• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.

AMD Files Patent for its Own big.LITTLE Tech - Processor Clusters

btarunr

Editor & Senior Moderator
Staff member
Joined
Oct 9, 2007
Messages
46,274 (7.69/day)
Location
Hyderabad, India
System Name RBMK-1000
Processor AMD Ryzen 7 5700G
Motherboard ASUS ROG Strix B450-E Gaming
Cooling DeepCool Gammax L240 V2
Memory 2x 8GB G.Skill Sniper X
Video Card(s) Palit GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER GameRock
Storage Western Digital Black NVMe 512GB
Display(s) BenQ 1440p 60 Hz 27-inch
Case Corsair Carbide 100R
Audio Device(s) ASUS SupremeFX S1220A
Power Supply Cooler Master MWE Gold 650W
Mouse ASUS ROG Strix Impact
Keyboard Gamdias Hermes E2
Software Windows 11 Pro
In a sign of AMD's answer to Intel Hybrid tech being quite far away from implementation in a product, the company filed patents to a rival/similar technology only as recently as June 30, 2020, with the patent application being dug up by Underfox. The patent calls for a multi-core processor topology with two kinds of CPU cores - a "high-feature" core (big core), and a "low-feature" one (small core).

Here's where AMD's design is different: it calls for closely integrated groups of the two kinds of cores (one big core, and one small core), called "Processor Clusters." The dedicated L1 caches of the big and small cores in each group shadow data, while an L2 cache is shared between the two cores. Several such big+small Processor Clusters sit across a die, sharing the chip's last-level cache (L3 cache). This is unlike Intel's Hybrid design, where the big and small cores are spread apart on the die, with little cache coherency (Lakefield die-shot by le Comptoir du Hardware below). The patent also details the workflow of how the processor reconciles the ISA differences between the two core types.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site
 
Joined
Mar 21, 2016
Messages
2,194 (0.75/day)
So I guess more trivial tasks will be offloaded, but when higher feature requirements are met it detects it and switches to the more robust higher feature larger chip.
 
Joined
Sep 26, 2006
Messages
463 (0.07/day)
Whilst my understanding is rudimentary at best, this seems like a pretty clever way to lower latency when switching from high/low feature cores.
 
Joined
Jan 8, 2017
Messages
8,860 (3.36/day)
System Name Good enough
Processor AMD Ryzen R9 7900 - Alphacool Eisblock XPX Aurora Edge
Motherboard ASRock B650 Pro RS
Cooling 2x 360mm NexXxoS ST30 X-Flow, 1x 360mm NexXxoS ST30, 1x 240mm NexXxoS ST30
Memory 32GB - FURY Beast RGB 5600 Mhz
Video Card(s) Sapphire RX 7900 XT - Alphacool Eisblock Aurora
Storage 1x Kingston KC3000 1TB 1x Kingston A2000 1TB, 1x Samsung 850 EVO 250GB , 1x Samsung 860 EVO 500GB
Display(s) LG UltraGear 32GN650-B + 4K Samsung TV
Case Phanteks NV7
Power Supply GPS-750C
I hope we wont see these in desktops, it's not their place.
 
Joined
Feb 11, 2009
Messages
5,389 (0.98/day)
System Name Cyberline
Processor Intel Core i7 2600k -> 12600k
Motherboard Asus P8P67 LE Rev 3.0 -> Gigabyte Z690 Auros Elite DDR4
Cooling Tuniq Tower 120 -> Custom Watercoolingloop
Memory Corsair (4x2) 8gb 1600mhz -> Crucial (8x2) 16gb 3600mhz
Video Card(s) AMD RX480 -> ... nope still the same :'(
Storage Samsung 750 Evo 250gb SSD + WD 1tb x 2 + WD 2tb -> 2tb MVMe SSD
Display(s) Philips 32inch LPF5605H (television) -> Dell S3220DGF
Case antec 600 -> Thermaltake Tenor HTCP case
Audio Device(s) Focusrite 2i4 (USB)
Power Supply Seasonic 620watt 80+ Platinum
Mouse Elecom EX-G
Keyboard Rapoo V700
Software Windows 10 Pro 64bit
I hope we wont see these in desktops, it's not their place.

but of an odd remark, how do you know so well what the future holds and what place this tech does and doesnt have?
 
