Topic: AMD's Trinity

[Verbl Kint]

This could well be the basis of my next HTPC.   
 
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6335/amds-trinity-an-htpc-perspective

[Stagea]

This could well be the basis of my next HTPC.   
 
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6335/amds-trinity-an-htpc-perspective

Trinity notebooks have been around for sometime, and yes they do well with typical video use. The upcoming desktop parts should be great for this purpose. The Llano and Trinity APUs strike a good balance between CPU power ang IGP ability for mainstream use, imho.

Intel's also making good advancements. The HD4000 equipped Ivy Bridge processors (i5 K and i7 processors) now offer AMD-esque video post processing, leading to improved image quality. It's not quite there yet in customizability and feature set, but it's enough to be a noticeable step forward. The great thing going for AMD is that you don't need a 10k - 15k processor (or a dedicated video adapter) to get these useful features.

I hope Intel brings the i3-3225 to our shores. At the moment, it's the only Intel processor that really competes with Llano or Trinity when it comes to an IGP-based HTPC application.

[Verbl Kint]

Cheapest I've seen so far for the A10-5800k is P5,580.

[≧◉◡◉≦xrampage≧◉◡◉≦]

Trinity notebooks have been around for sometime, and yes they do well with typical video use. The upcoming desktop parts should be great for this purpose. The Llano and Trinity APUs strike a good balance between CPU power ang IGP ability for mainstream use, imho.

Intel's also making good advancements. The HD4000 equipped Ivy Bridge processors (i5 K and i7 processors) now offer AMD-esque video post processing, leading to improved image quality. It's not quite there yet in customizability and feature set, but it's enough to be a noticeable step forward. The great thing going for AMD is that you don't need a 10k - 15k processor (or a dedicated video adapter) to get these useful features.

I hope Intel brings the i3-3225 to our shores. At the moment, it's the only Intel processor that really competes with Llano or Trinity when it comes to an IGP-based HTPC application.

Comparing the price of the two intel's price is not that high to AMD but the plus factor of AMD is the quad core compare to intel dual core. PQ of AMD on their GPU is much better than HD4000 of intel IMHO. You can also use the  HD7660D of AMD A10 GPU for mid to semi high gaming resolution. 

[Verbl Kint]

Comparing the price of the two intel's price is not that high to AMD but the plus factor of AMD is the quad core compare to intel dual core. PQ of AMD on their GPU is much better than HD4000 of intel IMHO. You can also use the  HD7660D of AMD A10 GPU for mid to semi high gaming resolution. 

Interestingly, the AMD's are not true quad-cores. Meanwhile, performance of single-threaded applications is, ironically, not as good compared to Ivy Bridge.

I believe that it is really in the pricing and versatility of Trinity (i.e. you can crossfire it) which makes it a compelling choice for an HTPC.

[Stagea]

Comparing the price of the two intel's price is not that high to AMD but the plus factor of AMD is the quad core compare to intel dual core. PQ of AMD on their GPU is much better than HD4000 of intel IMHO. You can also use the  HD7660D of AMD A10 GPU for mid to semi high gaming resolution. 

Intel HD Graphics 4000 delivers a nice picture for me, at least it's a noticeable improvement over Intel HD Graphics 3000 and is a big step ahead of Nvidia's hardware decoding. It's more or less at the level of AMD's Radeon HD 6000 series for hardware-decoded video image quality. I was pleasantly surprised when I used it, as I have Nvidia and AMD solutions to compare it to. The image calibration increments are also finer, which is one of my main gripes with HD Graphics 3000. The main downside of Intel's solution is that it's a lot weaker when it comes to 3D rendering (gaming, content-creation, etc.).

Interestingly, the AMD's are not true quad-cores. Meanwhile, performance of single-threaded applications is, ironically, not as good compared to Ivy Bridge.

I believe that it is really in the pricing and versatility of Trinity (i.e. you can crossfire it) which makes it a compelling choice for an HTPC.

AMD's been behind with single threaded performance since Intel rolled out the Core 2 series. AMD's been banking on multi-threaded performance with Bulldozer and Piledriver by being highly parallel internally (having two integer units per module). This helped sell Opterons, as this is great for server workloads and the like.

Windows 8 also helps these new designs, as the task scheduler is no longer confused with this type of architecture. Windows 7 and prior could not fully take advantage of Bulldozer and Piledriver.

