AMD confirms that it is working on consumer CPUs with a hybrid architecture. They often have greater performance and lower efficiency scores. The company wants to decide for each application when to increase the number of cores, and when to choose a hybrid design.
So says AMDs Chief technical officer Mark Papermaster in an interview With Tom’s Hardware. He states that increasing the number of cores “is no longer the only way to meet customer demands.” For example, in some cases, customers want the same amount of cores but more acceleration, he claims.
Papermaster continues: “But you also see variation in the cores themselves, with performance cores mixed with efficiency cores mixed with acceleration. So now we’re not only getting differences in core density, we’re also getting differences in the type of core and how the cores are made.” When asked if we can expect a hybrid architecture in consumer processors, Paperman replied, “Absolutely. You’re already seeing that, and it’s only going to increase.” He says the Ryzen 7040 CPUs are an early example of a hybrid architecture, as these processors include integrated AI overclocking.
In March, leaked documents had already spread rumors that AMD was working on APUs in Phoenix with a hybrid architecture. In addition, two different types of cores will be supported: Performance and Efficiency. Both types of cores will have a different feature set. Performance cores do the heavy lifting, while smaller cores handle back-end operations to increase overall efficiency.
With the arrival of a hybrid architecture, AMD is following suit against rival Intel. The latter introduced its Alder Lake processors in 2021, which also feature performance and efficiency cores. Intel’s more efficient e-cores take up less chip space and consume less power than the more powerful P-cores. Intel’s efficiency cores also lack support for hyper-threading.
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