On your latest flight you may have noticed some branding on the displays powering the schedules and in-flight entertainment, or perhaps if you were flying to Vegas you didn't notice it until you were playing the slots. If you were paying attention you would have noticed that the display was powered by AMD, as are many POS, medical and even military displays. A new series of Excavator based processors was announced today, the Merlin Falcon which has four Excavator cores, a Radeon third-gen GCN GPU and support for both DDR3 and DDR4 RAM.
Yes that is right, the first DDR4 chip from AMD is arriving but you won't be running it in your desktop. You should probably be jealous as this processor will have HSA 1.0, hardware based HEVC/H.265 video decode, DirectX 12 support and even the ARM co-processor that provides AMD's new Secure Processor feature. There is more at The Register if you follow the link.
"AMD will today unveil Merlin Falcon, its latest R-series processor aimed at industrial systems, medical devices, gambling machines, digital signs, military hardware, and so on."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- SanDisk, Toshiba to jointly make 3D flash memory @ DigiTimes
- Michael Dell berates Microsoft's Nadella about high price of Surface tablet @ The Inquirer
- Square Enix To Concentrate On Remaking Their Back Catalog @ Slashdot
- Marvell, Longsys partner to make SSDs @ DigiTimes
- IoT's sub-GHz 802.11ah Wi-Fi will be dead on arrival, warn analysts @ The Register
- Amazon Fire TV Review @ Hardware Secrets
“POS processor” I see what
“POS processor” I see what you did there, it’s more sad than funny.
ya, that isn’t a common term
ya, that isn't a common term at all http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=pos/
It is a revenue stream for AMD that they are actually very competitive in, which is a good thing.
here is COM Express Type 6
here is COM Express Type 6 Basic module with the new AMD r series APUs!
http://linuxgizmos.com/com-express-type-6-module-revs-up-with-new-r-series-soc/
“Supporting the launch of the
“Supporting the launch of the latest AMD Embedded R-Series SOC series (formerly codenamed “Merlin Falcon”), SAPPHIRE Technology is offering several new solutions to enable customers to quickly adopt this technology and incorporate it into new designs.
Designed for demanding embedded needs, the latest processors incorporate AMD’s newest generation x86 64-bit CPU core (“Excavator”), third-generation Graphics Core Next GPU architecture, and state-of-the-art power management for reduced energy consumption, to provide industry-leading performance and key embedded features for next-generation designs. As an AMD strategic partner for Embedded Solutions, SAPPHIRE Technology is manufacturing and selling two AMD-designed development platforms for the new R-Series SOC (DB-FP4 for DDR3 and DB-FP4-D4 for DDR4). These systems are only available from SAPPHIRE. In addition, SAPPHIRE will offer both Mini-ITX board level and complete system level products.
Known as the IPC-FP4-LC and IPC-FP4-DP, the SAPPHIRE Mini-ITX boards are fully featured designs delivering the full complement of I/O and display outputs supported by the AMD Embedded R-Series SOC. Four USB 3.0 and three USB 2.0 ports are supported as well as two Gbit Ethernet ports and two serial com ports. The AMD Embedded R-Series SOC supports 4K video, so the IC-FP4-LC supports two HDMI 2.0 ports plus one DisplayPort while the IPC-FP4-DP variant will support three DisplayPorts. Two SODIMM slots allow installation of dual-channel DDR4 memory and two SATA III ports allow the connection of SSD or HDDs. Further expansion is provided by one Gen3 PCI-e x8 slot and a half-length mini-PCIe slot on the solder side of the board.”(1)
(1)
http://www.sapphiretech.com/page.asp?IDno=5997&lang=eng
From my perspective, AMD’s
From my perspective, AMD’s new Carrizo-based embedded APUs will not be any better in terms of market penetration than previous generation Kaveri-based embedded APUs. The embedded market has very little use for faster integrated GPU and HSA features (which will be largely under-utilized or never utilized at all). That includes POS (point of sales) systems. Additionally that TDP of 12W to 35W means active cooling may be required. Majority of embedded PCs and devices are fanless and passively cooled.
What are you talking about?
What are you talking about? Every processor since socket 939 has been a POS. 🙂
Trolling for clicks with a
Trolling for clicks with a double entendre, eh?
If it’s not for desktop use,
If it’s not for desktop use, then why even mention it?
There are industrial uses for
There are industrial uses for this SKU, but some of those Industrial Fitlet-PC based systems make for great Mini desktops with plenty of extra Ethernet/other port support. And the there is full Linux open driver/software support for the APU using AMD’s all-open Linux driver including Mentor Embedded Linux from Mentor Graphics and their Sourcery CodeBench IDE development tools. Let’s hope these/and the Carrizo SKUs make it into some Mint Box/other devices. That HSA 1.0 support is what is impotent with more acceleration done on the GPU. That ECC memory support is a first for embedded systems SKUs from AMD! I’d expect there will be lots of digital signage based systems that will support Vulkan, so some of those systems may be usable for HTPC’s. AMD full Linux driver support for these systems may mean more Mini Steam box support can be had also! A mini PC with support for PCI expansion would be nice. These embedded Merlin Falcon SKUs will probably augment/replace the line of AMD embedded GPU products. Hopefully these new APU SKUs will find their way into lots of products.
P.S. an overall better info
P.S. an overall better info at Anandtech than The Register’s article!
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9726/amd-launches-excavator-based-rseries-apus-for-embedded-with-ddr4-support
– Should I write embedded on
– Should I write embedded on the title?
– No better right POS. It is more funny.
Point Of Sale.
aka modern
Point Of Sale.
aka modern high-end cash registers.
s/HBM/HSA/
s/HBM/HSA/
“You should probably be
“You should probably be jealous as this processor will have HBM 1.0, …”
I would be jealous if it had HBM. Surprised more people didn’t notice the typo.
Bloody hell it is getting
Bloody hell it is getting hard to type the right acronym at this point. Thanks, fixing it.
But you can remember SEx Port
But you can remember SEx Port well enough. 😀 lol
If you let me name things
If you let me name things then we wouldn't be in this mess!
Hey, you have MY permission,
Hey, you have MY permission, but unfortunately it’s not my permission that matters.