AMD is planning to achieve 25x improvement in the energy efficiency of its Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) by 2020.
During 2008 to 2014, AMD improved the typical use energy efficiency of its products more than 10x.
The increase in energy efficiency will assist the rapid growth in devices. Recent statistics say 3 billion personal computers use more than 1 percent of all energy consumed annually, and 30 million computer servers use an additional 1.5 percent of all electricity consumed at an annual cost of $14 billion to $18 billion.
“Creating differentiated low-power products is a key element of our business strategy, with an attending relentless focus on energy efficiency,” said AMD Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster during a keynote at the China International Software and Information Service Fair (CISIS) conference in Dalian, China.
AMD will achieve the new milestone through APU architectural enhancements and intelligent power efficient techniques.
The company said this would be achieved through both performance gains and rapid reductions in the typical-use power of processors. Besides increased performance, the efficiency gains help to extend battery life, enable development of smaller and less material intensive devices, and limit the overall environmental impact of increased numbers of computing devices.
Jonathan Koomey, research fellow at the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University, said: “AMD’s focus on improving typical power efficiency will likely yield significant consumer benefits substantially improving real-world battery life and performance for mobile devices.”
AMD expects its energy efficiency achievements to outpace the historical efficiency trend predicted by Moore’s law by at least 70 percent between 2014 and 2020.
