AMD Piledriver to use energy recovery technology

According to Cyclos Semiconductor AMD’s next generation of processors, known as Piledriver (apparently due out later on this year if speculation is true) will be using a revolutionary new technology (well revolutionary for the x86 processor market). AMD’s Piledriver processors will use RCM technology.

What is RCM Technology?

RCM technology is resonant clock mesh technology. Essentially what it allows a processor to do is reclaim kinetic energy which would otherwise be ‘wasted’ as heat and save power use. Cyclos semiconductor defines RCM as:

“The Cyclos RCM technology introduces inductive-capacitive oscillators in mesh-based high-performance clock distribution networks to provide frequency-locked, high-performance, high-precision timing while dissipating almost no power.”

What does this mean for AMD?

Your probably thinking this all sounds like a bit of a gimmick, another ‘new technology’ to help market some AMD products but this should actually bring something good to the table from AMD. RCM technology promises between 5-30% less power consumption which is going to be very important after the “power failures” of Bulldozer. The power saved either gets re-used or used to help boost the processor to higher clock speeds. And in good news for AMD this technology doesn’t require any drastic architecture changes as:

“the Cyclos RCM technology can be deployed by adding Cyclos drop-in IP and the Cyclos RCM Compiler to any standard synthesis-APR flow, resulting in high-performance semiconductors with dramatically reduced power consumption”

If this all goes ahead this will be the first time an AMD chip has ever used this technology and hopefully for PC enthusiasts it will mean at least lower power consumption on AMD processors if not slightly better performance as well.

Source: Cyclos