Puma platform: new generation of AMD's mobile technologies

Yesterday in Moscow, Taipei, and many other cities of the planet, there was held a worldwide presentation of AMD, where the new-generation mobile platform AMD for notebooks was announced. The even proved interesting and exciting because it was represented by technical experts from AMD, as well as notebook PC manufacturers like Acer, ASUS, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, MSI, Rover Computers, and Toshiba. However, a few days before the event, there was held a special briefing in Moscow attended by specialists, where they shed light on the technical details of the new platform, so today we can talk about the AMD Puma architecture substantially, for which we express our gratitude to the employees of AMD's Russia representation office.

The AMD Puma platform comprises several components, the key of them being the 2-core Turion X2 Ultra, the AMD M780G chipset (the working name RS780M currently under development), discrete graphics of the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 series, as well as the wireless Wi-Fi module with support for the draft IEEE 802.11n specifications by third-party providers like Atheros or Broadcom.

Straight off, we note the key advantages of the new mobile platform Puma stressed out by AMD representatives during the presentation: these are increased power efficiency, 3-fold raised 3D graphic performance which is five times as high while handling HD-video content, and 40% faster wireless transmission of HD video content. The AMD Puma platform is a framework for the new mobile solutions like AMD Business Class, AMD GAME!, and AMD LIVE!

The architecture of the new-generation mobile processor Turion X2 Ultra codenamed Griffin is based on the classical K8 architecture, but according to the company specialists, the power-saving circuits, bus and memory interfaced were developed from scratch.

Therefore, the new CPU Turion X2 Ultra was developed following the modular principle, solely for mobile applications. The CPU acquired the Griffin code name in the honor of a griffin, a magic creature with the lion's body and the head of an eagle.

But, let's turn back to the details of the chip's architecture. The CPU Turion X2 Ultra offers two cores, integrated DDR2 memory controller, and the HyperTransport 3 bus; the higher-end ZM-86 model offers 2MB L2 cache size (1 MB x 2), the lower-end models – 1 MB, and is manufactured following the 65-nm process technology with SOI.

Among the important novelties is the Independent Dynamic Core Technology: to reduce the CPU power consumption, the voltage on the chip's cores and the module of the integrated components of the north bridge is adjustable independently. Apart from that, it provides a standalone adjustment of the clock speeds of each CPU core – from the top performance to a complete halt, in 1/8 increments, that is, there are 9 positions for the clock speed of each core.

In addition to the capabilities of the previous generation of AMD mobile processors, the power-saving state C4 (Deeper Sleep) has been added. In general, there are three types of power-supply schemes for the CPU cores and integrated components of the north bridge - aimed at various patterns of using the notebook PC.

Use of the HyperTransport technology of version 3 in Turion X2 Ultra mobile chips allowed to provide such flexible bus modes when each CPU core depending on the current task is able using one of the five patterns of its load - x16, ?8, ?4, ?2, or 0, which also has a positive effect on the reduction of the chip's overall consumption.

The CPU Turion X2 Ultra uses a substantially reworked memory controller with support for the DDR2-800: it has acquired the DRAM prefetch feature and additional power-saving circuits which keep track of the temperature of the memory and CPU and reduce load as the critical heating levels are attained.

Currently, there have been presented three versions of the CPU Turion X2 Ultra, however, their prices have not yet been announced.

A few notes on the Socket S1. This low-profile socket was developed specially for the generation 11 AMD processors with the purpose of reducing the prime cost of the system.

Chips for the Socket S1 in the µPGA package with the 35x35 mm dimensions are of the same size as the predecessors, but the new CPUs Turion X2 Ultra will not work in systems for the previous generations of chips AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile Rev. of revisions F or Rev. G.

Another key component of the Puma platform is the chipsets of series 7. The mobile version presented yesterday is made on the combination of the north bridge M780G (RS780M) and the south bridge SB700. The key element of the north bridge of the chipset is the integrated graphics core PCI Express Gen. 2 based on the Radeon HD 2400 architecture (40 streaming processors) which offer full support for DirectX 10/SM4.0.

The video memory is arranged based on the UMA architecture, the video output controller offers two standalone ports, thus supporting the Display Port, standard D-Sub, TV, DVI, and HDMI (with support for audio output). With a single monitor, it supports resolutions up to 2048?1536, the dual transmitter LVDS supports up to two monitors with the WUXGA resolution, DVI – up to 2560?1600, HDMI – up to 1080p with 2-channel 48 KHz audio (two independent HDCP threads), and the Display Port – up to 2560x1600.

