Trinity vs Ivy Bridge

I know that HD 5450 it was two times 40/4, this was just an example that in the past AMD has also been experimenting with different sized SIMD/T widths.

 

Not sure where to post this, but i was just thinking this today. Would Krishna/Witchita also be VLIW4 like Trinity? It would make more sense than being VLIW5 wouldnt it? My earlier speculation was that it would be a Caicos + 2-4 Bobcat cores like they did for Brazos (Cedar + 2 Bobcat cores). But since they were already developing a VLIW4 architecture for Trinity it would make sense to carry it over to Krishna/Witchita as well. Maybe Krishna could have 128 VLIW4 SP's, 8 TMU's and 4 ROP's

 

Hey, news about Trinity from semiaccurate.

 

"scalar + VLIW4" ?

That's wrong regardless of whether he's talking about GCN or VLIW4.
This does not mesh with any rumors or review sites I've seen discussing the GPU for Trinity, some of which stated AMD told them it was VLIW4.

 

I wonder if we will get a die shot

what do we believe the slide(could be fake) or the rumors

 

Being HD7000 series in no way implies it must be GCN. Low end Southern Island parts will likely be VLIW-4. The fact that it is "7000" series was pretty much a given from a marketing point, whether it uses all new architecture or not is entirely separate from that fact.

 

You could even say 6xxx encompasses four architectures, or at least architecture revisions:

- Evergreen (6750/6770, renamed 57x0)
- Evergreen + UVD3 (Llano)
- Northern Islands VLIW5 / Enhanced Evergreen (Barts, Turks, Caicos)
- 'True' Northern Islands - VLIW4 (Cayman)


So yeah, I agree that HD 7000 for Trinity is just for marketing, APUs will always lag behind discrete GPUs by at least one generation.

 

Any basis for the claim that these are different? (when not counting the memory architecture which is of course different because there is also cache-coherent CPU in the same chip)

We don't even know for sure how many of the GPU's that ATI is going to release in the coming winter are "GCN" or just cayman's VLIW4 architecture manufactured with 28nm.

And I would not say "always lag", Llano had their first GPU manufactured with "CPU process", and Trinity will be only second, it also takes time to "develop the development process" so that they can quickly integrate their new GPU's into APU's.

(bobcat-based chips use "gpu processes")

 

I'd guess 0 of 0. ATI isn't going to release GPUs anymore, AMD is. *SCNR*

 

Granted, I don't know for sure.

That being said, my reasoning goes like this:
To keep the development as simple and short as possible, it would be easiest to take an existing GPU design and fuse it with the CPU. The only 5-SIMD design AMD made and probably had ready when Llano was designed was Redwood, and I assume Llano's GPU is based on it.
The UVD engine is probably easy to upgrade since it's a bit separated (layout-wise) from the rest of the GPU. But Barts & Co. had their TMUs and Tesselation unit updated as well.
I'm not saying it's impossible that AMD ported those over to Llano, but considering the market & performance segment Llano is targeting, I think it's at least possible that they didn't bother. They had their hands full enough with solving more pressing issues like yields and power consumption, I think.

But you're right, it might me architecturally identical to NI-VLIW5 GPUs.

Fair enough, they may get there some time in the future. The time gap will certainly shrink, but I think it's easier (and less risky) to integrate a finished design than a work-in-progress design, that's why I wouldn't expect, let's say, Trinity successor with GCNv2 two months after discrete GCNv2. Unless they're made on the same manufacturing process, then it might be a somewhat different matter.

 

Ivy Bridge GPU slides from IDF: http://www.anandtech.com/Gallery/Album/1375#1

 

Damn! Intel is serious on the IGP front here.

 

wow an extra half a billion transistors for the GPU alone is pretty serious indeed. We may finally start seeing good intergrated PC graphics across the board.

 

Let's hope the driver support will be on the same level as the HW investment. Carmack for sure will be pleased this time.

 

Too bad they have to get by with mediocre memory bandwidth.

 

You seriously suggest that only GPU is upgraded in IB compared to SB?

 

Its anand suggesting those transistors are mostly attributed to he gpu nkt me. I certainly hope the cpu has some decent improvents over SB.