After implementing resonant clock mesh technology power consumption reduced in AMD CPUs

[KanthaBEN]

Hey hello friends, here I have got an interesting thread for you all. Recently few days ago I read an article of Cyclos Semiconductor Inc. Company. There they mentioned that AMD have now Realized and noticed that there is a Significant Reduction in Power Consumption after the Implementing Cyclos Resonant Clock Mesh Technology. Now I am not sure whether thing is 10% fact or not but seems like it’s a very much interesting topic to be discussed and therefore I opened a thread, so please have your views and opinions on it. Let’s see how many of you all feel what with thing implementation.

[Arun K]

The company called Micro Devices Inc. has currently gained the first commercial implementation of resonant clock mesh technology that was licensed by Cyclos Semiconductor Inc. AMD’s 4+ GHz x86-64 core have utilized the resonant clocking in order to just reduce the clock distribution power. They tried to reduce up to 24% while maintaining the low clock-skew target which was required by high-performance processors. Let me tell you that the Piledriver actually represents the first volume production enabled implementation of this technology i.e. resonant clock mesh technology.

[raghini]

Ok, in your post the only thing I have noticed is the phrase “up to 24%”. In the same article I guess, it was also mentioned that the Cyclos inductors and clock control circuits however recycles the clock power. This helps us in instead of wasting them on every single clock cycle like in the clock tree implementation which later on however results in the reduction of the IC power. It reduces the total IC power consumption of up to 10%.
If I have not mistaken the 24% power reduction is nothing but it is in the clock distribution network on the processor. This is itself going to stand for approximate 20% of the complete power consumption on the modern CPU design. All this will result in overall power utility or saving in the 5% region for the complete CPU which according to me is not so bad.

[Pamina]

I am sure that the Piledriver chips, Trinity APUs etc are going to definitely clock at an extreme level. This technical implementation has made AMD make it into ultra thin with the Trinity 17w APU. I hope that Piledriver won’t be what exactly Bulldozer was.

[Skullnit]

Now I feel that AMD have taken a right step at the right direction which is currently making me quite satisfying and happier about the Piledriver. You know for me power consumption was one of the most important and the biggest gripes with the bulldozer, there were other things too which were very much disappointing like IPC. But that really didn’t disappoint me until I clocked them to 4.5GHz+ in order to help myself make up for the low IPC without the chips having gobs of power.

[LavinaD]

Now this would be very interesting from AMD side, yeah I would be one of those people who will be very much excited to see how and what kind of overclocking option will be offered by AMD having this changes implemented in the processor. Generally the tree with the traditional clock uses multipliers in order to gain the desired clock frequency this is essentially a direct-drive LRC circuit.
Also if you see the capacitance is always kept fixed by the clock mesh whereas the inductance differs in order to obtain the required frequency. So therefore you need to select a different inductance value in order to make every change in the clock frequency. Now its on them, how much different values they actually put up in the design.

[crook]

I would really wish that all this news is true as now I have been trying a Trinity APU laptop upgrade over my Sandy Bridge i3 and maybe even offloading my 955 desktop and building a Trinity-powered desktop that depends on how well the L3-less chip performs in some of the desktop applications. I really do have lot of faith on AMD APUs and I surely believe that they can deliver over there; I am just expecting something very much smaller cheaper and efficient.

[Marquise]

Initially when I read about all this thing, I was literally smiling and laughing but somewhere I feel that there is a remote possibility that the news is more than a fictitious rumor, especially with the statement that stated if Trinity is using this new clock topology then there is no longer a 'multiplier' to something usual. And the closest analog would be the circuit induction and you would definitely be reducing it in order to just increase the frequency.

[Calvert]

Everything is fine and quite satisfying but it would be more interesting to see whether this thing has more or less a positive or negative effect on overclocking.

Let me tell you that this Piledriver has to be the most sensible choice once the yield goes up to the point where the AMD can simply change the price as per their requirement and necessity. I am not at all sure why exact a company or a manufacturer would simply attest to back out of such a high end race that simply changes the high end prices. Currently if you see the pricing structure is fully messed up.