Apple on Thursday gave its MacBook Pro line a long overdue refresh. While most were transfixed on the new TouchBar that replaces the row of function keys, others were more intrigued by AMD's new Radeon Pro 400 Series graphics processors.
Based on AMD's Polaris architecture and built using a 14-nanometer FinFET manufacturing process, the new graphics processors feature a thermal envelope of less than 35 watts. AMD has also made use of a process known as "die thinning" that reduces the thickness of each silicon wafer from 780 microns down to just 380 microns which is slightly less than the thickness of four sheets of paper.
As for specifications, the Radeon Pro 450 features 640 stream processors (10 compute units) with peak performance rated at up to one teraflop. The Radeon Pro 455 checks in with 768 stream processors (12 compute units) and 1.3 teraflops of performance while the highest-end Radeon Pro 460 packs 1,024 stream processors (16 compute units) and is good for up to 1.86 teraflops.
All three offer 80GB/s of memory bandwidth.
Raja Koduri, senior vice president and chief architect, Radeon Technologies Group, AMD, said they couldn't be more proud to have Radeon Pro 400 Series Graphics launching in the new 15-inch MacBook Pro.
Apple's new 15-inch MacBook Pro is scheduled to ship in two to three weeks with pricing starting at $2,399.