At AMD we strive to stay ahead in meeting the needs of our customers and the market. With a desire to improve battery life of our technology, plus awareness of the importance of reducing their environmental impact, we’ve “leaned in” further in our efforts to lower power consumption of our products while improving their performance.
To this end, I am pleased to share several important updates on AMD’s “25x20” Energy Efficiency Initiative. More than two years ago AMD announced a goal to accelerate the “performance per watt” of our mobile (APU) microprocessors by 25 times by 2020, from a 2014 baseline. Achieving it means that in 2020, an AMD powered notebook computer will accomplish a task in one fifth of the time as one produced in 2014, while consuming on average less than one fifth the power.
Recent 25x20 highlights include:
- The AMD 7th Generation A-Series APU (formally codenamed “Bristol Ridge”) keeps AMD on the glide path to achieve our 25x20 goal. Our new “PRO” A-Series APUs deliver up to 32% greater energy efficiency compared to the previous PRO generation, powering numerous commercial HP and Lenovo desktop and notebook products.[ii] We also launched a 35W PRO A-Series APU that reduces energy consumption by two-thirds from the prior generation, while delivering powerful performance for ultra-small form factor PCs like the Lenovo ThinkCentre M715 Tiny desktop.[iii]
- In 2016 AMD’s 25x20 Initiative received several accolades, including “Project of the Year” from Environmental Leader, the “Catalyst Award” from the Green Electronics Council, and the “Technology & Innovation Award” from the Austin Chamber of Commerce.[iv] These recognitions were proudly accepted on behalf of the many talented AMD engineers and business teams around the world.
- 25x20 has been verified by the “Science-Based Targets initiative” (“SBTi”)– a collaboration with the UN Global Compact, Word Resources Institute, and others - as aggressive enough to address AMD’s role in mitigating climate change. In fact, AMD currently is the only microprocessor company recognized by SBTi to demonstrate company-wide carbon reduction targets aligned with climate science.
Looking ahead, we are excited about how AMD’s unique design capabilities and power management features will continue to accelerate the energy efficiency of AMD processors, despite the slowing gains from manufacturing advances (e.g., Moore’s law). As one award judge commented “… there’s a shift in technology [with 25x20] that maybe exceeds Moore’s Law and causes a shift in computing success.”[vi]
We invite you to learn more about energy efficiency trends in a new Electronic Design article titled, “Moore’s Law has Slowed, So What’s Next for Computing Efficiency?” authored by AMD Corporate Fellow, Sam Naffziger and Research Fellow at the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University, Dr. Jonathan Koomey.
AMD values the opportunity to design efficient and world-class processors for your business. Whether you are looking to lower total cost of ownership, reduce energy use, extend battery-life, or improve compute performance, AMD’s 25x20 Energy Efficiency Initiative can help support your priorities.
We look forward to updating you as we continue our bold journey towards 25x20!
Jim Anderson, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Computing and Graphics Business, AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
[ii] Testing by AMD Performance labs. PC manufacturers may vary configurations yielding different results. 3DMark 11 Performance is used to simulate graphics performance, and Cinebench R11.5 1T Performance is used to simulate single threaded CPU performance; the 7th Generation AMD PRO A12-9800 at 65W scored 3521.25 and 1.21 while the AMD PRO A10-8850B at 95W scored 2880 and 1.06 respectively. CPU Performance improvement : 1.21/1.06=1.14X or 14% more, Graphic Performance improvement : 3521.25/2880=1.22X or 22% more, Power Consumption improvement : (95W-65W)/95W=0.32X or 32% less.
[iii] https://community.amd.com/community/amd-corporate/blog/2016/10/27/powering-the-evolving-desktop, footnote #1
[iv] www.amd.com/25x20
[vi] http://www.amd.com/en-us/press-releases/Pages/amd-wins-prestigious-2016sep07.aspx
