The processors will all be designed on 28nm technology

Jan 19, 2015 10:52 GMT  ·  By

With all the things happening or not happening on the semiconductor market, many people are wondering if the roadmaps of Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, Samsung, and everyone else are still the same as before. We can't speak for most of them, but we do know some of what AMD is preparing.

In a way, Advanced Micro Devices never actually revealed a roadmap that was nailed down. While it did disclose some of its plans for the future, they were still somewhat fluid.

The recent, stealthy departure of three primary executives could have caused enough of a whirl that some products could have been delayed or accelerated. As far as we know, that hasn't happened.

This is probably why the leak about the upcoming AMD Kaveri and Carrizo accelerated processing units could even occur.

The AMD Kaveri APUs

AMD's Kaveri line of chips has been selling for months, spearheaded by the 12-core A10-7850K, of which four are CPU cores and eight are GPU modules.

This chip is a 3.7GHz Socket FM2+ unit with a TDP (thermal design power) of 95W and AMD Radeon R7 series graphics. In other words, it is already a very powerful piece of work.

Nonetheless, there cannot really be a year without some sort of product release, which is why Advanced Micro Devices is preparing a “Kaveri Refresh.”

This refresh could include an A10-7850K with somewhat faster clocks, but it's not a guarantee. Even if it doesn't get changed, the lower-power Kaveri will be revised at least.

The Carrizo and Carrizo-L

We've known about these accelerated processing units being set for release during 2015 since November 2014, a couple of months ago.

The Carrizo and Carrizo-L are made for laptops and tablets and will possess BGA packaging, meaning that they'll not be removable once soldered to a motherboard.

Carrizo will have 4 Excavator cores with HSA 1.0 support, FP4 BGA package and a TDP of 35W. Carrizo-L will have four PUMA+ Cores and TDP of 25W, but is otherwise the same as the Carrizo.

There will be a desktop version of Carrizo, but even those units will stay BGA, so no DIY upgrading for you. We imagine they will power pre-configured business and home-theater PCs.

Other chips we may expect

An ultra low power Mullins APU refresh with 4 Puma cores and 2W TDP will debut at some point, an SoC with FT3 BGA package. All these AMD chips will be built on the 28nm manufacturing process.