Posted on 04/20/2012 10:56:17 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
AMD’s x86-64 core code-named “Piledriver” with 4GHz and higher clock-speeds employs resonant clocking to reduce clock distribution power up to 24% while maintaining the low clock-skew target required by high-performance processors. Fabricated in a 32nm SOI process, Piledriver represents the first volume production-enabled implementation of resonant clock mesh technology.
“We were able to seamlessly integrate the Cyclos IP into our existing clock mesh design process so there was no risk to our development schedule. Silicon results met our power reduction expectations, we incurred no increase in silicon area, and we were able to use our standard manufacturing process, so the investment and risk in adopting resonant clock mesh technology was well worth it as all of our customers are clamoring for more energy efficient processor designs,” said Samuel Naffziger, corporate fellow at AMD.
Cyclos resonant clock mesh technology employs on-chip inductors to create an electric pendulum, or “tank circuit”, formed by the large capacitance of the clock mesh in parallel with the Cyclos inductors. The Cyclos inductors and clock control circuits “recycle” the clock power instead of dissipating it on every clock cycle like in a clock tree implementation, which results in a reduction in total IC power consumption of up to 10%.
Clock mesh power reduction is one area where EDA vendors have not yet delivered design solutions so the validation of resonant clock mesh technology via the AMD Piledriver design is welcome news to the IC design community.
Implementing inductors on-chip to resonate a clock mesh is a simple idea with complex implementation requirements. Cyclos has commercialized over 10 years of research to produce the first resonant clock mesh design solution that meets all the testability, reliability, dynamic frequency scaling, and quality assurance requirements of today’s ICs.
“Now that the Cyclos technology is validated, we’re looking forward to expand into SoC designs via the design automation tools that are in development at Cyclos. We believe resonant clock mesh design will be a key enabler for GHz+ embedded processor IP blocks in next generation SoCs that also require ultra-low power consumption,” said Marios Papaefthymiou, founder and president of Cyclos Semiconductor.
AMD Begins Volume Manufacturing of A-Series "Trinity" APUs.
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Advanced Micro Devices said during quarterly conference call with financial analysts that it began volume manufacturing of its next-generation A-series "Trinity" accelerated processing units (APUs) in the first quarter of 2012. Actual systems powered by the new Fusion APU will become available in the second quarter of the year.
"We are successfully ramping production of Trinity APUs as our customers are preparing to launch a record number of AMD notebook designs beginning this quarter," said Rory Read, chief executive officer of AMD, told financial analysts.
AMD A-series "Trinity" APUs are projected to improve AMD's competitive positions on the market of low-power and mainstream systems thanks to substantial improvements in x86 and graphics performance. In addition, thanks to usage of a new resonant clock mesh technology developed by Cyclos Semiconductor and implemented into Piledriver-class x86 cores, Trinity will be able to both offer ultra low-voltage models as well as very high-performance models. Rich family of different A-series "Trinity" Fusion APUs will broaden market prospects for the APU to a wide range of applications and form-factors, from ultra-thin laptops to full-size desktops.
Prune juice and vodka?
Agreed. Hopefully these can compete with the Intel I-series. I’m sick of AMD constantly being behind.
I’m not - I have 100 shares of INTC!
On the other hand I wish this Clock Mesh trick worked at 90nm where my next chip is...
Oh well - dream on.
And what is the clock speed of the DRAM?
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Memory Standard
DDR3 2133(O.C.)/2000(O.C.)/1800(O.C.)/1600/1333/1066
So maybe we will get 1800 as standard .
Been reading on the Trinity...but haven't come across hard facts.
Lot's of speculation though,
FYI:
http://www.independentlivingnews.com/2012/04/11/new-strategies-for-reclaiming-your-online-privacy/
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