Next Gen AMD Stoney And Bristol Ridge APUs Spotted In BIOS Update

Khalid Moammer

AMD's next generation Bristol Ridge and Stoney Ridge desktop APUs set to launch in 2016 were spotted in a BIOS update. These two families of desktop APUs are based on AMD's fourth generation CMT - Clustered Multi-Threading- x86 CPU microacrchitecture code named "Excavator".

AMD Carrizo APU Render
Based on the various leaks that have come out so far, Bristol Ridge APUs should feature up to 4 Excavator CPU cores as well as 8 GCN GPU compute units. Stoney Ridge APUs on the other hand will target the entry APU segment, featuring half the number of CPU cores and 3 GCN compute units. The addition of Bristol Ridge and Stoney Ridge ID's indicates that we might see some engineering samples of said APUs appear in the wild in the not too distant future.

AMD 7th Generation APUs Coming To Desktops Next Year

Bristol Ridge and Stoney Ridge both belong to AMD's 7th generation APU line-up that the company announced back in May at its Financial Analyst Day event. The 7th generation of AMD APUs will debut on a brand new socket and platform dubbed AM4 that they will share with AMD's hotly anticipated high-performance Summit Ridge family of CPUs.
Summit Ridge is the leaked code name for AMD's upcoming FX family of enthusiast/high-end desktop CPUs featuring AMD's brand new high performance x86 CPU core "Zen", the development of which was spearheaded by the legendary CPU architect Jim Keller.

AMD Financial Analyst Day 2015 CPU APU Roadmap
Despite sharing the same platform, Summit Ridge processors will be made on a more advanced 14nm/16nm FinFET manufacturing process for better power efficiency and higher performance. While the Bristol Ridge and Stoney Ridge families will build-on the current Carrizo SOC design and maintain the same Globalfoundries' 28nm SHP process. However Summit Ridge, Bristol Ridge and Stoney Ridge will all share DDR4 memory support and AM4 socket compatibility

AMD Financial Analyst Day 2016 CPU, APU, GPU Roadmap
All three families represent an all new top-to-bottom roll-out of brand new desktop CPU and APU products coming up next year. All AMD desktop processors, CPUs and APUs, will share a single platform starting with the previously mentioned AM4 socket. Differentiation in motherboard tiers will therefore occur at the chipset level. We should see a range of high-end to medium range and entry level chipsets to address the needs of enthusiasts on the Zen based FX processor line as well the needs of the more average user looking to build a simple APU based system.

Summit Ridge and Stoney Ridge Platforms

WCCFTechAMD Bristol RidgeAMD Stoney RidgeAMD A-Series "7000/8000-Series"
Product SegmentMainstream APULow-end APUMainstream Processors "Kaveri/Godavari"
Product Architecturex86 Excavatorx86 Excavatorx86 Steamroller
Process Node28nm28nm28nm
Max CPU Cores424
GPU ArchitectureNext Gen GCNNext Gen GCNSea Islands / GCN 1.1
TDPTBATBA95W
SocketAM4AM4FM2+
South BridgePromontoryPromontoryA78/A88X
North BridgeOn-dieOn-dieBoard
Memory SupportDDR4DDR4DDR3
LaunchQ3 2016Q3 20162013-2015
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