Joined
Jan 8, 2017
Messages
8,860 (3.36/day)
System Name Good enough
Processor AMD Ryzen R9 7900 - Alphacool Eisblock XPX Aurora Edge
Motherboard ASRock B650 Pro RS
Cooling 2x 360mm NexXxoS ST30 X-Flow, 1x 360mm NexXxoS ST30, 1x 240mm NexXxoS ST30
Memory 32GB - FURY Beast RGB 5600 Mhz
Video Card(s) Sapphire RX 7900 XT - Alphacool Eisblock Aurora
Storage 1x Kingston KC3000 1TB 1x Kingston A2000 1TB, 1x Samsung 850 EVO 250GB , 1x Samsung 860 EVO 500GB
Display(s) LG UltraGear 32GN650-B + 4K Samsung TV
Case Phanteks NV7
Power Supply GPS-750C
how do you know so well what the future holds and what place this tech does and doesnt have?

You only need a general idea of what these things are good for, you don't have to know what the future holds. big.LITTLE is an extreme power saving measure that's unneeded in desktops.
 
Joined
Oct 12, 2019
Messages
128 (0.08/day)
You only need a general idea of what these things are good for, you don't have to know what the future holds. big.LITTLE is an extreme power saving measure that's unneeded in desktops.

General ideas about CPU designs are basically the only kind I have :)...

However, Intel plans to use the same design on desktops. Would there be some advantages if ALL cores worked at the same time, or say both in pair (since it's here described as such), or it's exclusively either/or situation?

Through my general idea, having 2 cores produced to work in two 'flavours' (because we do have frequency lowering and boosts and whatnot for energy efficient already) seems unreasonable. They 'look' like more expensive to design and occupy more place for nothing.

Some core features/space 'look' as needed to be present on all cores, which seems wasteful. Or perhaps yield for small ones is such good and production cheap that it comes to some calculation?

Now, this whole post is because the fact that both Intel/AMD are talking (or even starting production) about this approach - well, I know very little about pricing or advantages of this 'innovation' - only about ARM cores, where it's kinda obvious - or is it, after all?

I would like to know why, that's all - can anyone who understands this write some short Pros/Cons or something. It will be appreciated...
 
Joined
Jan 11, 2005
Messages
1,491 (0.21/day)
Location
66 feet from the ground
System Name 2nd AMD puppy
Processor FX-8350 vishera
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3
Cooling Cooler Master Hyper TX2
Memory 16 Gb DDR3:8GB Kingston HyperX Beast + 8Gb G.Skill Sniper(by courtesy of tabascosauz &TPU)
Video Card(s) Sapphire RX 580 Nitro+;1450/2000 Mhz
Storage SSD :840 pro 128 Gb;Iridium pro 240Gb ; HDD 2xWD-1Tb
Display(s) Benq XL2730Z 144 Hz freesync
Case NZXT 820 PHANTOM
Audio Device(s) Audigy SE with Logitech Z-5500
Power Supply Riotoro Enigma G2 850W
Mouse Razer copperhead / Gamdias zeus (by courtesy of sneekypeet & TPU)
Keyboard MS Sidewinder x4
Software win10 64bit ltsc
Benchmark Scores irrelevant for me
as the trend is going greener it will have a place in desktop also, office pc's +nuc+....
 
Joined
Jul 21, 2016
Messages
137 (0.05/day)
Processor AMD Ryzen 5 5600
Motherboard MSI B450 Tomahawk
Cooling Alpenföhn Brocken 3 140mm
Memory Patriot Viper 4 - DDR4 3400 MHz 2x8 GB
Video Card(s) Radeon RX460 2 GB
Storage Samsung 970 EVO PLUS 500, Samsung 860 500 GB, 2x Western Digital RED 4 TB
Display(s) Dell UltraSharp U2312HM
Case be quiet! Pure Base 500 + Noiseblocker NB-eLoop B12 + 2x ARCTIC P14
Audio Device(s) Creative Sound Blaster ZxR,
Power Supply Seasonic Focus GX-650
Mouse Logitech G305
Keyboard Lenovo USB
I'm wondering if lets say the weaker 2 or 4 cores c/would be used only for the OS and its or (user installed) backround processes. Or what else thoose slower cores could be used for?
 
