AMD Announces Three New Embedded SKUs With Jaguar+ And Excavator Cores

[IInuyasha74]

AMD announced three new SKUs in its embedded solutions G-Series product lineup that will use either Jaguar+ or Excavator CPU cores.

AMD Announces Three New Embedded SKUs With Jaguar+ And Excavator Cores : Read more

 

[Calculatron]

This is great.

Meanwhile, they need to hurry up and get that Athlon X4 845 to market. I have tinkering to do!

 

[Wisecracker]

... they need to hurry up and get that Athlon X4 845 to market

It's been at retail for several weeks --- late to US, possibly here the 3rd week of March.

Early tests look impressive for a cut-down chip. Bristol Ridge should be big fun with an unlocked chip. Benchies from FlanK3r at XS

 

[alextheblue]

Early tests look impressive for a cut-down chip. Bristol Ridge should be big fun with an unlocked chip. Benchies from FlanK3r at XS

Thanks for the benches. However, the current Excavator design (Carrizo) was designed for power efficiency more so than high clocks. So unless they have reworked it substantially in secret, it probably won't be an impressive overclocker. We'll see. The IPC gains help a lot but it remains to see how much they affect games and other real-world applications.

Either way, building an AM4 Excavator rig to tinker with is a lot more appealing than FM2+ at this point. Down the road you've got a nice upgrade path.

 

[Calculatron]

... they need to hurry up and get that Athlon X4 845 to market

It's been at retail for several weeks --- late to US, possibly here the 3rd week of March.

Early tests look impressive for a cut-down chip. Bristol Ridge should be big fun with an unlocked chip. Benchies from FlanK3r at XS

Yeah, sadly I am in North America. Been envious of the others who are starting to make threads like this.

Testing with my current 760k, at the moment, and I have been able to get up to 130 on my base clock with AHCI. I'm not sure what all the fuss is about with base clock overclocking on the FM2+ platform...? (Or am I just lucky on my motherboard lottery?)

 

[salgado18]

Could anyone enlighten me on why is there a Jaguar+ core, if Excavator is faster and more efficient? Could it be cost, and if it is, is it enough to justify a substantially lower chip?

 

[IInuyasha74]

Could anyone enlighten me on why is there a Jaguar+ core, if Excavator is faster and more efficient? Could it be cost, and if it is, is it enough to justify a substantially lower chip?

Jaguar, Jaguar+, Puma and Puma+ are all essentially the same core with some alterations. Jaguar+ developed before Excavator and it is designed to be a low-cost highly efficient processor. That is part of the reason that Microsoft and Sony used Jaguar in the new game consoles. I don't have all the specifics on hand, but Jaguar+ should be less expensive and take up less die area than Excavator. As other SoCs in the G-Series already use Jaguar+ too, it is possible that AMD is just reusing lower-yield chips for these products as well.

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

Still not seeing the Athlon X4 845, which is a pity. It will make a great HTPC/media server chip by my reckoning.

 

[Wisecracker]

Could anyone enlighten me on why is there a Jaguar+ core, if Excavator is faster and more efficient? Could it be cost, and if it is, is it enough to justify a substantially lower chip?

*Cat Cores* are manufactured by TSMC at 28nm --- they also fabbed the 40nm 'Bobcat' original AMD 'SoCs'

There are 2 *Excavator* chip fabs/lines that feature 'dense libraries'

The Carrizo Excavator in fabbed on GloFo 28nm SHP and is a derivative of the Bulldozer-Piledriver APU line (Kaveri).

The Carrizo-L Excavator is fabbed on TSMC 28nm *Cat* line --- as a make-believe engineer 🙂D) I suspect it is safe to assume that a good many of the 'masks' involved in the fabbing of these chips are the same (neat way to cut costs)

What evolves from the *Cat Line* is the likely precursor to the AM4 Bristol Ridge and Summit Ridge (the shared FPU of the Bulldozers is being dropped). It's anyone's guess as to the points of manufacture but is sure is interesting that GloFo and Samsung are collaborating on 'FinFet' design.

What that means is that Bristol Ridge and Summit Ridge have the potential to be fabbed at GloFo in Germany, TSMC in Taiwan and/or GloFo Luther Forrest in NY .... and maybe even Samsung.