AMD Enhances Embedded Graphics
February 2014, The Embedded computing marketplace is growing rapidly to cover just about every aspect of interaction with people and machines. At the meca for this new technology – Embedded World, this year held in Nuremburg, Germany; AMD introduced a new GPU for the embedded market. The rise of visual computing and advanced graphics UIs, has driven the need for full high powered GPUs in the embedded space.
Markets such as digital gaming (arcade, casino and pachinko/ pachislot ), digital signage, medical imaging, conventional military and commercial avionics have moved to media quality color and ultra-high resolution black & white imaging. These display solutions now require GPU and GPGPU solutions that are on a par with media and content creation tools. The challenge of the embedded marketplace is the integration of the units into a power and function “standardized” form factor and a long life cycle. The new AMD E8860 Radeon graphics solution (code name “Adelaar”) is designed for these embedded markets with a 7 year guaranteed product and process life, and an complete subsystem MCM that includes 2GB of pre-qualified GDDR5 memory. The GPU module has a PCIe Gen 3 interface and supports delivers 3D and 4K graphics to multiple displays.
Targeted towards x86 systems applications and as a companion to the AMD APU products, The E8860 features a Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture that has a 37W embedded power envelope and contains 640 Shader processors which can provide 768 / 48 GFLOPS single / double precision peak (600e/4.5Gbps) . This is a A 33 percent higher single precision floating point2 over the previous generation, and an Improved performance that is 92 percent higher performance on 3D graphics in the performance-per-watt specifications over previous generations. The module features 128-bit wide 2GB GDDR5 72GB/s memory subsystem on the module.
AMD Radeon E8860 Embedded GPU module
The AMD E8860 GPU is targeted at high end complex parallel applications such as terrain and weather mapping, facial and gesture recognition and biometric and DNA analysis To support these applications in an embedded environment, the E8860 GPU supports DirectX® 11.1, OpenGL 4.2, and OpenCL™ 1.2, Open CV, along with VCE (video encode), UVD4 (video decode). For output, it supports DP1.2, HDMI™ 1.4, Wireless Display, Stereo 3D.
The GPU is part of the standard AMD Eyefinity Technology with support for Microsoft Windows 7, Windows Embedded 7 Standard, Windows 8/8.1, Windows Embedded 8 Standard, Linux and real-time and safety-critical operating systems supported by CoreAVI’s suite of embedded software drivers. Advanced applications include the connectivity of up to 5x DP1.2 displays, 1x of the HDMI 1.4a displays, 4x Single Link DVI, 2x Dual Link DVI, and 1X LVDS interfaces on either single or dual links.
The GPU modules began sampling in 2013, and are slated for volume production in 2014.
