AMD Kaveri A10 review thread

[scaryjim]

Kaveri has 4 channels within it's memory controller (physically)? What??

Yeah, are you not reading the PD chitchat thead?

I believe it's indisputable that the memory controller has 4 64bit partitions, and the rumours are that it's also GDDR5 capable as well as DDR3. Only 2 partitions are used in the FM2+ package versions (for obvious reasons). But it's possible that a different package could allow all 4 channels to be used. Personally I'm hoping for laptops with "sideport" like memory soldered onto the motherboard

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It seems high speed RAM is not really any different in price on Amazon than the bog standard 1600MHZ stuff:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CMZ8...ywords=1866mhz
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-BLT2...ds=crucial+8gb
http://www.amazon.co.uk/G-Skill-Ripj...ds=2133mhz+8gb

Hopefully by the time the A8 7600 arrives more cheap sets will have appeared.

[fteoOpty64]

Yeah, are you not reading the PD chitchat thead?

I believe it's indisputable that the memory controller has 4 64bit partitions, and the rumours are that it's also GDDR5 capable as well as DDR3. Only 2 partitions are used in the FM2+ package versions (for obvious reasons). But it's possible that a different package could allow all 4 channels to be used. Personally I'm hoping for laptops with "sideport" like memory soldered onto the motherboard

I do not think AMD will waste transistors in stuff that is not functioning in the Kaveri chip!. The design of that hUMA switch/Memory controller might be able to go full four channel for GDDR5 RAM but implemented as it is , is a DDR3 dual channel controller in this Kaveri version. The die shot of the DDR3 controller is rather huge (ie it is the hUMA switch) so there are lots of complexities designed into it. Also the gpu cores in Kaveri is now able to context switch meaning they can do more than one thing at a time like a processor but it chews numerics like floating-point really fast and can do several in parallel.
It is actually possible to implement "SidePort" like GDDR5 VRAM for the gpus if the hUMAswitch can support both GDDR5 and DDR3 at the same time. The difference here would be that this SidePort VRAM would also be accessiible by the cpu cores while in non-HSA architectures the VRAM is dedicated to the gpu only. HSA allows cpu and gpu to access the same memory in shared mode managed by the hUMA switch. So we have true heterogeneous multi-processing for once with HSA systems.
Future Kaveri version might see an included 64MB SRAM cache in the hUMA switch to bring DDR3 speeds close to GDDR5 speeds allowing for more effective bandwidth. Looks like Xbox One APU uses such a scheme.
Since DDR3-2400 RAM is coming down in prices, it might just be the direction to go for AMD considering their 28nm process can pack the density inside a reasonable die-size. Add a couple of watts to the TDP and it will fly.