AMD A10-7850K Light Review

AMD A10-7850K Kaveri APU review - The Embedded GPU - HSA &
hUMA

HSA & hUMA
HSA then, the abbreviation you heard so many times already, we'll keep it simple. It's short for
Heterogeneous System Architecture and it is what sets Kaveri apart from previous generation
APUs. HSA is a way of designing software and hardware to take and distribute computing tasks
to both the CPU and GPU, basically taking advantage of the strengths of each serial and parallel
processing unit. Graphics processors, for example, excel at performing many calculations
simultaneously. So HSA addresses an old problem with existing CPU + GPU architectures by
allowing both units to directly access each other's memory pools - a unified memory pool. This
eliminates the need for copying inbetween buffers which decreases time and work required e.g.
better efficieny. Traditionally CPU and GPU have to address different blocks of memory which
means data has to be copied between these two blocks. By eliminating the need to copy data
between these different blocks, the CPU and GPU can both work on the same data without
waiting for it to be copied back and forth. Heterogeneous queueing rebalances how the GPU and
CPU interact with each other. While the CPU assigns workloads to the GPU in most current PCs
Kaveri's queueing feature allows both processors to dispatch work to each other and create work
for themselves. A very nice feature in the Kaveri APUs is the hUMA memory architecture which
on its end is a part of the Heterogeneous System Architecture. It allows the APU to make use of
a unified memory architecture which would allow cross sharing of system ram between the GPU
and CPU.

The GPU In the APU
AMD moved towards the Radeon 7000 series architecture for Kaveri, and as such they have a
very strong offering as it is GCN based and in essence the same architecture that you see in say
the Seres 7000 GPUs (Radeon 7800/7900/260/270/280/290) instead of the previously used
VLIW design. Llano APUs made use of AMDs VLIW5 architecture while Trinity and Richland
used an updated VLIW4 architecture.
Up to 8 GCN-based GPU cores
Up to 512 shaders
Up to 720MHz
8xAA and 16xAF Support
DirectX11.2 Support
Mantle Support
AMD Eyefinity Technology2 and 4K Ultra HD Support
DisplayPort 1.2 Support

The Kaveri APUs make use of the Radeon GCN (Graphics Core Next 2.0) architecture. So next
to the four CPU cores, you now will spot 8 GCN based GPU cores as well, up-to eight cores
(depending on APU) result into a whopping 512 shader processors (64 cores per GCN Core
cluster) and that's where AMD is making the difference opposed to its competition. Basically they
compensate with a very powerful graphics engine harbored inside that APU. BTW AMDs claim of
"up to 12 compute cores" in its APU line is a little confusing, as it refers to four CPU cores and
eight GCN compute units linked via HSA.
APU GPU cores
Shader
Cores
GPU Clock DirectX Video Coding Mantle Tdp
A10-7850K 8 512 720 MHz 11.2 VCE2 Yes 95W
A10-7700K 6 384 720 MHz 11.2 VCE2 Yes 95W
A8-7600 6 384 720 MHz 11.2 VCE2 Yes 65W
A8-7600 6 384 720 MHz 11.2 VCE2 Yes 45W
Now the A10-7850K will have 512 shader cores, which resolves to 8 CUs which may boost
towards 720 MHz. This roughly equates to the Radeon HD 7750. The performance is good, the
shared L2 cache definitely helps out here, but a bottleneck remains graphics memory which is
drawn from System Memory, hence for systems with Kaveri APUs faster memory will result into
better graphics performance.

Unified Video Decoder & Video Compression Engine
Kaveri supports hardware decoding of H.264 and VC-1 video codec standards. The chip also has
built-in support for video encoding for H.264 via its video compression engine.
Dedicated hardware to offload video encoding/decoding from CPU
AMD Picture Perfect support with HD Post-Processing technologies
The AMD Kaveri APUs adds some new high quality video post processing features to improve
video. This includes new super- resolution upscaling that can improve how SD quality video
looks on HD screens, as well as how 1080P content looks on Ultra HD screens. The IGP will
provide support for multiple monitors and all common connectors are supported including HDMI,
DVI, DisplayPort and DSUB (VGA).

A new videocodec: h265/hevc
Kaveri will support h265/hevc as well. The new video codec is up and coming thanks to the rapid
adoption of Ultra HD and thus the sheer need to preserve costly bandwith. Initially we heard that
this will be software support rendered over the shader engine ony. High Efficiency Video Coding
(HEVC) is a video compression format and will be a successor to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
(Advanced Video Coding). HEVC is to double the data compression ratio compared to
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC at the same level of video quality. It can alternatively be used to provide
substantially improved video quality at the same bit rate. It can support 8K UHD and resolutions
up to 8192x4320.
AMD True Audio
Audio immersion is a key factor for AMD as they are now implementing an audio pipeline into the
newest APUs. Now first, please understand that AMD True Audio only is available on Kaveri and
newer APUs.
Dedicated DSP for true-to-life audio with no performance compromise
Enable dynamic 3D sound processing effects across more audio channels
Programmable audio pipeline grants artistic freedom to game audio design
AMD implemented a fully programmable audio engine, True Audio technology. You guys know
programmable shaders for visuals right? To some extent that now applies for audio as well; to
improve audio effects (real-time voices and audio channels in your game opposed to what is
possible with CPUs today) enabling directional (surround) audio over input. To do so, AMD
injected DSPs into the APU that can do some magic on the audio channels.
There are multiple Audio optimized DSP cores
Tensilica HiFi2 EP instruction set
Tensilica Xtensa SP Fload support
The DSPs have 32KB instruction and data caches
8KB of scratch RAM for local operation.
For example surround with stereo could be virtualized. There isn't enough CPU power left to run
complex audio mechanisms and this is where the technology kicks in. So professional grade
audio is now closer to the PC with this new audio technology. Try to imaging High Quality
Reverbs, Room Simulation True 3D audio dedicated audio processing. Game developers can
use what is called a Wwise audio plugin to get all this going over the AMD True Audio DPS. This
is going to help with CPU load or better put, offloading. A few simple Audio effects can use up-to
14% of your CPU, this is now offloaded to the AP

Reference
Works Cited
Hagedoorn, H. (2014, 7 27). The Guru of 3d. Retrieved april 23, 2014, from AMD A10-7850K Kaveri
APU review: http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_a10_7850k_apu_review,3.html

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