Imo, the "powerful enough" integrated graphics is what makes Trinity and Llano appealing. Intel's solutions are far weaker when it comes to graphics rendering performance -- this steers the attention away from what would otherwise be an excellent processor. AMD delivers a balanced blend of general processing and graphics performance with their APUs, thereby making them great candidates for not-so-demanding general purpose builds like HTPCs. The Trinity is the proverbial "Jack of all Trades."

[≧◉◡◉≦xrampage≧◉◡◉≦]

Interestingly, the AMD's are not true quad-cores. Meanwhile, performance of single-threaded applications is, ironically, not as good compared to Ivy Bridge.

I believe that it is really in the pricing and versatility of Trinity (i.e. you can crossfire it) which makes it a compelling choice for an HTPC.

Lets see pag nabuo ko na ang AMD A10 ko kasi ang splash pro motion 2 recommended is quadcore. How they put a 4 core om their specs if not true. 

[Stagea]

Lets see pag nabuo ko na ang AMD A10 ko kasi ang splash pro motion 2 recommended is quadcore. How they put a 4 core om their specs if not true. 

I think Verbl Kint is just saying that there are no 4 discrete cores. The A10 APU works like it has 4 cores, but it's really made up of 2 processing modules - each module is a conjoined "twin core" (resources are shared between the twins). In AMD's current case (Piledriver and Bulldozer modules), one module works like 2 cores for the majority of tasks (except when handling certain mixtures of floating point computations). This is why they dropped the triple-core models for Trinity -- they can only do multiples of "two cores" with Piledriver and Bulldozer module design (cutting a module to a "single core" will have performance implications for designs having more than 1 module).

AMD counted this as two cores per module, which is probably the easiest way to explain and market it to the public. This is actually similar to clustered integer core designs in some RISC processors.

[Verbl Kint]

Lets see pag nabuo ko na ang AMD A10 ko kasi ang splash pro motion 2 recommended is quadcore. How they put a 4 core om their specs if not true. 

Lets see pag nabuo ko na ang AMD A10 ko kasi ang splash pro motion 2 recommended is quadcore. How they put a 4 core om their specs if not true. 

The A10 is 2 Piledriver dual cores put together that share resources, which should, technically, make it a quad core.  However, in a "classic" sense, x86 quad cores do not share resources.  This is the reason why I called the A10 "not true quad-cores".

To further add to the confusion, AMD call's these "modules" instead of cores.

[Verbl Kint]

I think Verbl Kint is just saying that there are no 4 discrete cores. The A10 APU works like it has 4 cores, but it's really made up of 2 processing modules - each module is a conjoined "twin core" (resources are shared between the twins). In AMD's current case (Piledriver and Bulldozer modules), one module works like 2 cores for the majority of tasks (except when handling certain mixtures of floating point computations). This is why they dropped the triple-core models for Trinity -- they can only do multiples of "two cores" with Piledriver and Bulldozer module design (cutting a module to a "single core" will have performance implications for designs having more than 1 module).

AMD counted this as two cores per module, which is probably the easiest way to explain and market it to the public. This is actually similar to clustered integer core designs in some RISC processors.

+1 Stagea covers the technical aspects of this much better.

[Stagea]

The A10 is 2 Piledriver dual cores put together that share resources, which should, technically, make it a quad core.  However, in a "classic" sense, x86 quad cores do not share resources.  This is the reason why I called the A10 "not true quad-cores".

To further add to the confusion, AMD call's these "modules" instead of cores.

There are two integer clusters and one floating point cluster per module. This means that a module should very well approach two discrete cores in performance (and maybe exceed them because of the better communication between clusters/cores) with purely integer operations. On the other hand, it would perform like a single core design for purely floating point operations. Most applications are highly integer-intensive, so this hides the reduced FP capacity (as it rarely becomes a bottleneck).  AMD designed these modules this way to optimize transistor use -- lower transistor count helps reduce manufacturing cost and power consumption in general. From the software side of things, a module appears like two discrete cores (the magic just happens within each module). Unfortunately, Bulldozer and Piledriver based designs are the first x86 processors to use this internal architecture -- which means that operating systems and software prior to Windows 8 are not designed to assign threads to make truly efficient use of this (especially when we're talking about processors with more than one module, running applications that do use FP).

