Interview: AMD's Chief Architect Of Gaming 'Frank Azor' On Ryzen 4000 Series Mobility CPUs, Smart Shift And The 'AMD Advantage'

Interview: AMD'due south Chief Architect Of Gaming 'Frank Azor' On Ryzen 4000 Series Mobility CPUs, Smart Shift And The 'AMD Advantage'

AMD'southward Frank Azor, Master Builder of Gaming Solutions.

Like all of the PC triumvirate, AMD has an appetite for a star-studded cast. Frank Azor, the co-founder of Alienware, is the most recent member of AMD'due south loftier-powered roster and joined the company back in June 2019. He has been working as the Principal Architect of Gaming Solutions ever since and considering we were the first publication to talk nearly Frank moving from Alienware (Dell) to AMD, this is an interview we wanted to do for a long time. In this short interview, we talk well-nigh what he has been working on for the past couple of months: Ryzen 4000 series mobility processors, AMD Smart Shift, and something Frank calls the "AMD Advantage".

Interview: Frank Azor talks about the 'AMD Advantage'

Frank had been with Alienware, Dell Inc. for most 25 years before joining AMD and brought with him a wealth of experience, knowledge, and industry contacts. Because AMD is in such a transformative state right at present, Frank would have proven to be invaluable equally the visitor chased design wins for its impressive Renoir lineup (the codename for AMD's Ryzen 4000 mobility serial). It seems similar aught can end AMD right at present, and with industry veterans like Frank onboard, it'south easy to see why.

Without any further ado, let's become started with the interview:

Q: And so how has your fourth dimension been at AMD so far?

A: Nearly a year in, I tin say AMD has truly provided me a unique opportunity to make an touch on the gaming industry. I have big ideas that tin can only be executed by a visitor that owns an end-to-finish ecosystem of intellectual holding beyond CPUs, GPUs, APUs, Chipsets and software. AMD is the only visitor that has this portfolio of high-operation IP today with key blueprint wins beyond every segment of gaming hardware including PCs, consoles, cloud and mobile; I phone call this the "AMD Advantage." The team at AMD is open to the opportunities I see for the industry and the do good they will bring to gamers and they are enabling me to evangelize on this vision. Information technology's been a really exciting experience then far filled with new friends, opportunities and challenges and we are making incredible progress.

Q: And then, I know you take been winning a lot of hearts with the Renoir launch, what with the huge battery life increase it brings to laptops and the sheer performance. What would you lot say is your vision for Renoir and its successors?

A: The new 4000 Serial Mobile Processors are just awesome! They've brought unprecedented performance to mobile CPUs along with significant design enhancements and incredible ability efficiency. The CPU design and development teams under AMD leadership have washed a really impressive job at bringing leaps and bounds innovation to united states. We are not taking our foot off the gas pedal, AMD engineers are super-aggressive and will proceed to innovate in the mobile calculating space at a rapid pace.

Q: I know it's already doing dandy, simply how do you see Renoir competing in terms of blueprint wins against offerings from your competitors? And for that matter how has the response been like from OEMs and ODMs?

A: We are expanding our OEM product portfolio and on rail to launch more than than 100 Ryzen Mobile designs in 2020. We are too expecting to double our gaming-specific notebook launches compared to 2019. With systems coming from nigh major OEMs, including Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and MSI, I think it is safe to say that our OEM partners are excited virtually the operation and ability efficiency of the Ryzen 4000 Series Mobile Processor family.

Frank here not just confirms that AMD is on rail to launch more than 100 Ryzen mobile designs in 2020 but also reveals that the company is going to be doubling their gaming-specific notebook launches equally compared to 2019. With most major OEMs already on board for the 'AMD Advantage', and considering the competitive price/perf positioning compared to Intel parts; it's non surprising that the company wants to double downward on OEM expansion. Renoir has also managed to offer generational leaps in battery life compared to the past generation, on acme of everything else. Mobility constitutes a large chunk of acquirement for a chip-designer like AMD and can usually be very reliable - unlike the DIY PC market.

Q: I know you guys went with the Vega IP in the iGPU for Renoir as opposed to the newer Navi IP and it makes a lot more sense from an economical point of view (especially considering AMD's vision to reduce the price to gamers) but was there any other reason backside not picking Navi/RDNA IP right now?

A: When nosotros locked the design for Ryzen 4000 Series Processors, our RDNA GPU architecture was not yet gear up to be integrated into an SoC. Instead, we chose to port the Vega architecture to 7nm and make additional power & performance optimizations. The net result was upwards to 32% better performance than our previous-generation graphics even though we are only using 8 graphics cores vs. 10 graphics cores on the previous generation. It is surprising to see, simply gaming on a Ryzen 4000 processor powered system is really possible at a reasonable frame rate and resolution on many games peculiarly some of the about pop ones beingness played today.

And there yous accept it, folks, the answer to your question as to why AMD chose to go with Vega IP instead of an RDNA-based one. This besides clarifies that Vega 7nm Enhanced is essentially a port of the original Vega compages along with some improvements. That said, a 32% increase in operation while reducing the overall core count is very impressive and tin be credited largely to AMD's aggressive arroyo with bleeding-border nodes. 7nm is showing its power hither and for all practical purposes, Vega Enhanced is very much an independent GPU IP in its own right.

Q: How would you rate the efficiency of the Renoir Zen 2 package vs the normal desktop counterparts?

A: Our mobile designs are optimized with different thermal levels required for laptop designs which are commonly 15, 35 and 45 watts along with additional system-level optimizations that accept resulted in our nigh efficient processors all the same. Desktop processors have more thermal headroom to work within typically 65 and 95 watts if non higher so we become to turn everything up to xi on those which tin exist a lot of fun.

