—     Design Opti­miza­ti­ons, Intel­li­gent Power Manage­ment and Hete­ro­ge­neous Sys­tem Archi­tec­tu­re Advan­ces To Enable AMD To Out­pace His­to­ri­cal Ener­gy Effi­ci­en­cy Trend by At Least 70 Per­cent—

Dali­an, Chi­na —Chi­na Inter­na­tio­nal Soft­ware and Infor­ma­ti­on Ser­vice Fair— June 19, 2014 — AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announ­ced its goal to deli­ver a 25x impro­ve­ment in the ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy of its Acce­le­ra­ted Pro­ces­sing Units (APUs) by 2020,¹ Details inclu­ding inno­va­tions that will pro­du­ce the expec­ted effi­ci­en­cy gains were pre­sen­ted today by AMD’s Chief Tech­no­lo­gy Offi­cer Mark Paper­mas­ter during a key­note at the Chi­na Inter­na­tio­nal Soft­ware and Ser­vice Fair (CISIS) con­fe­rence in Dali­an, Chi­na. The “25X20” tar­get  is a sub­stan­ti­al increase com­pared to the pri­or six years (2008 to 2014), during which time AMD impro­ved the typi­cal use ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy of its pro­ducts more than 10x.¹

World­wi­de, three bil­li­on per­so­nal com­pu­ters use more than one per­cent of all ener­gy con­su­med annu­al­ly, and 30 mil­li­on com­pu­ter ser­vers use an addi­tio­nal 1.5 per­cent of all elec­tri­ci­ty con­su­med at an annu­al cost of $14 bil­li­on to $18 bil­li­on USD. Expan­ded use of the Inter­net, mobi­le devices, and inte­rest in cloud-based video and audio con­tent in gene­ral is expec­ted to result in all of tho­se num­bers incre­asing in future years.²

“Crea­ting dif­fe­ren­tia­ted low-power pro­ducts is a key ele­ment of our busi­ness stra­tegy, with an atten­ding relent­less focus on ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy,” said Paper­mas­ter.  Through APU archi­tec­tu­ral enhance­ments and intel­li­gent power effi­ci­ent tech­ni­ques, our cus­to­mers can expect to see us dra­ma­ti­cal­ly impro­ve the ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy of our pro­ces­sors during the next seve­ral years. Set­ting a goal to impro­ve the ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy of our pro­ces­sors 25 times by 2020 is a mea­su­re of our com­mit­ment and con­fi­dence in our approach.”

        “The ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy of infor­ma­ti­on tech­no­lo­gy has impro­ved at a rapid pace sin­ce the begin­ning of the com­pu­ter age, and inno­va­tions in semi­con­duc­tor tech­no­lo­gies con­ti­nue to open up new pos­si­bi­li­ties for hig­her effi­ci­en­cy,” said Dr. Jona­than Koomey, rese­arch fel­low at the Stey­er-Tay­lor Cen­ter for Ener­gy Poli­cy and Finan­ce at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. “AMD has ste­adi­ly impro­ved the ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy of its mobi­le pro­ces­sors, having achie­ved grea­ter than a 10-fold impro­ve­ment over the last six years in typi­cal-use ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy.  AMD’s focus on impro­ving typi­cal power effi­ci­en­cy will likely yield signi­fi­cant con­su­mer bene­fits sub­stan­ti­al­ly impro­ving real-world bat­tery life and per­for­mance for mobi­le devices.  AMD’s tech­no­lo­gy plans show every pro­mi­se of yiel­ding about a 25-fold impro­ve­ment in typi­cal-use ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy for mobi­le devices over the next six years, a pace that sub­stan­ti­al­ly exceeds his­to­ri­cal rates of growth in peak out­put ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy.  This would be achie­ved through both per­for­mance gains and rapid reduc­tions in the typi­cal-use power of pro­ces­sors. In addi­ti­on to the bene­fits of increased per­for­mance, the effi­ci­en­cy gains help to extend bat­tery life, enable deve­lo­p­ment of smal­ler and less mate­ri­al inten­si­ve devices, and limit the over­all envi­ron­men­tal impact of increased num­bers of com­pu­ting devices.”

