INSIDE Jon Peddie’s JON PEDDIE’S TECH WATCH HDR 1 TECH WATCH PAGE 22

Jon Peddie Research June 9, 2015 • Volume 15, Number 12 www.jonpeddie.com IN THIS ISSUE SEMI NEWS ■ SEMI NEWS: AMD’s sixth-gen APU . . . .1 Broadwell for desktop ...... 6 Vivante’s vision IP ...... 6 AMD launches Carrizo, AMD’s Think Silicon’s 3D GPU ...... 7 ■ SOFTWARE sixth-generation APU I/O ...... 1 Lima to Carrizo in just four years Adobe acquires Maximo ...... 9 By Jon Peddie Regular features ■ EDITORIAL: Watches ...... 2 MD first started whispering about AMD calls “lossless delta color com- ■ NEWS WATCH ...... 11 its forthcoming sixth-generation pression.” AMD says it gets a 40% gain next-generation, highly integrated in memory bandwidth efficiency with it. ■ MT. TIBURON TESTING LABS . . . . .14 A mobile A-Series APU, code-named Naturally, the GPU is Mantle- and ■ GUEST EDITORIAL: HDR ...... 22 Carrizo, at CES 2015. A bit more was DX12-compatible. At the time of this ■ TECH INSIDER: Mobile payments . . . 24 revealed in February and again with writing, we could not find informa- ■ AMD’s HSA (Heterogenous System Ar- tion about support for about Vulkan, BACK PAGE: The fallacy of TAM . . . 28 chitecture) 1.0 spec roll-out in March. See SEMI NEWS, page 3 In May at the quaint Clift landmark hotel in San Francisco, AMD finally gave us the details and said shut up until Computex, so we did. The key features of the new Carrizo are its low power usage, its new CPUs, its graphics, and its video encoder/­ decoder. It has other features as well, but these are the ones we care about the most. Graphics Carrizo has AMD’s third generation of Graphics Core Next (GCN, which, by the way, is really kind of a stupid name. How is this graphics core next when they’re putting it in the GPU now? Never mind … marketing), the GCN 1.2, and it is similar to Tonga-based re- tail AIBs. SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENTS AMD increased the GPU’s clock speeds and added two more GCN cores in Carrizo from six (384 SPs) to eight Google I/O (512 SPs), affording a 33% poten- tial improvement, which the company Housekeeping with the occasional surprise claims gives the APU a 20% improve- ment in performance, clock for clock. By Kathleen Maher The GCN 1.2 GPU includes AMD’s ay 1 of Google I/O was a bit of a new features for watches, and a smart- latest color compression algorithms. chore. The company focused on er Google Now—nothing really unex- Part of it is the storing of lossless tex- housekeeping, updates, and going pected, no parachutes, but some nice ture data for maximum visual fidel- tit for tat with Apple. Among the initiatives that might lead to cool stuff. ity and the ease of movement between D headline features were Android Pay, For instance, Google introduced Jump, graphics cores in a compressed state. a collaboration with GoPro for a 360 GCN 1.2 introduced a new color camera, and Jacquard, the ability to compression technique for ROPs (ren- weave sensors into fabric via conduc- der output units) that reduced the mem- tive fibers. ory bandwidth needed for frame buf- One of the major themes was the fer operations. AMD has offered color relative openness of Google’s interests. compression for over 10 years since The company talked about applications the ATI days; however, GCN 1.2 in- troduced a color compression method See SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENTS, page 7