The integrated graphic core of the chipset also supports the AVIVO HD technology and offers the powerful hardware Universal Video Decoder to handle MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC and VC1, which allows to unload the CPU core substantially while watching video.

The technology of extended adjustment of the graphic core power consumption has been named as the PowerXPress - when switching between the standalone to stationary power supply it provides transition from the integrated graphics to external graphics without having to reboot the system.

The architecture of the AMD Puma platform provides support for the full-featured mode of operation for two CrossFire video cards, as well as the Hybrid CrossFire X mode which enables the combined performance of integrated and external 3D graphics.

Of separate mention is the Display Cache Interface technology with the 16-bit DD2 interface and support for up to 128 MB of memory, that supports high speeds of data exchange without substantial rise in the power consumption.

The south bridge SB700 offers support for 14 USB 2.0 ports, six SATA ports (including the eSATA), one PATA, the PCI bus, as well as the bus for support of the NAND flash memory to implement the useful ReadyBoost/ReadyDrive feature for operation with Windows Vista.

As external graphics in the new mobile platform AMD Puma, the company also offers the yesterday announced graphic chips of the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3800 series, along with the formerly announced ATI Mobility Radeon 3400 and 3600. The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3800 series of graphic processors is manufactured following the 55-nm process technology, supports the Microsoft DirectX 10.11, the PCI Express 2.0 bus, as well as handing HD 1080p video from Blu-ray media, and supports up to four monitors.

The key features of the new generation of mobile graphics ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3800 are similar to the specifications of the series aimed at desktop PCs: that is support for the new generation of Unified Shader Architecture, 256-bit GDDR3 memory bus, the ATI CrossFireX technology, the PCI Express 2.0 bus, the ATI Avivo HD technology, and the power-saving technology ATI PowerPlay.

The AMD Puma platform also includes new technologies of wireless communications, such as IEEE802.11 Draft n offered by Atheros, Broadcom, Marvell, Realtek, and Qualcomm. Besides, AMD is cooperating with providers of solutions for 3G networks towards integration of these technologies into the new platform.

Perhaps some may be confused by the lack of mention of the WiMAX Mobile standard in the description of the AMD Puma platform. Giuseppe Amato, when asked the question of future prospects for this standard, noted that the company specialists are currently working at a thorough certification of this standard. That is, there will be support for WiMAX Mobile, albeit somehow later.

The AMD Puma platform in the version for corporate consumers meets the industry standards on safety and manageability with the Trusted Platform Module v1.2 module and the Enhanced Virus Protection module.

Finally, the spice of the presentation: an entirely new development – the interface to support for external performance devices, primarily, the graphics – the External Graphics Platform.

In fact, the ATI XGP technology is an external cable with the bus of the PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 standard in the PCIe ?8 configuration, which provides data exchange at speeds up to 4.0 Gbit/s in both directions. The specifications for cables and connectors for the ATI XGP technologies were developed jointly with Japan Aviation Electronics Industry, Limited.

The special cable ATI XGP also offers integrated functionality of the USB 2.0, which allows using it for imparting additional features to external devices. The cable, smartly named as the Lasso, may be as long as 2 meters.

Therefore, due to the ATI XGP technology the user can use a light and mobile notebook PC on the run, and while working at home or at an office desk plug in external graphics thus substantially raising the system performance.

Unfortunately, no solutions with the ATI XGP interface for the Lasso cable were demonstrated at the presentation of new models based on the AMD Puma platform during the presentation – such models are still under the development, but Fujitsu Siemens will soon release a notebook PC with the ATI XGP.

The new AMD Puma platform has been adopted by AMD partners, which is seen from at least twice as much number of developments as compared to the previous platform based on the CPU AMD Turion. Notebook PCs based on the new platform will be released by the leading OEM manufacturers, like Acer, ASUS, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP, MSI, NEC, Rover Computers, Toshiba, and others. The yesterday's announcement, apart from the reports of the above mentioned companies partnering with AMD, also included a demonstration of new notebook models built on the AMD Puma platform.

Some of these models have already been covered in our reviews and reports from Computex 2008. In the nearest time, we will certainly go on with the publications of novelties of that show, and will update you on the novelties based on the AMD Puma.

On the whole, a flood of notebooks built on the new mobile AMD platform to the retail stores is expected in the 3rd quarter of 2008. Hopefully, by that time the theoretical materials will be complemented with live test reviews on the first retail products based on the AMD Puma.