AMD Wins Prestigious Catalyst Award for 25x20 Energy Efficiency Initiative

SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwired - Sep 7, 2016) - AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today announced the company has received the Catalyst Award for its 25x20 energy efficiency initiative, presented by the Green Electronics Council (GEC) after review by an independent panel of judges. The award will be formally presented at the Electronics Goes Green 2016 conference in Berlin on September 7, 2016. AMD is ahead of pace to achieve its ambitious goal to dramatically improve the energy efficiency of its mobile microprocessors 25 times by year 2020, from a 2014 baseline.

"AMD clearly stood out among a strong group of finalists in their ability to catalyze large scale sustainability impact," said Nancy Gillis, chief executive officer, Green Electronics Council. "Bringing a new architecture and energy management to computer chips will have a huge impact on managing energy use and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, yet another example of technology's fundamental role in building a sustainable world." 

As part of its 25x20 initiative, AMD is developing new processor architectures, power efficient technologies, and power management techniques to achieve the goal of accelerating energy efficiency of its processors. As an example, the AMD 6^th Generation A-Series Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) (code-named "Carrizo") released in 2015 for notebook computers, delivered a 2.7 times improvement in energy efficiency compared to its 2014 predecessor.ⁱ This improvement set a pace well ahead of the trend line for achieving the 25x20 goal. Also, the AMD 6^th Generation A-Series APU achieved an approximate 46-percent reduction in lifecycle carbon emissions compared to the previous generation APU.ⁱⁱ Further demonstrating AMD's commitment to energy efficient computing, the new Polaris architecture-based Radeon™ RX 400 Series GPUs can be up to 2.8 times more energy efficient than graphics cards made just two years ago.ⁱⁱⁱ

"As always, there is extreme competitive pressure in the computer market for new processors that provide even greater performance while minimizing power consumption," said Mark Papermaster, SVP and chief technology officer, AMD. "This is made more challenging due to the slowdown in Moore's Law. As the energy efficiency gains that were always a byproduct of manufacturing advances slow down, AMD engineers are creating innovative new designs aimed at managing energy use, and that is fueling our drive to 25x20."