THE BUSINESSVOLUME OF 15,GRAPHICS NUMBER 12 AND MULTIMEDIA JUNE 9, 2015 JON PEDDIE’S TECH WATCH 7

SEMI NEWS trates the cutting-edge technology avail- Feature Nema|t100 Nema|t200 Nema|t400 able in its GC7000-XS with the addi- GPU cores 1 2 4 tion of vision acceleration to a core that already has photorealistic 3D rendering Silicon area (mm2 at 28 nm) 0.1 0.15 0.25 capabilities. Core clock (MHz at 28 nm) 400 400 400 Vivante says they are working with leading industry partners on high-per- (GOPS) 3.2 6.4 12.8 formance, real-time, intelligent vision Pixel Rate (Mpixels/second) 400 800 1600 image-processing solutions in mobile, automotive, and smart security products TINY 3D GPUs. through OpenVX- and OpenCL-based Vivante GPUs. The company claims its OpenVX- reduced battery life or poor power con- power network-on-. NEMA/t100 compliant GC7000-XS VX allows high- sumption,” said Ulli Mueller, vice presi- supports all major IoT operating sys- level, deeply embedded devices to op- dent of sales and marketing. tems and middleware­ including FreeR- timize their real-time performance for The scalable and modular architec- TOS, Linux, and Android. It comes with minimal power consumption by allow- ture is available in one-, two-, or four- software libraries for graphics APIs such ing continuous sensory vision process- core configurations. The GPU can be as OpenGL ES, DirectFB, and μGFX es to function without fully powering customized for small footprint devices and a bare metal C library for OS-less on the GPU—they say all that in one and configured for flexible display re- ­systems. breath … quirements using core frequencies as The company’s first design win was OpenVX can be used directly by low as 25 MHz. Think Silicon features 4 on a wearable device (smart watch), applications or to accelerate higher-­ bpp (bits-per-pixel) real-time frame-buf- and the next was on a for white level middleware, including the popular fer compression/decompression, and the appliances. The idea is that people are OpenCV vision library, which is often 6 bpp texture compression and real-time used to fluid graphics and nice user in- used for application prototyping. It is de-compression techniques eliminate the terfaces through touch screens. They are also an ideal foundation for use in pro- need for external DDR memory. happy controlling devices using an in- duction systems, with extensive confor- The NEMA/t100 is available in terface similar to their . And mance tests to complement a focused Verilog HDL code. It supports AMBA using NEMA/t, you can have these fea- and tightly defined specification for (Advanced Bus Archi- tures on devices with extremely low sili- consistent and reliable operation across tecture) interfaces (AHB, AXI 32 or con/memory/power budget, which you multiple vendors and platforms. 64 bits), and embeds DMA control- couldn’t have until now. Like other Khronos specifications, lers with command list for minimal The NEMA/t100 is available for li- OpenVX is extensible to meet individ- CPU overhead, input/output memory censing now. s ual customer needs before an extension management unit, and an ultra-low-­ is integrated into the core specification. SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENTS n Think Silicon launches Continued from page 1 industry’s smallest ultra- for iOS. They announced a Cardboard biggest problem with USB is that you low power 3D GPU update that will be able to fit a large had to plug it in right-way-up on ear- 6-inch phone and support iOS content. lier versions—and it’s impossible to tell Tiny GPU IP for IoT Likewise, the Unity plug-in for game which way is the right way on casual Think Silicon, our favorite GPU IP development will also support iOS plat- examination (see releated story, page supplier in Greece, announced their forms. In a similar vein, intro- 12). USB-C fixes this; you can plug first core product in the NEMA series, duced its AndroidWorks set of tools. It’s it in either way. Whew, there’s a critical the NEMA/t100 design for Internet- an expansion of Nvidia’s GameWorks technical problem corrected. USB-C is of-Things (IoT) graphics applications. tool kit, and it supports Android de­ also on the path to becoming a univer- The company says they’re targeting a vices beyond those built on the sal connector, and it is able to charge new generation of wearable and non- semiconductor platform. Nvidia’s own devices much faster than earlier USB wearable IoT products. The NEMA/ Shield Android TV set-top box arrived versions. t100 is tiny with a silicon footprint just before Google I/O. The company promised better bat- of 0.1 mm2 (400 MHz in 28 nm). Its tery life with new APIs including sens- low power consumption in leakage and Android M ing to recognize when the device is not memory power enables longer battery The housekeeping chores revolved being used and dropping down to a life in wearables. The NEMA/t100 in- around the Android M developer pre- deeper sleep to preserve battery life. cludes OpenGL ES API and Think Sili- view. There was a certain amount of con’s proprietary memory compression apologizing for Lollipop, we thought. Google Now technology. Like every previous release, M prom- It’s hard not to picture Google Now, “Now we can truly speak of a tiny ises to improve performance and bat- Cortana, and Siri all bickering away GPU where vibrant visual experiences tery life. in a digital space somewhere about paired with stunning performance can Google is moving their ecosystem who is better. Google has tried to keep be delivered without the limitations of forward to the USB-C. Apparently, the Google Now all business with no cute

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