The AMD APU codenamed Van Gogh will have new audio technology
AMD’s APU codenamed Van Gogh is a mysterious product that appeared on the leaked AMD official roadmap before. Although its specifications are a bit different compared to other AMD products, since there has been little information and it is not a mainstream product that has close contact with ordinary users, it did not attract much attention at the beginning.
According to previous information, Van Gogh will be manufactured using TSMC’s N7 process technology, with a TDP of 9W, support for CVML, and have certain AI computing capabilities. There is also news that Van Gogh not only supports LPDDR5/DDR5 memory but also has a 256-bit memory interface, which is four channels. It integrates a CPU based on the Zen 2 architecture and a GPU based on the RDNA 2 architecture, which is a bit similar to the custom chips developed by AMD for Microsoft Xbox Series X/S and Sony PlayStation 5. Of course, this is not enough to show that Van Gogh is an APU customized for games, although many people speculate that Van Gogh may be used as a portable gaming device.
According to Phoronix, AMD has released 12 patches for Van Gogh’s Linux Audio Driver Architecture (ALSA) to support the upcoming Van Gogh. The information on these patches shows that Van Gogh will use AMD’s new audio co-processor ACP 5.x and will have two I2S interfaces/controllers. Van Gogh seems to be AMD’s first platform to support new audio technologies.
It is difficult to find information about AMD ACP on the Internet. According to TomsHardware‘s information, the only relevant introduction was in 2017, ACP 3.x on Raven Ridge APU, maybe AMD’s APU is currently configured with ACP 4. As for the difference between ACP 5.x, it is not clear, it may be Dolby Atmos, and it can only be determined to be better than the previous ACP.
AMD has not commented on Van Gogh so far. The current understanding of Van Gogh comes from leaked roadmaps, Linux patches, and fragmentary rumors.