Aside from this adoption of Conjoined-core multiprocessing, AMD is banking on heterogenous computing with their APUs. They have been boosting the compute performance of their GPUs (their current GPUs are well ahead of Nvidia in compute performance) to encourage software developers to take advantage of this. The idea is to offload more work to the GPU, freeing up the CPU for other tasks. APUs benefit from this even more than discrete solutions because the GPU and the CPU portions of the APU communicate very quickly with each other. Again, this has the potential to improve the cost to performance ratio of hardware (better transistor/component utilization). Unfortunately, very few applications take full advantage of this at the moment.

[Stagea]

Lets see pag nabuo ko na ang AMD A10 ko kasi ang splash pro motion 2 recommended is quadcore. How they put a 4 core om their specs if not true. 

Splash Pro seems to allocate processing in a pretty primitive manner, as it is not workload-based. Please keep us posted if it works well with Trinity.

[yygoob]

tried splash pro ex with my sandy 2100...nice soap/hdvideocam effect with no/few noticeable drops in frame or stutter...i guess quad core is ideal but not necessary for us to enjoy the motion 2 feature of splash pro ...at least i dont need to buy a quad cpu for htpc for now..

[Stagea]

tried splash pro ex with my sandy 2100...nice soap/hdvideocam effect with no/few noticeable drops in frame or stutter...i guess quad core is ideal but not necessary for us to enjoy the motion 2 feature of splash pro ...at least i dont need to buy a quad cpu for htpc for now..

Motion 2 is designed to work with dual core processors, but the Motion 2 Ultra setting was originally intended for quad core processors (though today's high-performing dual core processors could likely handle this).

[≧◉◡◉≦xrampage≧◉◡◉≦]

Interestingly, the AMD's are not true quad-cores. Meanwhile, performance of single-threaded applications is, ironically, not as good compared to Ivy Bridge.

I believe that it is really in the pricing and versatility of Trinity (i.e. you can crossfire it) which makes it a compelling choice for an HTPC.

Wait a minute even you don't crossfire it check youtube you will see A10-5800k in action crysis andBF3 game with onboard GPU. You can set the onboard GPU up to 2GB.

Crysis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvjA3iMqvjI

BF3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijRbNnSuqxc

AMD Trinity A10-5800K vs INTEL core i5 3550 gaming benchmarks + overclocking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLVrumedUOQ

Specifications and Features
When compared to last year’s Llano processors, AMD has implemented some noteworthy changes listed below.

New x86 architecture featuring “Piledriver” cores

Supports up to 4 cores and support for the latest ISA instructions including FMA4/3, AVX, AES, XOP
Branch Prediction and Cache enhancements over the previous “Bulldozer” cores
2MB L2 cache per dual-core module (up to a total of 4 MB)
Max Turbo Frequencies up to 4.2 GHz
Configurable via AMD OverDrive
New GPU Cores

Featuring VLIW 4 architecture
Up to 384 shaders
Up to 800 MHz
Up to 8xAA and 16AF support
Controllable via AMD OverDrive
DirectX®11 Support
AMD Turbo Core 3.0

Adds frequency to GPU and CPU cores (bi-directional)
Controllable via AMD OverDrive
UVD and VCE

Video Encode and Decode Hardware to offload CPU
AMD Picture Perfect support with HD Post Processing technologies
Support for new display technologies

AMD Eyefinity technology for 3+1 monitor support
Display Port 1.2 support











[img]http://www.overclockers.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/amd_trinity-13-300x169.jpg[img]

Source: http://www.overclockers.com/amd-trinity-a10-5800k-apu-review

So even their FX quadcore is not a true quadcore because of the piledriver?

For mow i believe A10 has a 4 cores a real quadcore. 

[Verbl Kint]

Reposting my reply above:

The A10 is 2 Piledriver dual cores put together that share resources, which should, technically, make it a quad core.  However, in a "classic" sense, x86 quad cores do not share resources.  This is the reason why I called the A10 "not true quad-cores".

You might also want to read and understand Stagea's posts above.  Quite informative, really.

[≧◉◡◉≦xrampage≧◉◡◉≦]

Reposting my reply above:

You might also want to read and understand Stagea's posts above.  Quite informative, really.

