For several years now, the term APU has been used to define a type of processor that has been developed by AMD manufacturers. Processors that were made to this day. Then What is APU? In this article you will know all the data and differences with a CPU on this term.
APU processors.
What is APU?
The term APU, which stands for Accelerated Processing Unit, refers to a type of processor from AMD. Where it joins, just below IHS. Certain computing cores plus some graphics, however, they are manufactured with the function of being able to play with these, therefore, the concept of APUs comes from the general idea of AMD Fusion.
And it is possible to think that Intel's Core series processors could also be called APUs, because inside it also has cores for computing, and cores for graphic activities.
But, we have a feature that these processors do not have. Its structure does not have an HSA architecture. This is what allows the calculation cores to split their data directly with the graphics cores. And in this way the graphics cores are used to perform calculation operations.
Generally speaking, using an HSA can greatly simplify the number of steps that can be taken to complete an instruction in an APU. This makes the processor take advantage of all the resources offered by the system with greater capacity.
Low-end processor APU?
Clearly, one of the best advantages that AMD APUs have is the ability to use it as a mixed processor. In addition to having excellent performance if it can be said, however, really the compute cores used are not always the most powerful from AMD. But the union of these, together with its integrated graphics card, which allows creating high-content consumer equipment.
Although, due to this same fact of the computational cores, in addition to the use of graphics cores to which certain functions have been shortened. Including the fact that its iGPUs feature system RAM as VRAM. Thus, this processor is recognized as a low-end model.
And still, this type of APU processor will still be in the low-end space. They will also have their own audience, which is always looking for a simple system to update. But from the beginning, let them perform any computational operation and play with simple adjustments, in which it is not necessary to invest large amounts of money.
Memory system
One of the observations that AMD has within the APU revolution is the fact that it can generate fully consistent memory access between CPU and GPU. What can be taken in that the GPU can read what the GPU writes without the ability to read what the CPU writes without the use of a DMA drive for this and vice versa. This can be achieved from Carrizo where drives were added that allow consistency of cache data on the GPU with CPU space.
Differences between an APU and a SoC
Even though the APU is a brand used exclusively by AMD, it is actually used as a way to differentiate a full SoC from an APU. What do we mean by full SoC? They are those that have inside a chipset for I / O peripherals. Usually in a reduced way compared to that of the motherboard.
If you liked this article, we invite you to see more like this on our website on Computing as it can be What are storage devices? On the other hand, we leave you the following video so that you know a little more about this type of processor and enjoy all the data.