Moore’s Law sta­tes that the num­ber of tran­sis­tors capa­ble of being built in a given area dou­bles rough­ly every two years.  Dr. Koomey’s rese­arch demons­tra­tes that his­to­ri­cal­ly, ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy of pro­ces­sors has clo­se­ly tra­cked the rate of impro­ve­ment pre­dic­ted by Moore’s Law.³  Through intel­li­gent power manage­ment and APU archi­tec­tu­ral advan­ces, in tan­dem with semi­con­duc­tor manu­fac­tu­ring pro­cess tech­no­lo­gy impro­ve­ments and a focu­sed on typi­cal use power, AMD’s expects its ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy achie­ve­ments to out­pace the his­to­ri­cal effi­ci­en­cy trend pre­dic­ted by Moore’s law by at least 70 per­cent bet­ween 2014 and 2020.

 

Archi­tec­ting for Ener­gy-Effi­ci­en­cy Leadership

Like advan­ces in com­pu­ting per­for­mance, advan­ces in power effi­ci­en­cy have his­to­ri­cal­ly come along with new gene­ra­ti­ons of sili­con pro­cess tech­no­lo­gy that shrink the size of each indi­vi­du­al tran­sis­tor. AMD expects to out­pace the power effi­ci­en­cy gains expec­ted from pro­cess tech­no­lo­gy tran­si­ti­ons through 2020 for typi­cal use based on suc­cessful­ly exe­cu­ting three cen­tral pil­lars of the company’s ener­gy effi­ci­ent design strategy:

• Hete­ro­ge­neous-com­pu­ting and power opti­miza­ti­on: Through Hete­ro­ge­neous Sys­tem Archi­tec­tu­re (HSA), AMD com­bi­nes CPU and GPU com­pu­te cores and spe­cial pur­po­se acce­le­ra­tors such as digi­tal signal pro­ces­sors and video enco­ders on the same chip in the form of APUs. This inno­va­ti­on from AMD saves ener­gy by eli­mi­na­ting con­nec­tions bet­ween dis­crete chips, redu­ces com­pu­ting cycles by trea­ting the CPU and GPU as peers, and enables the seam­less shift of com­pu­ting workloads to the opti­mal pro­ces­sing com­po­nent.  The result is impro­ved ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy and acce­le­ra­ted per­for­mance for com­mon workloads, inclu­ding stan­dard office appli­ca­ti­ons as well as emer­ging visual­ly ori­en­ted and inter­ac­ti­ve workloads such as natu­ral user inter­faces and image and speech reco­gni­ti­on. AMD pro­vi­des APUs with HSA fea­tures to the embedded, ser­ver and cli­ent device mar­kets, and its semi-cus­tom APUs are insi­de the new gene­ra­ti­on of game consoles.
• Intel­li­gent, real-time power manage­ment: Most com­pu­ting ope­ra­ti­on is cha­rac­te­ri­zed by idle time, the inter­val bet­ween key­strokes, touch inputs or time revie­w­ing dis­play­ed con­tent. Exe­cu­ting tasks as quick­ly as pos­si­ble to has­ten a return to idle, and then mini­mi­zing the power used at idle is extre­me­ly important for mana­ging ener­gy con­sump­ti­on.  Most con­su­mer-ori­en­ted tasks such as web brow­sing, office docu­ment editing, and pho­to editing bene­fit from this “race to idle” beha­vi­or. The latest AMD APUs per­form real-time ana­ly­sis on the workload and appli­ca­ti­ons, dyna­mi­cal­ly adjus­ting clock speed to achie­ve opti­mal through­put rates. Simi­lar­ly, AMD offers plat­form awa­re power manage­ment whe­re the pro­ces­sor can over­clock to quick­ly get the job done, then drop back into low-power idle mode.

·         Future inno­va­tions in power-effi­ci­en­cy: Impro­ve­ments in effi­ci­en­cy requi­re tech­no­lo­gy deve­lo­p­ment that takes many years to com­ple­te.  AMD reco­gni­zed the need for ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy years ago and made the rese­arch invest­ments that have sin­ce led to high impact fea­tures. Going for­ward many dif­fe­ren­tia­ting capa­bi­li­ties such as Inter-frame power gating, per-part adap­ti­ve vol­ta­ge, vol­ta­ge islands, fur­ther inte­gra­ti­on of sys­tem com­pon­ents, and other tech­ni­ques still in the deve­lo­p­ment stage should yield acce­le­ra­ted gains.