Joined
Jun 10, 2014
Messages
2,889 (0.81/day)
Processor AMD Ryzen 9 5900X ||| Intel Core i7-3930K
Motherboard ASUS ProArt B550-CREATOR ||| Asus P9X79 WS
Cooling Noctua NH-U14S ||| Be Quiet Pure Rock
Memory Crucial 2 x 16 GB 3200 MHz ||| Corsair 8 x 8 GB 1333 MHz
Video Card(s) MSI GTX 1060 3GB ||| MSI GTX 680 4GB
Storage Samsung 970 PRO 512 GB + 1 TB ||| Intel 545s 512 GB + 256 GB
Display(s) Asus ROG Swift PG278QR 27" ||| Eizo EV2416W 24"
Case Fractal Design Define 7 XL x 2
Audio Device(s) Cambridge Audio DacMagic Plus
Power Supply Seasonic Focus PX-850 x 2
Mouse Razer Abyssus
Keyboard CM Storm QuickFire XT
Software Ubuntu
I'm not a fan of the hybrid approach to begin with, particularly because it increases the complexity of OS scheduling and probably microarchitecture specific code in the OS kernel. It also increases the chance of an OS to behave erratically.

But having a big and a little core share L2 cache is a bad idea. This will make the cache less efficient and possibly increase the cache latency. It will also make it harder for the scheduler to predict the performance. I certainly hope a such design (if it is realized at all) is limited to low power laptops and APUs.

I'm wondering if lets say the weaker 2 or 4 cores c/would be used only for the OS and its or (user installed) backround processes. Or what else thoose slower cores could be used for?
Just open task manager and look at all the threads in there, there may be thousands of threads tied to background processes, drivers, services etc.
 
Joined
Sep 17, 2014
Messages
20,774 (5.97/day)
Location
The Washing Machine
Processor i7 8700k 4.6Ghz @ 1.24V
Motherboard AsRock Fatal1ty K6 Z370
Cooling beQuiet! Dark Rock Pro 3
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200/C16
Video Card(s) ASRock RX7900XT Phantom Gaming
Storage Samsung 850 EVO 1TB + Samsung 830 256GB + Crucial BX100 250GB + Toshiba 1TB HDD
Display(s) Gigabyte G34QWC (3440x1440)
Case Fractal Design Define R5
Audio Device(s) Harman Kardon AVR137 + 2.1
Power Supply EVGA Supernova G2 750W
Mouse XTRFY M42
Keyboard Lenovo Thinkpad Trackpoint II
Software W10 x64
You only need a general idea of what these things are good for, you don't have to know what the future holds. big.LITTLE is an extreme power saving measure that's unneeded in desktops.

Depends. There is still a power budget and there is heat/density issue at play. If those fat cats get a chance to cool down a little bit that could benefit the overall performance as well. Also keep in mind that for x86 its really all about the last five percent and even that is being very generous. Steps forward will require out of the box designs.

I still think its an interesting route, and I also think AMD has a better (again) plan when it comes to yields and product stacks. The mess of Intel Alder Lake core configurations... holy crap. This however, looks sensible. It is likely you also want the better small cores with the better big cores and they're still sticking to chiplets this way.

In some way this also reminds of Bulldozer/Piledriver, except now the bottleneck is just the large core perf. So yes, we could think 'why bother' and I get that, part of me does it too. But when you take Intel's bursty CPU management the idea suddenly isn't so strange. And AMD is fast approaching that as well, even if their boost is more intelligent and bases are higher, they still do get warm on a tiny surface area.
 
Joined
Mar 21, 2016
Messages
2,194 (0.75/day)
It'll be interesting to see if they can squeeze one of these chips in with the I/O hub to pretty much just add to their current chip designs w/o really sacrificing anything in the process and where a larger chip wouldn't have worked and fit, but a smaller one could. Also it'll be interesting to see how precision boost works in tandem with this.

Depends. There is still a power budget and there is heat/density issue at play. If those fat cats get a chance to cool down a little bit that could benefit the overall performance as well. Also keep in mind that for x86 its really all about the last five percent and even that is being very generous. Steps forward will require out of the box designs.

I still think its an interesting route, and I also think AMD has a better (again) plan when it comes to yields and product stacks. The mess of Intel Alder Lake core configurations... holy crap. This however, looks sensible. It is likely you also want the better small cores with the better big cores and they're still sticking to chiplets this way.

