AMD Jaguar Based APU Runs at 2 GHz and Beats AMD Brazos by 260% ~ The World is Mine

Sep 4, 2012

AMD Jaguar Based APU Runs at 2 GHz and Beats AMD Brazos by 260%

9/04/2012 07:27:00 PM

dannzfay

AMD’s up and coming Jaguar architecture has been revealed at this year’s Hot Chips conference and we reported on that here and here. The new x86 core design is supposed to bring more instruction set support, better performance and much improved power efficiency.

One thing we’ve noticed about all the Jaguar reports that are floating on the Internet, and that is that nobody seems to think about how much performance it will bring in the low-end sector and how that will correlate with Intel’s missing Atom upgrade. As most of you know, Intel hasn’t upgraded the Atom processor line in a while now and the company apparently wants to leave things the way they are now until next autumn or even later. Seeing that Intel is not doing anything spectacular, AMD did not upgrade Bobcat either and only brought minor improvements in the Brazos 2.0 platform. The Texas-based CPU designer actually knows that its most important market is the low- to mid-end and the desktop side has always been its strongest area as the company now rules over 43% of that market just by using Llano and Brazos processors.

Therefore, even if Intel is not doing anything in the low-power sector, AMD is working hard on Jaguar that will apparently be ready early next year. In the Hot Chips 2012 slides, AMD claims that the new Jaguar CPUs will work at a higher frequency than the current Brazos processors and estimates a frequency increase of more than 10%. Considering that the top Brazos 2.0 CPU works roughly at 1700 MHz, we can definitely say that Jaguar will indeed have a top working frequency of around 2 GHz. AMD is also expecting an IPC increase of over 15% and that means that even when working at the same frequency, the Jaguar CPUs will be more than 15% faster than the fastest Brazos 2.0 implementation.

Practically, a 2 GHz Jaguar processor is likely to be roughly 25% to 30% faster than the top Brazos dual cores. On the other hand, Jaguar CPUs will also come in quad core flavor and this means that the performance difference will reach a high 260% when comparing a 4-core Jaguar to a dual-core Bobcat. Intel’s new 22nm Atom called Silvermont will have a serious competitor from AMD, but we have the feeling that Jaguar’s success will be even greater than what the company has managed with Brazos and Brazos 2.0.