on a flight, 100Wh. A few manufacturers have bumped up against that lately.

        • The TSA doesn't know how to read what watt-hours an internal battery is. or external. I've got over 180wh worth of thinkpad battery I travel with and they don't bat an eye.

    • What buyers really want to know is how much longer a laptop battery will last.

      Nope. What buyers want to know is will it be OMG FAST!

      Cos', like, nobody wants a slow computer no matter what the battery life.

      This question seems to be well avoided

      People who write computer reviews mostly only know how to run benchmarks, despite computers being "fast enough" for the last decade or more.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It depends as much on the rest of the laptop as the CPU. Obviously if you have discrete graphics and a 120Hz display it's going to impact battery life.

      We will have to wait for some real world benchmarks.

    • I get about 14h on my Thinkpad without overclocking, but I do have the Beluga whale extension on the bottom.

  • Good to hear! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Thursday June 25, 2020 @03:40PM (#60228066)

    This wonderful news for web developers: Now they can apply 31.7X more Javascript to accomplish tasks like showing a restaurant menu or displaying a magazine article.

    • Re:Good to hear! (Score:5, Funny)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Thursday June 25, 2020 @03:53PM (#60228120) Journal
      I'll be honest, that's not enough for me. I've been experimenting recently with containers in javascript, think of it as Docker for the Web. Web 4.0 if you will. It makes the code really clean. Just a little more power in the browser and it will be reality. Finally we can import the concept of micro-services into the frontend, with all the resultant benefits of separation of concerns and strong interfaces. Teams no longer have to step on each other's feet while committing code.

      Someone told me I should just use 'classes' but that makes no sense to me: OOP is for boomers.

      • I sure hope this is next-level trolling.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sconeu ( 64226 )

          I believe you have been Poe'd

        • Now that it's been suggested out loud, in a vaguely serious-sounding sort of way, you know the next round of rats from NIH will be selling it to VCs, filling up SmackOverflow with it, and submitting Slashvertisements.

        • Let me introduce http://copy.sh/v86/ [copy.sh] to you... :D
          Sadly, it lists no image with a Firefox new enough to "go deeper". YET.
          But it works on mobile too.

        • Yeah, but now that I've thought about it, I'm seriously thinking about making a company pushing it. I'm 90% sure I could get people to use it, because containers are the only way a lot of people know how to organize their code.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Just port systemd to Javascript and be done with it. Every web site can be a custom Javascript kernel with systemd, tied together with JSON and running node.js apps.

        • That's a worthy point, the traditional browser init routine is too complicated. We could really simplify things by making Javascript declarative.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Chaset ( 552418 )

        I like the word "commit" in that context. I take it it's "commit" as in...

        commit murder
        commit genocide
        commit code

        Seems like a perfect word for that kind of "commit".

    • Everyone knows that restaurants menus are delivered via PDF.

      • Wanna be afraid?

        PDF... doesn't exclude JS usage either, nowadays!

        Now remember that PS, on which PDF is based, is a full programming language too, that could also have been used for interactivity, and weep.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z80a ( 971949 )

      "i really need to implement this realtime, preemptive multitasking, memory protected kernel, drivers and service system in javascript on this restaurant website"

      • "i really need to implement this realtime, preemptive multitasking, memory protected kernel, drivers and service system in javascript on this restaurant website"

        There are probably already emulators so that you could just write it in C for a microcontroller and embed the binary with the emulator in the front end.

  • TDP is still 45 Watts.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

      Was TDP 1,426 Watts in 2014? If that's the case I would be pushing for better from my engineering team as well.

      (45*31.7)

      • Well, if the current CPU's processing power is that much greater instead,
        and/or it throttles that much more instead, (hint: it's both), you get the same difference too.

        Or in other words: If you run it limited to performance of a CPU from 2014, it will use that much less power to do its job. (E.g. because it can sleep for most of the time between short bursts. And because the architecture itself is more efficient too, of course.)

      • Was TDP 1,426 Watts in 2014? If that's the case I would be pushing for better from my engineering team as well.

        (45*31.7)

        Nope. It's all about processing power per Watt. A chip can also be 31.7 times faster than a 45 Watt chip was in 2014 and it counts.

    • TDP is still 45 Watts.

      So it has a high maximum power consumption, that doesn't mean you don't do a lot with those 45W. My AMD Athlon 800 had a TDP of 45W too, that doesn't mean this here isn't an order of magnitude more efficient.

      You can't reduce power budget without crippling performance if you first don't address efficiency.

  • I'm all for AMD these days, but a TDP of 45W? On max clock speeds it probably goes up a bit to 55W... Okay so you're going to drain a 100Wh laptop in less than 2 hours still. Although I don't like Apple these days, I fear an ARM laptop will still do significantly better.

    • If you're running your CPU at 100% of normal clock 100% of the time, a laptop probably isn't for you. All modern CPUs throttle down to slower speeds when the power isn't needed.

    • I have the exact chip mentioned (4800U) in my new laptop. It seems like next to no heat output during normal use. There's no discernable airflow coming out of the laptop's fans, the keyboard barely feels warmer than when it's powered off... and this laptop has discrete graphics to cope with, on top of the Ryzen. It runs Windows 10, Firefox, McAfee, and ambient temp is 79 degrees, so it's not quite an ideal environment.

      When I fire up a game is when it starts getting hot. And it does get hot at that point. I'

    • I'm all for AMD these days, but a TDP of 45W? On max clock speeds it probably goes up a bit to 55W... Okay so you're going to drain a 100Wh laptop in less than 2 hours still.

      Only if you run it at 100% CPU for 100% of the time.

  • If you add all the prediction features, caches, features and GHz to them, they are just as inefficient as others. The laws of physics don't change.

    It reminds me of when MySQL was new, and claimed to be the fastest, but lacked major guarantees and features that would actually have made it an SQL implementation, surprising no one with a clue with that statement.

    • In 2004 ARM was clearly a cleaner and more efficient architecture. With the improvements found in x86-64, the x86 architecture caught up a lot with important things. The ARM is still cleaner, but let's be honest, ARM isn't a great architecture and the difference isn't nearly as clear as it once was.

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