AMD is using the International Solid-State Circuits Conference this week to present a paper and announce some interesting developments regarding the next iteration of the Bulldozer architecture, codenamed ?Excavator?, as well as other details regarding the CPU range that it will be placed in called ?Carrizo?.

At the tail end of 2014 we reported on Carrizo and AMD's announcement for its next generation of APUs, and more recently the discussion surrounding Carrizo not coming to desktop. In those announcements AMD revealed that Carrizo will be aimed at the laptop and notebook community first and foremost, a first for the company as previous APU designs have been aimed at both the desktop and mobile markets.

From a hardware standpoint, Carrizo will be combining a number of Excavator modules, AMD's R-Series GCN GPUs, and the chipset/Fusion Controller Hub into a single package, bringing with it full HSA compatibility, TrueAudio, and ARM Trustzone compatibility. As with Kaveri before it, Carrizo will be built on Global Foundries? 28nm Super High Performance (28SHP) node, making Carrizo a pure architecture upgrade without any manufacturing changes. Today's ISSCC paper in turn builds on these revelations, showing some of the data from AMD's internal silicon testing.