AMD Releases New PRO Mobile APUs: Carrizo up to A12-8800B
by Ian Cutress on October 2, 2015 7:25 PM EST
We touched upon this very briefly in our recent HP Elitebook news, but at the end of September AMD officially launched four new professional mobile APUs under the AMD PRO line. The PRO line is similar to the commercial line of APUs that end up in the hands of casual users, except they are mostly sold in machines aimed at the professional market, and might have some slightly different arrangements in configuration to ensure a long-tail support program. This typically means that features such as TrustZone (using ARM IP) embedded in the processors go through ISV (independent software vendor) certification to ensure a fully functioning product.
The four AMD PRO processors being released today all use AMD’s latest microarchitecture codenamed Carrizo, which fits comprises of one or two ‘Excavator’ class modules and Radeon Rx graphics. In a change from regular AMD A-Series nomenclature, the top processor of the stack is now an ‘A12’ class design which reaches greater parity with previous microarchitecture designs on the desktop. This means a dual module design paired with eight graphics compute units giving what AMD calls 12 compute cores in total with ‘R7’ graphics.
AMD’s Carrizo platform was built focused on the 15W TDP window, although AMD will allow its partners to boost the designs with a configurable TDP up to 35W on the A12, A10 and A8. AMD is also promising an enterprise package with partners to ensure a 36-month extended OEM warranty, 24-month product longevity, 18-month image stability and a ‘richer configuration’ package. That last point is promoted through the use of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X5 LTE modem (Cat4) in certain HP branded professional notebook designs.
Carrizo’s raison d’être was to bring use cases that required high end laptop configurations down into the mainstream (>$800 into $500-$700), which could be considered important if a business is considering deployment of several hundred devices at once along with a support package to go along with it. The PRO APUs will also support DASH for remote desktop management as well as AMD PRO Control Center for SMBs.
AMD expects a number of partners to release information over the next few months. We are working towards obtaining a suitable Carrizo unit for testing as well.
Source: AMD
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Flunk - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
HP is pretty big on AMD chips, I always figured they had a deal with AMD for a cut-rate price. Oddly this make some of HP's low-end notebooks more interesting because you can actually play low-end games on them well or high-end games poorly.Penti - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
Fury laptop?With Carrizo? Just produce better mobile products. Their mobile GPU's doesn't really fit in at the moment.
bill.rookard - Saturday, October 3, 2015 - link
Hate to say it, I agree. Right now the OEMs are (it seems almost deliberate) gimping the chip with absolutely crazy design choices. 6GB RAM? Way to wipe out dual channel memory mode. HDDs instead of SSDs? Big shocker, they're going to boot slower and run slower.Put together a simple system with a decent 1080p screen, 8GB RAM, and a 256GB SSD, and people will probably buy it since it would most likely be cheaper still than most Intel systems.
Lolimaster - Saturday, October 3, 2015 - link
A 15.6 1080p IPS screen with tiny bezel250-500GB SSD + another 2.5" slot
2x4GB DDR3 2133
FX-8800P
Aluminum Body
Similar desing as the LG Gram, Dell XPS 13
$799-899
Since AMD is not a gigantic workforce monster they could give better prices than most OEM's.
Lolimaster - Saturday, October 3, 2015 - link
AMD FX-8800P price is probably similar to the low end non ULV dual core i5, a lot of money to actually invest in quality features such a materials, screen, sound, heat managamente, SSD.mercucu1111 - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
DOA lolPenti - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
Won't find much use when OEM's do better machines with cheap Intel chips. I'm a bit perplexed by their strategy of going Carrizo/Excavator in low/mainstream. They need chips truly built for mobile.silverblue - Saturday, October 3, 2015 - link
Excavator is, though. I mean sure, its roots suggest anything but, however a quad core CPU plus 512 shader GPU which can operate with as little as 10W, and at 15W still provides 2/3 of its performance at 35W, suggests they're doing pretty well here. Compared to their previous ULV offerings with Kaveri, Carrizo is a huge step forwards.Penti - Saturday, October 3, 2015 - link
It would have been fine years ago, but they will sell it parallel to Zen chips next year.AMD iGPU's are no selling arguments, Intel's faster any way. It's not like a 8800 with a discrete card would be enough for gaming either.
medi03 - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
Intel is faster than what?