In some way this also reminds of Bulldozer/Piledriver, except now the bottleneck is just the large core perf. So yes, we could think 'why bother' and I get that, part of me does it too. But when you take Intel's bursty CPU management the idea suddenly isn't so strange. And AMD is fast approaching that as well, even if their boost is more intelligent and bases are higher, they still do get warm on a tiny surface area.
Yeah I really see precision boost being something that could come into play with this design. If they can offload certain things to the smaller core and reduce heat in the process they could potentially use it to leverage higher peak boost, longer sustained boost, or higher all core performance and of course mix of all three could be a play. It's a bit like if I can eek out more efficiency well I can eek out more performance. It could also help more than the CPU's themselves potentially like it'll really interesting to see how it impacts motherboards VRM's for example if they aren't over stressed that's a good perk as well and reason enough to consider a bit of this kind of design. I don't see any real negatives to the option of it.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Feb 18, 2005
Messages
5,239 (0.75/day)
Location
Ikenai borderline!
System Name Firelance.
Processor Threadripper 3960X
Motherboard ROG Strix TRX40-E Gaming
Cooling IceGem 360 + 6x Arctic Cooling P12
Memory 8x 16GB Patriot Viper DDR4-3200 CL16
Video Card(s) MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Ventus 2X OC
Storage 2TB WD SN850X (boot), 4TB Crucial P3 (data)
Display(s) 3x AOC Q32E2N (32" 2560x1440 75Hz)
Case Enthoo Pro II Server Edition (Closed Panel) + 6 fans
Power Supply Fractal Design Ion+ 2 Platinum 760W
Mouse Logitech G602
Keyboard Logitech G613
Software Windows 10 Professional x64
The mess of Intel Alder Lake core configurations... holy crap. This however, looks sensible.

To me it looks like the most naive way to implement big.LITTLE. To my mind, Alder Lake's design seems more advanced because it apparently allows heterogeneous numbers of big and little cores to be combined, allowing for extreme flexibility (and, yes, potential complexity) - whereas AMD's design always requires a 1:1 big:little core count.

There are already Arm CPUs with 3 different types of cores (small, medium, large as opposed to just big, little) and the heterogeneous core count of Alder Lake makes me strongly suspect it's also designed for this sort of flexibility. Whereas AMD's design doesn't seem much more than, to borrow an old and incorrect analogy, "glue".
 
Joined
Sep 17, 2014
Messages
20,774 (5.97/day)
Location
The Washing Machine
Processor i7 8700k 4.6Ghz @ 1.24V
Motherboard AsRock Fatal1ty K6 Z370
Cooling beQuiet! Dark Rock Pro 3
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200/C16
Video Card(s) ASRock RX7900XT Phantom Gaming
Storage Samsung 850 EVO 1TB + Samsung 830 256GB + Crucial BX100 250GB + Toshiba 1TB HDD
Display(s) Gigabyte G34QWC (3440x1440)
Case Fractal Design Define R5
Audio Device(s) Harman Kardon AVR137 + 2.1
Power Supply EVGA Supernova G2 750W
Mouse XTRFY M42
Keyboard Lenovo Thinkpad Trackpoint II
Software W10 x64
To me it looks like the most naive way to implement big.LITTLE. To my mind, Alder Lake's design seems more advanced because it apparently allows heterogeneous numbers of big and little cores to be combined, allowing for extreme flexibility (and, yes, potential complexity) - whereas AMD's design always requires a 1:1 big:little core count.

There are already Arm CPUs with 3 different types of cores (small, medium, large as opposed to just big, little) and the heterogeneous core count of Alder Lake makes me strongly suspect it's also designed for this sort of flexibility. Whereas AMD's design doesn't seem much more than, to borrow an old and incorrect analogy, "glue".

Yes good arguments as well, but to the glue I respond: 'seems to be working out quite well for AMD'. I'm mostly looking at yields and margins here, not so much flexibility. Its likely we will see a similar trajectory in minor differences as we see now; where Intel has a product for every niche, even the ones nobody knew existed, and AMD has a simple line up top to bottom for a handful of segments.
 
Joined
Apr 12, 2013
Messages
6,728 (1.68/day)
I don't see where it's mentioned that a big core needs one small core alongside to work in AMD's implementation of big little. What you're talking about has been in play from ARM as DynamIQ for ages, unless there's a technical limitation to what AMD proposes, in their implementation of clustered cores, it should work the same way! Intel's implementation as of now is useless, a single big core that too neutered to the extent of 7W TDP is just useless in anything but fanless & tablet implementations, even there lower count AMD APUs will beat it to a pulp.
 