I already read but as I said on my last post the new A10 has 4 cores and the FX bulldozer of amd is piledriver also so that means that their bulldozer is not also a true quadcore?  and i can't see any post form amd that their piledriver is not a true quadcores can you share one saying their quadcore are not true quadcores?

[Stagea]

I already read but as I said on my last post the new A10 has 4 cores and the FX bulldozer of amd is piledriver also so that means that their bulldozer is not also a true quadcore?  and i can't see any post form amd that their piledriver is not a true quadcores can you share one saying their quadcore are not true quadcores?

There is no difference between how Trinity cores are counted versus how Bulldozer and Piledriver cores are counted. It's really a matter of how people see it. Core "count" was not something marketed prior to Intel and AMD bringing this to the consumer sphere, by the way.

IBM's POWER4 MCM was the first module integrating multiple identical processing units (2001), and is generally considered the first "multi-core" processor as it is a single module symmetric multi-processing design. The Digital's Alpha EV5 was the first "clustered multi-thread" processor (1995). The latter being very similar in design to a Bulldozer/Piledriver module (2 integer units per module). If we are to follow AMD's current naming scheme, the EV5 (aka 21164) would've been the first "dual-core" processor. Neither IBM or DEC actually marketed their products as quad or dual core back then.

Intel's first attempt to a multicore processor was the Itanium 2 MX2 (2004). It followed IBM's footsteps with POWER4 in having separate fully-functioning dies in one MCM (one core per die). It is when they developed Conroe (Core 2) that they integrated two cores in one die, sharing a single L2 cache per die (it was also IBM who pioneered this design with POWER5 in 2003). This improved transistor use as there is less need for transistors storing the same data (as done in prior designs with multiple L2 caches). It made sense to use such a design moving forward for multi-core processors. This allowed Conroes and succeeding designs to be cut to single core processors by disabling one core, but prevented odd-numbered multicores because of non-symmetry issues (this is why Intel did not release 3-core processors to the mass market).

AMD pushed the semantics game with Bulldozer a little further (far more parts were shared). Having 2 dedicated schedulers and integer execution units per module (sharing everything else), AMD ensured that each module performs as close to a conventional dual core by having powerful instruction decode and dispatch units that can keep the execution units busy (processing 2 threads at the same time also helps at the software level). Being somewhere in between, AMD probably thought about if they would market each module as a massively parallel single core, or a slower dual core. They went with the latter, as it'd probably sell better that way (the average consumer would think it's better). Prior to Bulldozer, AMD used symmetric designs with dedicated L2 caches per core (this allowed them to create odd-core-numbered multi-core designs without performance penalties).

Anyway, here's a conventional Quad Core (Llano):

See how one can slice out each core because each one works as a discrete processor with no internally shared units. This is a 4-way SMP architecture in one chip.

Here's a clustered integer core processor (Trinity):

Notice how there is no symmetry in each module. That's because each module could not be divided into two physical cores, even if it works like two physical cores in the far majority of tasks.

Ironically, makers didn't market having multiple "cores" before Intel and AMD did because it was considered a less elegant way of achieving parallelism in the past. It was only when instruction level parallelism became excessively difficult to increase did thread level parallelism emerge as the way forward.

[≧◉◡◉≦xrampage≧◉◡◉≦]

this is why Intel did not release 3-core processors to the mass market

AFAIK the 3 cores of amd has a 4 core but it was disable remember the unlockable quadcore of AMD you have either 2 core or tri core but there are board that can unlock the hidden cores. I also experience this when i have the board that can unlock. I did unlock the 2 hidden core but 1 core is only working so i have 3 core with the price of a 2 core.

I think Trinity has different architecture than Llano as pero in the diagram trinity has new features than Llano.

[rthirtyfourgtr]

AFAIK the 3 cores of amd has a 4 core but it was disable remember the unlockable quadcore of AMD you have either 2 core or tri core but there are board that can unlock the hidden cores. I also experience this when i have the board that can unlock. I did unlock the 2 hidden core but 1 core is only working so i have 3 core with the price of a 2 core.

I think Trinity has different architecture than Llano as pero in the diagram trinity has new features than Llano.

i think what they are trying to explain is that previous generation AMD quad-cores had 4 independent cores (each core having 1 integer cluster and 1 floating point cluster) while current gen have 2 independent modules (each module having 2 integer clusters and 1 floating point cluster)