Indus­try ana­lyst firm TIRIAS Rese­arch recent­ly review­ed AMD’s metho­do­lo­gy for mea­su­ring its ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy and the plans to achie­ve a 25x impro­ve­ment by 2020 and pro­du­ced a publicly-available white paper detail­ing their analysis.

“The goal of an ener­gy-effi­ci­ent pro­ces­sor is to deli­ver more per­for­mance than the pri­or gene­ra­ti­on at the same or less power,” said Kevin Kre­well, ana­lyst at TIRIAS Rese­arch. “AMD’s plan to acce­le­ra­te the ener­gy-effi­ci­en­cy gains for its mobi­le-com­pu­ting pro­ces­sors is impres­si­ve. We belie­ve that AMD will achie­ve its ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy goal, par­ti­al­ly through pro­cess impro­ve­ment but most­ly by com­bi­ning the saving from redu­cing idle power, the per­for­mance boost of hete­ro­ge­neous sys­tem archi­tec­tu­re, and through more intel­li­gent power manage­ment. With this under­ta­king, AMD demons­tra­tes lea­der­ship in the com­pu­ting indus­try, dri­ving inno­va­tions for a more ener­gy-effi­ci­ent future.”

 

Sup­port­ing Resources
·         TIRIAS Rese­arch white paper
·         Beco­me a fan of AMD on Facebook
·         Fol­low @AMD on Twitter
·         Join AMD on Goog­le Plus

About AMD
AMD (NYSE: AMD) designs and inte­gra­tes tech­no­lo­gy that powers mil­li­ons of intel­li­gent devices, inclu­ding per­so­nal com­pu­ters, tablets, game con­so­les and cloud ser­vers that defi­ne the new era of sur­round com­pu­ting. AMD solu­ti­ons enable peo­p­le ever­y­whe­re to rea­li­ze the full poten­ti­al of their favo­ri­te devices and appli­ca­ti­ons to push the boun­da­ries of what is pos­si­ble. For more infor­ma­ti­on, visit www.amd.com.

¹ Based on typi­cal-use Ener­gy Effi­ci­en­cy as defi­ned by taking the ratio of com­pu­te capa­bi­li­ty as mea­su­red by com­mon per­for­mance mea­su­res such as Spe­c­In­tRa­te, Pass­Mark and PCMark, divi­ded by typi­cal ener­gy use as defi­ned by metrics such as ETEC (Typi­cal Ener­gy Con­sump­ti­on for note­book com­pu­ters) as spe­ci­fied in Ener­gy Star Pro­gram Requi­re­ments Rev 6.0 10/2013

² Energy-efficient computing, The MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI); https://mitei.mit.edu/news/energy-efficient-computing

³ Asses­sing Trends in The Elec­tri­cal Effi­ci­en­cy of Com­pu­ta­ti­on Over Time, Koomey: https://www.llnl.gov/news/aroundthelab/2010/Nov/attach/koomeyoncomputingtrends-v5.pdf