Q: How much of a deviation (in wide terms) does smart shift make to the performance and power efficiency of Renoir?

A: Our SmartShift technology allows users to harness the combined ability of our Ryzen 4000 Mobile Processors, Radeon Graphics, and the latest AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 edition together to deliver an improved computing experience. With SmartShift we can automatically shift power between the Ryzen processor and Radeon graphics as needed enabling the CPU to perform faster during CPU intensive workloads and inversely the graphics chip during graphics intensive workloads. We do this seamlessly to the operating organisation and via the Infinity Fabric architecture in real-fourth dimension and within 2ms of whatever the workload demands. As for how much of a difference information technology makes, we have seen up to a 14 per centum performance increment with AMD SmartShift but information technology varies from app to app/game to game.

This is the start time (I believe) we have seen an bodily number on just how fast AMD'southward SmartShift is. With a response time of under 2 ms, this would make the dynamic system incredibly responsive to pretty much all scenarios and would experience real-time for all practical applications. Frank also mentioned that they take seen upward to a 14% increase, on average, from Smartshift in apps, which should set the upper limit of what users can expect from the feature (although this has been covered before and is not new information). 14% off the dorsum of dynamic power shifting is a huge performance gain that an AMD customer is essentially getting for free and i that I am sure will be very welcome for gamers on the motility.

Frank Azor, AMD at CES in Las Vegas, Nevada, Monday, Jan half-dozen, 2020.

Q: Is SmartShift 100% automated or can its bias (towards CPU/GPU) be user-defined?

A: It is automatic and can't exist turned-off just you lot can meet it in activity inside our Adrenalin software. In there y'all can see it in real-time shifting power and performance between the CPU and graphics processor.

Q: I know the current implementation of SmartShift requires a singular power source (and packet?) for both the CPU and GPU merely are there any plans to bring SmartShift to desktop platforms or is this a mobile-but solution? I.e. could users expect the future Renoir Desktop APU series to utilize some sort of smart shift?

A: I can't comment on what may or may non be in our future roadmap, however, we are actively working with OEM partners on helping them improve their gaming systems and experiences. SmartShift, as you lot know information technology today, is merely the commencement of a bunch of awesome technologies only possible with the combination of an AMD CPU, AMD GPU and our AMD software that we accept in the works and that will accelerate the PC gaming experience significantly in the coming years. Implementing SmartShift requires a small prepare of additional requirements that we piece of work hand in hand with our partners to enable including the correct components, firmware design, and thermal designs.

Q: The SmartShift on the PS5 tin can aid boost the GPU all the mode upwardly to 2.23 GHz, is this a behavior gamers can look from laptop implementations too?

A: Inorthward line with the previous question higher up, nosotros have seen up to a 14 percent performance increase with AMD SmartShift on the Dell G5 SE xv. Any additional PlayStation 5 questions should be directed toward Sony.

~~Oh well, you tin can't blame a guy for trying.~~ Frank's answer seems to indicate that you will likely not be seeing the same level of SmartShift as PS5 claims on the laptop implementations (every bit we already know the clocks of existing implementations). Assuming PS5's claims of 2.23 GHz are truthful, this could be because of a number of unrelated reasons, including but not limited to the architecture and the highly centralized power pattern of the panel - not to mention that it features a vastly more powerful AMD GPU that is tuned for sheer performance and likely highly binned.

Q: What is your favorite feature of Renoir?

A: The battery life and performance are just incredible. I've strived my unabridged career to bring desktop performance into a portable/mobile figurer like a laptop and The Ryzen 4000 series mobile processors have made it possible in form factors that are practical to bear around with you lot all-day.

I must say I absolutely concord here, the bombardment life to performance ratio of Renoir-based laptops seems to be the defining feature of the series and a major selling point for power users like me.

Q: What is your favorite feature/utilise-example for SmartShift in laptops?

A: SmartShift is like a free upgrade for your CPU and Graphics carte du jour to the next higher tier. Yous get a performance heave on CPU and graphics intensive workloads where it would toll y'all significant amount of dollars more to equip that performance uplift individually. This is merely possible because the AMD Reward in that nosotros are the merely PC technology provider that has the consummate high-performance ecosystem across CPUs, GPUs and software. How awesome is that? It's been a long time since nosotros've seen cross-component innovation like that for consumers and gamers exterior of console architectures. This is disruptive stuff and it's only the beginning of what's possible.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to share with u.s.?

A: AMD has a history of innovating in mobile computing; from introducing the first APUs, integrating CPU and GPU, in 2011 to launching the first x86 7nm mobile SoC this year. 2020 is an important year for us with our launch of the Ryzen 4000 Series Mobile processors and now with the Dell G5 15 SE beingness the first to have the Radeon RX 5600M integrated with SmartShift. This volition be the fastest laptop featuring the RDNA compages when information technology becomes available and volition be offered at a disruptively compelling price bespeak. We have never had such a solid selection of potent laptop solutions like we have today and I retrieve people are going to be very excited to run across and then many compelling options coming to market for them to cull from..

Frank's coined term of 'AMD Reward' is something that we have already begun to witness to a large extent. AMD has presence in pretty much all parts of the ecosystem; from CPUs to GPUs to APUs. When all of the products in a consumer device are designed by AMD, they can create some wonderful synergy that would commonly not be possible between chips of different IHVs. This is something that as of this moment, neither Intel nor NVIDIA can reproduce - although that might change a couple of years later when Intel has its GPU side up and running.

Marrying Frank's industry expertise with AMD's technical skills seems to be a recipe for success and all in all, this was a wonderful conversation. We wish him the very best of luck at AMD.