Joined
Feb 11, 2009
Messages
5,389 (0.98/day)
System Name Cyberline
Processor Intel Core i7 2600k -> 12600k
Motherboard Asus P8P67 LE Rev 3.0 -> Gigabyte Z690 Auros Elite DDR4
Cooling Tuniq Tower 120 -> Custom Watercoolingloop
Memory Corsair (4x2) 8gb 1600mhz -> Crucial (8x2) 16gb 3600mhz
Video Card(s) AMD RX480 -> ... nope still the same :'(
Storage Samsung 750 Evo 250gb SSD + WD 1tb x 2 + WD 2tb -> 2tb MVMe SSD
Display(s) Philips 32inch LPF5605H (television) -> Dell S3220DGF
Case antec 600 -> Thermaltake Tenor HTCP case
Audio Device(s) Focusrite 2i4 (USB)
Power Supply Seasonic 620watt 80+ Platinum
Mouse Elecom EX-G
Keyboard Rapoo V700
Software Windows 10 Pro 64bit
You only need a general idea of what these things are good for, you don't have to know what the future holds. big.LITTLE is an extreme power saving measure that's unneeded in desktops.

Well imagine if offices around hte world adopt this, massive energy saving is a good thing these days.
 
Joined
Jan 8, 2017
Messages
8,860 (3.36/day)
System Name Good enough
Processor AMD Ryzen R9 7900 - Alphacool Eisblock XPX Aurora Edge
Motherboard ASRock B650 Pro RS
Cooling 2x 360mm NexXxoS ST30 X-Flow, 1x 360mm NexXxoS ST30, 1x 240mm NexXxoS ST30
Memory 32GB - FURY Beast RGB 5600 Mhz
Video Card(s) Sapphire RX 7900 XT - Alphacool Eisblock Aurora
Storage 1x Kingston KC3000 1TB 1x Kingston A2000 1TB, 1x Samsung 850 EVO 250GB , 1x Samsung 860 EVO 500GB
Display(s) LG UltraGear 32GN650-B + 4K Samsung TV
Case Phanteks NV7
Power Supply GPS-750C
Well imagine if offices around hte world adopt this, massive energy saving is a good thing these days.

big.LITTLE saves a couple of watts, in a phone that matters, in an office PC, I doubt it.
 
Joined
Feb 18, 2005
Messages
5,239 (0.75/day)
Location
Ikenai borderline!
System Name Firelance.
Processor Threadripper 3960X
Motherboard ROG Strix TRX40-E Gaming
Cooling IceGem 360 + 6x Arctic Cooling P12
Memory 8x 16GB Patriot Viper DDR4-3200 CL16
Video Card(s) MSI GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Ventus 2X OC
Storage 2TB WD SN850X (boot), 4TB Crucial P3 (data)
Display(s) 3x AOC Q32E2N (32" 2560x1440 75Hz)
Case Enthoo Pro II Server Edition (Closed Panel) + 6 fans
Power Supply Fractal Design Ion+ 2 Platinum 760W
Mouse Logitech G602
Keyboard Logitech G613
Software Windows 10 Professional x64
big.LITTLE saves a couple of watts, in a phone that matters, in an office PC, I doubt it.

In millions of office PCs around the world that are on 24/7/365 because of corporate IT policies?

Yeah, it matters.
 
Joined
Jan 8, 2017
Messages
8,860 (3.36/day)
System Name Good enough
Processor AMD Ryzen R9 7900 - Alphacool Eisblock XPX Aurora Edge
Motherboard ASRock B650 Pro RS
Cooling 2x 360mm NexXxoS ST30 X-Flow, 1x 360mm NexXxoS ST30, 1x 240mm NexXxoS ST30
Memory 32GB - FURY Beast RGB 5600 Mhz
Video Card(s) Sapphire RX 7900 XT - Alphacool Eisblock Aurora
Storage 1x Kingston KC3000 1TB 1x Kingston A2000 1TB, 1x Samsung 850 EVO 250GB , 1x Samsung 860 EVO 500GB
Display(s) LG UltraGear 32GN650-B + 4K Samsung TV
Case Phanteks NV7
Power Supply GPS-750C
In millions of office PCs around the world that are on 24/7/365 because of corporate IT policies?

There may be "millions" but the average business needs what, a couple of dozen PCs at the most ? It's not going to matter, they have other things to worry about besides an extra 10$ on an electricity bill, if that.

It's the same logic with "If we all took 1 minute showers we'd save so much water and money". Yeah, maybe we would but to the individual it makes no difference.
 
Top