This press release con­ta­ins for­ward-loo­king state­ments con­cer­ning Advan­ced Micro Devices, Inc. (the “Com­pa­ny”), inclu­ding, the abili­ty of the Com­pa­ny to con­ti­nue to inno­va­te in ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy at a rate neces­sa­ry to hit its 25X goal by 2020; and its abili­ty to out­pace Moore’s law by at least 70% with respect to ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy; which are made pur­su­ant to the safe har­bor pro­vi­si­ons of the Pri­va­te Secu­ri­ties Liti­ga­ti­on Reform Act of 1995. For­ward-loo­king state­ments are com­mon­ly iden­ti­fied by words such as “would,” “may,” “expects,” “belie­ves,” “plans,” “intends,” “pro­jects,” and other terms with simi­lar mea­ning. Inves­tors are cau­tio­ned that the for­ward-loo­king state­ments in this press release are based on cur­rent beliefs, assump­ti­ons and expec­ta­ti­ons, speak only as of the date of this press release and invol­ve risks and uncer­tain­ties that could cau­se actu­al results to dif­fer mate­ri­al­ly from cur­rent expec­ta­ti­ons. Risks include the pos­si­bi­li­ty Mate­ri­al fac­tors that could cau­se actu­al results to dif­fer mate­ri­al­ly from cur­rent expec­ta­ti­ons include, wit­hout limi­ta­ti­on, the fol­lo­wing: that Intel Corporation’s pri­cing, mar­ke­ting and reba­ting pro­grams, pro­duct bund­ling, stan­dard set­ting, new pro­duct intro­duc­tions or other acti­vi­ties may nega­tively impact the Company’s plans; that the Com­pa­ny will requi­re addi­tio­nal fun­ding and may be unable to rai­se suf­fi­ci­ent capi­tal on favorable terms, or at all; that cus­to­mers stop buy­ing the Company’s pro­ducts or mate­ri­al­ly redu­ce their ope­ra­ti­ons or demand for the Company’s pro­ducts; that the Com­pa­ny may be unable to deve­lop, launch and ramp new pro­ducts and tech­no­lo­gies in the volu­mes that are requi­red by the mar­ket at matu­re yields on a time­ly basis; that the Company’s third-par­ty foundry sup­pli­ers will be unable to tran­si­ti­on its pro­ducts to advan­ced manu­fac­tu­ring pro­cess tech­no­lo­gies in a time­ly and effec­ti­ve way or to manu­fac­tu­re its pro­ducts on a time­ly basis in suf­fi­ci­ent quan­ti­ties and using com­pe­ti­ti­ve pro­cess tech­no­lo­gies; that the Com­pa­ny will be unable to obtain suf­fi­ci­ent manu­fac­tu­ring capa­ci­ty or com­pon­ents to meet demand for its pro­ducts or will not ful­ly uti­li­ze its pro­jec­ted manu­fac­tu­ring capa­ci­ty needs at GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ (GF) micro­pro­ces­sor manu­fac­tu­ring faci­li­ties; that the Company’s requi­re­ments for wafers will be less than the fixed num­ber of wafers that it agreed to purcha­se from GF or GF encoun­ters pro­blems that signi­fi­cant­ly redu­ce the num­ber of func­tion­al die it recei­ves from each wafer; that the Com­pa­ny is unable to suc­cessful­ly imple­ment its long-term busi­ness stra­tegy; that the Com­pa­ny inac­cu­ra­te­ly esti­ma­te the quan­ti­ty or type of pro­ducts that its cus­to­mers will want in the future or will ulti­m­ate­ly end up purcha­sing, resul­ting in excess or obso­le­te inven­to­ry; that the Com­pa­ny is unable to mana­ge the risks rela­ted to the use of its third-par­ty dis­tri­bu­tors and add-in-board part­ners or offer the appro­pria­te incen­ti­ves to focus them on the sale of the Company’s pro­ducts; that the Com­pa­ny may be unable to main­tain the level of invest­ment in rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment that is requi­red to remain com­pe­ti­ti­ve; that the­re may be unex­pec­ted varia­ti­ons in mar­ket growth and demand for its pro­ducts and tech­no­lo­gies in light of the pro­duct mix that it may have available at any par­ti­cu­lar time; that glo­bal busi­ness and eco­no­mic con­di­ti­ons will not impro­ve or will wor­sen; that PC mar­ket con­di­ti­ons do not impro­ve or will wor­sen; that demand for com­pu­ters will be lower than curr­ent­ly expec­ted; and the effect of poli­ti­cal or eco­no­mic insta­bi­li­ty, dome­sti­cal­ly or inter­na­tio­nal­ly, on the Company’s sales or sup­p­ly chain. Inves­tors are urged to review in detail the risks and uncer­tain­ties in the Company’s Secu­ri­ties and Exch­an­ge Com­mis­si­on filings, inclu­ding but not limi­t­ed to the Quar­ter­ly Report on Form 10‑Q for the quar­ter ended March 29, 2014.

 

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AMD, the AMD Arrow logo and com­bi­na­ti­ons the­reof are trade­marks of Advan­ced Micro Devices, Inc. Other names are for infor­ma­tio­nal pur­po­ses only and may be trade­marks of their respec­ti­ve owners.