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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yannigr2 - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
I wonder if AMD is so difficult to persuade OEMs to use Carrizo, or if for OEMs it's so difficult to get Carrizo. First we where expecting those SOCs at the end of 2014. They where announced in this Summer, Windows 10 introduction came and passed, and still it is easier to find gold in your back yard than a review from a big hardware site like Anandtech.Hope you get one soon.
Kjella - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
Carrizo is a tiny chip built on 28nm technology, it's easy to manufacture and there's no shortage of wafer capacity. In fact, AMD keep taking penalties because they don't buy enough wafers according to the contract which is because they can't get customers for them. And my guess is the Windows 10 introduction came and went without much of a sales bump because people could just get a free upgrade instead of buying a new machine, it certainly won't be like Windows releases of the past. I guess we'll know in ~2 weeks when AMD releases their Q3 figures, but I don't see much hope..
The Steam hardware survey for September is out and there's little to be happy about for team red, the GTX 960 + GTX 970 market share increased by another 0.5% indicating the R300 series isn't getting many takers, while Fury is nice being a $500+ product across the line it's not going to see much volume. That said Q3 is usually the good quarter for consoles where the manufacturers are ramping up for Christmas sales, hopefully that'll keep them floating because I don't think their consumer CPU/APU/GPU sales will...
Samus - Saturday, October 3, 2015 - link
Yep. This.Unfortunately, I think the whole branding of this is flawed. AMD marketing dept. fail. What the hell is actually "pro" about these parts?
looncraz - Saturday, October 3, 2015 - link
I've always hated ATi (and now AMD's) naming scheme in that regard."Pro," for their graphics, means "cut-down."
Everywhere else, "Pro" means "one step up."
close - Saturday, October 3, 2015 - link
Indeed, I can remember now how the 9700 and 9800 PRO were a lot weaker than the non-PRO. Weren't they? o_OI guess the PRO is because they're trying to target OEMs and large businesses, not consumer retail.
Mr Perfect - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Nope, the non-pro versions had slower clockspeeds then the Pro versions. In some cases, people got lucky and the non-pros where just underclocked Pro cards. I rolled the dice on buying a 9800 non-pro and ended up with a card that had cheaper ram on it and couldn't simply be flashed into a Pro. :\StevoLincolnite - Saturday, October 3, 2015 - link
Not exactly.You had the Radeon 9500 or 9700 and then the faster "Pro" versions. Later you got XT, TX, GT, GTO, Cats, Pineapples, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious etc'... It was nuts.
These days the naming schemes are significantly easier.
nathanddrews - Saturday, October 3, 2015 - link
Unless it's an OEM or mobile part.Lolimaster - Saturday, October 3, 2015 - link
I remember the 9800XT-PEFlunk - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
Radeon 7970 Ghz Edition. 4 numbers AND a suffix.