AMD has added the high-performance "Carrizo" system-on-a-chip (SoC) and the mainstream SoC codenamed "Carrizo-L" to its 2015 AMD Mobile APU family roadmap. These new 2015 AMD Mobile APUs are designed as complete solutions for gaming, productivity applications, and ultra high-definition 4K experiences. They support Microsoft DirectX 12, OpenCL 2.0, AMD's Mantle API, AMD FreeSync and Microsoft's upcoming Windows 10 operating system.

"AMD's commitment to graphics and compute performance, as expressed by our goal to improve APU energy efficiency 25x by 2020, combines with the latest industry standards and fresh innovation to drive the design of the 2015 AMD Mobile APU family. We are excited about the experiences these new APUs will bring and look forward to sharing more details in the first half of next year, said John Byrne, senior vice president and general manager, Computing and Graphics business group, AMD.

The flagship "Carrizo" processor will integrate the new x86 CPU core codenamed "Excavator" with next generation AMD Radeon graphics in the first Heterogeneous Systems Architecture (HSA) 1.0 compliant SoC. The processor will have up to 4 CPU cores and its power consumption will be at the 15W ~ 35W range, being manufactured using the 28nm process.

The 28nm "Carrizo-L" SoC integrates up to four CPUs codenamed "Puma+" with AMD Radeon R-Series GCN GPUs and is intended for mainstream configurations. Power consumption will be at the 10W-25W range.

In addition, an AMD Secure Processor will be integrated into the "Carrizo" and "Carrizo-L" APUs, enabling ARM TrustZone across the entire family.

AMD has not mentioned anything about clock speeds or DDR4 support.

One of the big features that AMD is pushing with Carrizo is energy efficiency, considering the fact that AMD have been on the same process node.

So AMD is using the Voltage Adaptive Operation: Rather than compensate for voltage variations which wastes energy, this technology takes the average operating voltage and detects when the voltage increases beyond a smaller margin. Then the CPU speed is reduced until the voltage drops below the threshold and then the CPU speed is moved back up.

"Carrizo" and "Carrizo-L," are scheduled to ship in 1H 2015, with laptop and All-in-One systems based on the 2015 AMD Mobile APU family expected in market by mid-year 2015.

During its Future of Compute event held in Singapore, AMD also announced the introduction of the first ultra high-definition (UHD) monitors to feature its open-standards based FreeSync technology. Samsung plans to launch the screen synching technology around the world in March 2015, starting with the Samsung UD590 (23.6-inch and 28-inch models) and UE850 (23.6-inch, 27-inch and 31.5-inch models), and eventually across all of Samsung's UHD lineups. FreeSync will enable dynamic refresh rates synchronized to the frame rate of AMD Radeon graphics cards and APUs to maximally reduce input latency and reduce or fully eliminate visual defects during gaming and video playback.

In addition, Capcom announced its collaboration with AMD on the AMD Mantle API to enhance Capcom's "Panta-Rhei" engine, enabling enhanced gaming performance and visual quality for upcoming Capcom game titles.

AMD's Mantle API technology has been adopted by developers including Crytek's CRYENGINE, DICE's FrostBite 3 and Oxide's Nitrous engine.