Leaked AMD roadmaps reveal more about Zen-based APUs

An AMD Raven Ridge APU has appeared on SiSoftware's database

Leaked AMD roadmaps reveal more about Zen-based APUs

 
Recently leaked AMD roadmaps have revealed more information on the companies upcoming APU designs, which should be used in future mobile Ryzen systems and low power desktops.
 
The first of these new APUs is called the “Great Horned Owl”, which looks like the product name for AMD’s Embedded/enterprise version of their desktop/mobile Raven Ridge APUs. The specifications of this new APU closely match those of AMD’s recently leaked Raven series APUs, making this information seem more legitimate. 
 
This APU will feature 11 Radeon GPU compute units, which is more than any of AMD’s previous APU designs, with AMD stating that it will support up to four 4K displays, making this APU perfect for multi-screen workstation use. 
 
 

Leaked AMD roadmaps reveal more about Zen-based APUs

 

AMD’s great horned owl SoC will feature up to four cores and eight threads, giving it similar CPU performance to their Ryzen 5 series CPUs, though the below slide states that it will support 3200MHz memory out of the box, which is an impressive improvement from Ryzen’s stock memory controller that supports up to 2666MHz memory at stock. 

This gain in memory performance will be extremely beneficial for an APU, as in these processors the GPU can often be limited by GPU memory performance and therefore benefit from faster memory. 

 

Leaked AMD roadmaps reveal more about Zen-based APUs

  

Great Horned Owl is also stated to come in FP5 BGA (Ball Grid Array) and socketed AM4, with the BGA versions coming with TDPs of 12-45W and the socketed versions coming with TDPs of 45-65W. 

There will also be a smaller version of “Horned Owl” which uses an SoC with only 8 GPU compute units as well as a smaller “Banded Kestrel” SoC that comes with 2 CPU cores and 3 GPU compute units, both of which consume less than 15W of power in mobile solutions and are pin compatible with AM4 and FP5 BGA solutions. This will streamline motherboard/platform development across these various SoCs. 

  
Leaked AMD roadmaps reveal more about Zen-based APUsLeaked AMD roadmaps reveal more about Zen-based APUs

 

With these new SoCs, AMD finally has some great competitors for Intel’s mobile and low power CPU lineups, offering a great deal of CPU and GPU performance with low TDPs.   

AMD’s Great Horned Owl SoCs would make some great low-cost gaming notebooks, which would easily be suitable to MOBA’s, CSGO and many other popular titles.    

 

Leaked AMD roadmaps reveal more about Zen-based APUs

  
The combination of a relatively strong CPU and GPU in this processor will allow developers and system makers to do great things, potentially creating systems that can offer a decent amount of gaming performance without the need for a dedicated GPU. 

 

You can join the discussion on AMD’s leaked roadmaps and Zen-based APUs on the OC3D Forums. 

 

Special thanks to  The F34R Channel for bringing this news to our attention.  

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