AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) highlighted its sixth generation SoC during its Computex 2015 keynote in Taipei Wednesday.
Overall Carrizo has a number of technical improvements over the previous SoCs released by the company. Carrizo has four Excavator CPU cores and eight GCN graphics cores to make a total of 12 cores. AMD is promising much better battery life and nearly give hours of 4K video playback due to onboard HVEC decode. Having onboard HVEC decode is a big power saver savings, as 1080P video only draws 1.9-243 W where the same thing with Kaveri would take around 4.8W. In addition, AMD says that the chip will be compatible with HSA 1.0. AMD is targeting the $400 to $700 notebook segment with this chip, which is considered to be the segment of the market where the vast majority of devices are shipped.
AMD is not intending Carrizo to be the world’s most powerful chip. That’s not the point. It’s designed to be a solid mid-range chip — because that’s where the market is — for a competitive price with an excellent battery life. At AMD’s press event at Computex the company did demonstrate it had some interest from large notebook vendors as notebooks from a number of large players were out on display.
No New Radeon
Many expected AMD to launch its new flagship Radeon R9 and Fury / Fury X series at Computex. However, this was not the case. AMD’s Matt Skynner briefly appeared on stage to talk about Radeon, but he said that the big announcement would occur later this month at E3, to be held in Los Angeles, CA.
