DeKaveri we heard
We have learned yet another thing about AMD in 2015. The publicly discussed the Carrizo APU that is coming to All-in-Ones and notebooks in the second half of 2015, but many punters have been wondering what is happening on the desktop front.
A new processor, called Kaveri refresh, is (un)surprisingly a 28nm refresh of Kaveri. It will probably hit some higher speeds, but we don’t expect any miracles when it comes to performance. This part will have a tough time fighting Intel’s recent Core i5, Core i3 Haswell refresh desktop offerings, but it helps that Broadwell won’t be making its way to desktop. Intel still plans Skylake desktop parts before the end of the year, which will put more pressure on AMD’s 28 nm part.
AMD will play the price card, as the company will offer really affordable prices on Kaveri refresh processors. Since we already wrote that 20nm won’t happen for GPUs, you can draw your own conclusions, as it seems 20nm is not viable for high performance CPUs either. AMD will have Nolan in 20nm, but this is a low TDP part that kind of makes sense to manufacture in 20nm and probably fights Intel SoCs, as well as Tegra X1 and Snapdragon 810 in terms of performance.
The 50+ Watt parts won’t be coming in 20nm and AMD will have to wait for 14nm FinFET technology from GlobalFoundries and Samsung, with a 2016 launch timeframe.
