AMD's Carrizo microarchitecture has been up and about for quite some time now and back in June, and initially it had consisted of quad core SKUs. According to a report by CPU World AMD will soon be launching a few more models including a dual core Carrizo APU - also known as the Stoney Ridge platform, which we have previously talked about. There is no visible difference between the Business Class counterparts on paper but include certain virtualization, security and manageability tools that are of use to the enterprise world.

AMD logo Feature Cover

AMD launching Carrizo APU series for business

The original release consisted ofthe FX-8800P, A10-8700P and A8-8600P. The new units simply have the suffix B added to them (the P suffix indicates the consumer class processor) so you get the PRO FX-8800B, A10-8700B and A8-8600B. The new dual core unit will be called the A6-8500P and A6-8500B.All unannounced processors are not yet available in laptops.AMD has one more processor up its sleeve that will feature the Bulldozer family.

Now we have a fairly good idea about the performance of these processors (minus the Stoney APU) and since the performance of the consumer class is identical to the business class this should serve as a valid benchmark. carrizo business apus benchmarks

Benchmark courtesy of Notebookcheck.net

The Stoney Ridge APU will feature 2 x86 Excavator cores and 4 GCN cores for a grand total of 6CUs. Comparatively, the main APUs usually have a combination of 4 x86 cores and 8 GCN cores. This APU will be socketed on the AM4, FP4 and FT4 packages.The consumer variants of these APUs are targeted at the casual HTPC build will probably feature the single DDR4 IMC controller. This is completely fine since by 2016 or so, DDR4 memory prices will be cheaper than DDR3.

Lets talk about the mobile side of the Stoney Ridge platform for a bit. The CPU has the same clock rates as the 8600P, with base frequency of 1.6Ghz and turbo frequency of 3.0 Ghz. It also has a measly 1 MB L2 cache. The GPU is a Radeon R5 variant and consists of 256 stream processors (or 4 CUs). Basically you are looking at a 2+4 configuration. It is rated at 15W TDP and is expected to appear on the desktop side later this year or early next year as well. Given below is a specification comparison of the consumer class and business class APUs:

Carrizo Mobility Business-Class SKU List

Carrizo Model	Cores	Core Clock / Turbo	L2 Cache	Graphics	GPU Clock	Memory	TDP
A6 PRO-8500B	2	1.6 / 3 GHz	1 MB	R5	800 MHz	TBD	15W
A6-8500P	2	1.6 / 3 GHz	1 MB	R5	800 MHz	TBD	15W
A8 PRO-8600B	4	1.6 / 3 GHz	2 MB	R6	720 MHz	DDR3-2133	15W
A8-8600P	4	1.6 / 3 GHz	2 MB	R6	720 MHz	DDR3-2133	15W
A10 PRO-8700B	4	1.8 / 3.2 GHz	2 MB	R6	800 MHz	DDR3-2133	15W
A10-8700P	4	1.8 / 3.2 GHz	2 MB	R6	800 MHz	DDR3-2133	15W
A12 PRO-8800B / FX PRO-8800B	4	2.1 / 3.4 GHz	2 MB	R7	800 MHz	DDR3-2133	15W
FX-8800P	4	2.1 / 3.4 GHz	2 MB	R7	800 MHz	DDR3-2133	15W