According to a report by the Digitimes AMD’s Kaveri APU (Richland’s successor) is due to be replaced by Carizo in 2015. AMD’s Kaveri is due between Q4 of 2012 to Q2 of 2013 and Carizo is due 2015.
“In the first half of 2014, AMD plans to release two more HSA-based APU series: Berlin for server products and Beema, to replace the existing Kabini APU series. In 2015, AMD will release Carizo and Nolan APU series to replace Kaveri and Beema, respectively, both featuring HSA”
Not much else is known about Carizo other than it will offer HSA/HUMA support, that is the ability for the system to have a unified memory architecture for cross-sharing between the GPU and CPU. In terms of the CPU side it is likely that Carizo will be a second version of Steamroller, or a Steamroller refresh, just like how Trinity was Piledriver and Richland was a Piledriver refresh. That said it is also possible Carizo could bring in the new Excavator CPU architecture. In terms of graphics we could see a refresh of the GCN architecture, in the form of GCN 2.0 which seems the most likely option as the HD 9000 series will last well into the end of 2014 and that also uses a variant of GCN (and AMD APUs are known for lagging 1-2 generations behind the desktop AMD GPU platform).
It is still unknown if Carizo will be the “fourth generation” of AMD APUs or just a mere refresh like Richland was. We will have to wait and see for more details. New information is expected next month.
Image courtesy of AMD via WCCFTech
Future plans of AMD looks good. Let see how it goes.