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unaveragejoe on 21 February 2013
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Aielyn said:
RazorDragon said:
unaveragejoe said:
Does anyone think and AMD HSA technology might be used in the GPU?


Not a possibility, as the MCM with the GPU and CPU is not an APU because of the two separate dies. APUs, including ones with HSA technology, have the GPU and CPU on the same die, which isn't the case on Wii U.

I think you've misunderstood the question.

It's not "what if the GPU has HSA technology in how it works with the CPU?" It's "what if the GPU also contains more CPU circuitry, and thus is closer to being an APU?"

After all, we've heard repeatedly that the GPU in the Wii U is meant to basically be a GPGPU, and my understanding is that AMD's HSA technology is meant to be their equivalent of a GPGPU, just in the form of an APU. It might explain why we've got so much conflicting information. I even see what I think is a plausible location for it - feature D on the annotated die image. Mind you, I'm no expert - I'm just looking for similarities between Llano and the Wii U CPU and GPU dies. There are some structures in D that resemble structures in the CPU part of Llano (the bottom part of this image), and aren't all that dissimilar to the right side of the CPU (this image), where the actual CPU components are (the left side has the memory). And if you compare the size of D with the size of the CPU cores (you can recognise them based on the fact that there are three cores, and the middle one has four times the cache), it actually comes out damn close.

It doesn't necessarily have to have any physical CPU core - just some of the logic, etc.



Wow I had not thought of that. My thinking was on the possibility of a makeshift APU maybe with HSA technology. Because Nintendo needed IBM to make the CPU for backwards compatibility I knew the typical AMD APU would not work. That is an interesting thought though to have a CPU in addition to an APU on the MCM.