| 2015-11 Why we changed Jasper to APU? |
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| November 2015 | |
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The last platform produced by Compucon up to today and prior to the change has been very stable for several years. The level of stability means the technology vendor did not think it was necessary to change anything or the existing features were good enough. This level of stability is the norm for server technologies but is a surprise for desktops. Nevertheless the time has come for an upgrade, a rightly justified one. The old Jasper platform is based on Socket AM3+ whereas the new platform is based on Socket FM2+. These 2 sockets are not interchangeable meaning that the processor from one platform cannot be plugged onto the other platform. AM-socketed processors are called CPU for central processing unit, whereas FM-socketed processors are called APU for accelerated processing unit. APU contains CPU, GPU, and North Bridge in one. Some people may think the change is a no-brainer. It is not necessarily true because the real estate of a die is precious and a larger CPU plus external GPU and North Bridge can provide a much higher level of performance in many respects than All-in-One. The upgrade is based on one important factor. It is the success of AMD in implementing a new technology called heterogeneous system architecture (HSA) for its APU in 2015. This architecture has a specific strength that is practical and useful. The cache of the CPU is shared with the GPU so that data transfer is within the die and not across any external link such as PCI Express. We may think this makes a lot of sense and it should be the arrangement from the outset but it is not and AMD is the first technology vendor that has done it successfully. This change will pave the way for all new APU models to have spectacular runtime performance. This is the theory, and software applications that implement this feature will provide the evidence. We are confident. |