25x20 Energy Efficiency Initiative
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Inc.
“Improve the user experience and reduce power consumption” - This thought anchors AMD’s 25x20 energy efficiency initiative. We are proud to receive AREA’s “Green Leadership” award in our pursuit of building energy efficient, environment-friendly compute devices. Our innovative architecture and power management enable energy savings and reduce carbon emissions while helping users’ across the world access high performance computing at affordable price points.
INTRODUCTION
The economic and environmental implications of increased computer technology adoption is significant. Estimates range from 20 to 30 billion connected devices by 2020. All these devices require energy to operate, which in turn generate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that accelerate climate change. At AMD, we are committed to reducing this impact on the environment with our 25×20 initiative for energy efficient computing. As India moves toward digitization, AMD can provide energy efficient PC’s to help advance economic growth while supporting India’s commitment to reduce the GHG emissions intensity of its GDP by 33-35% by 2030 (from 2005).In 2014, AMD’s CTO Mark Papermaster announced the “25×20” goal in Dalian, China, committing to a 25-times improvement in the energy efficiency of our Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) by 2020. The goal means an AMD powered computer in 2020 will accomplish a task in one fifth of the time compared to 2014, while consuming on average less than one fifth the power. AMD is proud to be on-track to achieve 25×20.
FRAMEWORK AND STRATEGY
Achieving 25×20 requires a major company-wide commitment to develop new processor architectures and power management techniques. This starts at the top with the CEO and instilling the commitment throughout the company, and requires a fundamental shift in engineering priorities. The 25×20 goal represents an escalation of energy efficiency as a core strategy for AMD. It’s a definitive target adopted by our CEO and CTO, and coordinated with teams in India and across AMD. Our focus on energy efficiency has expanded from mobile APU products to include graphics, server, and embedded technologies.Most computers are used intermittently, meaning they only operate at peak performance 1-2% of the time. Instead of maximizing energy efficiency for “peak use,” AMD’s design prioritizes energy efficiency for “typical use”. Our smart power management features dynamically self-optimize power and performance for the 98% of time in typical use computing.
ACHIEVEMENT AND IMPACT
AMD has launched two APUs (6th and 7th generations) since announcing the 25×20 goal in 2014. Both achieved the aggressive performance per watt improvements required to keep AMD on-track to meet the goal. Achieving 25×20 means our APUs will outpace the historical efficiency trend predicted by Moore’s Law by at least 70 percent from 2014 and 2020 (www.amd.com/Documents/The-Future-of-Energy-Efficient-IT.pdf).In addition, 25×20 is a verified “science-based target,” meaning the GHG emission reductions are aggressive enough to combat climate change by helping avoid a 2-degree Celsius increase in global temperatures (www.sciencebasedtargets.org). An AMD study on the 6th Generation APU found power consumption and GHG emissions from computer use reduced by 50 percent from the previous generation (www.amd.com/Documents/carbon-footprint-study.pdf). When scaled to 100,000 notebook computers, savings include 4.86 million kWh and 3,350 metric tons of GHGs over a three year service life, equivalent to powering 4,500 electrified homes in India for a year (Based on 2014 annual average of 1079 kWh used per-household – www.worldenergy.org/data/efficiency-indicators).
FUTURE DIRECTION
Later in 2017, AMD will launch the next APU and report on how it advances the 25×20 goal. This AMD APU will leverage 14 nanometer silicon wafers, compared to previous products (2014 to 2016) built on 28 nanometer wafers. This advancement will result in additional energy efficiency improvements for AMD products.AMD continues to expand our energy efficiency strategy beyond APUs and 25×20. For example, our latest graphics processors (GPUs), often used in enthusiast gaming computers, achieved up to a 40% reduction in energy and GHG emissions compared to the previous generation (Study). And our Thin Client products, when compared to traditional desktops, cut energy use and GHG emissions by up to 82% (www.amd.com/Documents/computer-lab-case-study.pdf).
AMD designs innovative computing, graphics, and visualization technologies. Hundreds of millions of users globally use AMD technology to help improve how they live, work, and play. AMD has R&D facilities, data centers, and sales offices in 43 locations in 19 countries.
