Six years ago, AMD announced an ambitious project: the 25x20 initiative. It represented AMD’s vision to strengthen the energy efficiency of our mobile processors with graphics (APUs) by 25X by the year 2020. Today we are proud to announce that the award-winning AMD RyzenTM 4000 Series mobile processors significantly exceed our goal with a final energy efficiency of up to 31.7X our baseline.[1]
As we reflect on our path over these past six years, we admit that victory was not certain. Throughout that time, AMD made some critical strategic calls, among them being the investment in the “Zen” architecture, Infinity FabricTM and 7nm process technology. With AMD’s world class engineering team focused on power efficiency with these tools at their disposal, we had at least one shot at the goal. Nevertheless, the steep trajectory required by the 25x20 program was a “heavy lift.”
And it was a heavy lift that relied on timely delivery of many moving pieces:
- Innovation in real-time power management
- Rapid adoption of cutting-edge process technology
- Tight integration of leadership CPU and GPU architectures into a common SoC
- Continued evolution of our Infinity Fabric architecture
- Silicon-level power optimizations
- Rapid iteration of our landmark “Zen” architecture[2]
The AMD Ryzen 4000 Series mobile processors—available in-market right now—represent the culmination of that work. Compared to our baseline, these new processors reduce average compute time for a given task by 80% and reduce energy usage for that work by 84%.[3] Together, these metrics allowed AMD to achieve not just 25x20… but 31x20!1,3
Energy efficiency is not just an academic exercise. In truth, it’s an effort to make your devices faster and more convenient. Ultra-portable laptops with AMD Ryzen 4000 Series processors have unmatched performance, graphics and long battery life. In fact, reviewers like The Verge say AMD has “rewritten the rules” with the energy efficiency we packed into our goal-achieving processors.
I am incredibly proud of the contributions AMD employees have made to help enable the researchers, innovators and creators in our world to make a positive impact using more energy efficient devices. Though we have surpassed our goal, AMD is not yet done. I am very excited about what’s still to come. AMD will continue to strive for ultimate energy efficiency in pursuit of positive impacts on people, the environment, and our industry.
Mark Papermaster is CTO and EVP of Technology & Engineering at AMD.
[1] Testing by AMD Performance Labs as of 4/15/2020. Processors tested: AMD FX-7600P, AMD FX-8800P, AMD FX-9830P, AMD Ryzen 7 2700U, AMD Ryzen 7 2800H, AMD Ryzen 7 3750H, and AMD Ryzen 7 4800H. 25x20 program tracked against Energy Star Rev 6.1 8/12/2014 and 3DMark® 2011 P-Score and Cinebench R15 nT. Results may vary with drivers and BIOSes. RVM-108
[2] The information contained herein is for informational purposes only and is subject to change without notice. Timelines, roadmaps, and/or product release dates shown in these slides are plans only and subject to change. “Zen,” “Zen 2,” and “Zen 3” are codenames for AMD architectures, and are not product names. GD-122
[3] The normalized performance increase, based on a 50:50 weighted metric for Cinebench R15 and 3DMark11, is 5x higher from AMD’s 2014 notebook processor to the 2020 design. This equates to one-fifth the average compute time for a given task. Annual processor electricity use (kwh), based on ENERGY STAR typical use energy consumption (TEC), in 2020 equals 84% less than the 2014 amount.
