AMD Zen APU with Insane Memory Bandwidth Spotted

Ever since Llano launched back in 2011, AMD has been pushing their APUs as being the next big thing. Combining a powerful CPU and GPU on one die, the APU allows even budget users to enjoy strong graphics to play games or use it for compute. In 2016, AMD is looking to combine their new Zen CPU architecture with their Polaris based graphics and it looks like something revolutionary will happen. According to a leaked paper, AMD may be planning a multi-core Zen APU coupled with a massive iGPU and an HBM cache with 128GB/s of bandwidth

For AMD, APUs have stayed strong even as their CPU line faltered, with their iGPU beating out Intel solutions. This changed though with Intel’s Iris Pro graphics that came with an eDRAM cache, with the high-speed cache helping put Intel neck and neck with AMD’s top APUs. The only bright side for AMD is that Intel’s chips have cost significantly more than AMD’s offerings. With the launch of a competitive CPU architecture in Zen, a new GPU architecture in Polaris and a large HBM cache, AMD has a chance to surge past Intel in this critical segment.

At a peak of 128GB/s, the HBM cache performs similarly to that of the memory of graphics cards like the GTX 760 and 960. If AMD adds in a high-performance iGPU, the APU has the chance to match or even exceed $150 graphics cards. With this APU, AMD is truly bringing gaming to the masses. Maybe in 2016, we may finally see AMD APUs powering Apple products.