For quite some time, video cards remained an independent component of a personal computer. But the progress of semiconductor electronics developed rapidly, which led to a decrease in the physical dimensions of microcircuits with an increasing number of electronic components in them. Thus, combining several components into one device remained only a matter of time. Today we’ll look at how the AMD Radeon R2 Graphics came about and what its characteristics are.
The history of the first APUs
The pioneer in combining the video core and the processor part on one substrate is Intel, which in 2009 introduced Intel Atom processors based on the energy-efficient Pine Trail core - the first CPUs with video accelerators. Truth? the characteristics of the integrated video core were rather modest and did not allow them to be used with sufficient comfort even for the simplest games.
AMD, which absorbed ATI Technology in 2006, gained access to the most advanced video accelerator technology of the time. The first-born in combining the CPU and GPU for this company were the E-series processors for low-cost systems and netbooks, the peak of popularity of which came at that time. Although the characteristics of these processors could not boast of record performance, they brought a new concept to the industry - APU (Accelerated Processing Unit), the combination of the main parts of the computer in one chip.
AMD Radeon R2 Graphics. Characteristics
In the spring of 2014, AMD introduced the continuation of the line of energy-efficient APUs, the new Beema family processors for low-cost and ultra-light laptops and Mullins designed for portable devices, mainly tablets.
This was already the third generation of APUs with a more powerful processor and video part, with even lower power consumption. They used a new generation of GCN (Graphic Core Next) graphics, as well as improved the power system, which allowed to increase the operating frequencies of the integrated video cores. The new graphics subsystem is called AMD Radeon R2 Graphics, the characteristics of which:
- Beema - 128 shader processors, the frequency of the graphic core R2 350-500 MHz.
- Mullins - 128 shader processors, frequency of the graphic core R2 300 MHz.
In total, 4 models of processors from the Beema family were presented, 2 of them with an AMD Radeon R2 Graphics video card: characteristics of the E2-6110 and E1-6010. And also 3 models of the Mullins family, in one of which there was a graphics subsystem AMD Radeon r2 Graphics, namely the E1 micro-6200T.
Beema-Mullins Architecture: Video Subsystem
The graphics core of the new APUs contains 2 CUs (Compute Units), in total consisting of 128 ALUs based on the previous GCN architecture. This scheme is valid for all models of the Beema \ Mullins line, and the division of graphic subsystems into R2-R4 and R6 depends only on the clock frequency of the GPU.
Compared with the previous generation APU, it was possible to significantly reduce the energy consumption of chips. Now it lies in the range of 10-15 W, which is 40-50% less than the solutions offered by Intel, and this is at a higher performance AMD Radeon R2 Graphics. The characteristics of the graphics core of the youngest representatives in the line of new APUs are at the level of mid-range products from Intel.
findings
The new APUs with the AMD Radeon TM R2 Graphics video core, the characteristics of which allow us to say with confidence that AMD managed to squeeze Intel's monopoly in the market of inexpensive and ultra-light laptops and tablets. This is especially true of the APUs of the Mullins line, which have characteristics that allow them to be used in productive tablets, while not bringing the physical dimensions of the device to suit technical specifications.
Currently, AMD continues to improve both the architecture in the new APUs and increase the performance of the graphics subsystem. In 2016, the 7th generation of processors in this line was released, in which the youngest representatives of AMD Radeon R2 Graphics got 56% faster performance than the latest Intel processors with an integrated HD4000 video core. Thus, it is quite possible for a modern user to choose a device with the necessary performance.