AMD’s Smart Access Storage could be the company’s next AMD Advantage technology
Since the launch of the company’s RDNA graphics architecture, AMD has been working on ways to enhance the performance of all-AMD gaming systems. AMD wants laptop makers and other OEMs to pair Ryzen processors with Radeon graphics, and that means that AMD needs to make both product lineups synergistic, giving system creators a reason to invest in all-AMD systems. AMD has been marketing all-AMD gaming products as systems that have an “AMD Advantage”.According to Videocardz, AMD’s is planning to launch a new technology called Smart Access Storage, and at this time it is currently now known what this technology does. The feature is known to be part of Corsair’s upcoming All-AMD Voyager laptop, but aside from that, nothing is known about Smart Access Storage technology.
It has been speculated that Smart Access Storage is a name that AMD has given to their implementation of Microsoft’s DirectStorage technology. This would be similar to Nvidia’s RTX I/O technology, which is designed to accelerate storage performance using a graphics card. That said, the fact that Smart Access Storage has been linked to a specific laptop suggests that Smart Access Storage is a platform feature, not an implementation of DirectStorage.
What does AMD’s existing “AMD Advantage” features do
AMD’s has two major “AMD Advantage” features at the time of writing, Smart Access Memory, and SmartShift. Smart Access Memory is AMD’s implementation of the PCIe Express Resizable BAR feature. AMD’s Smart Access Memory feature was utilised to deliver notable performance gains in many PC games, with some games exhibiting substantial performance benefits. Smart Access Memory is available on AMD’s desktop and notebook products, and AMD’s competitors have utilised Resizable BAR to enable similar performance gains on their own hardware.
SmartShift is a platform level feature that AMD has created that can be used to intelligently shift power from your processor to your memory. If laptop makers create their systems with powershift in mind, they can dynamically adjust the power usage of both AMD’s Ryzen Mobile processors and Radeon discrete graphics chips to deliver optimal power use and performance on all-AMD gaming systems. This technology gives AMD’s hardware performance benefits and increased power efficiency.
Whether or not Smart Access Storage will be exclusive to all-AMD laptops or be available to all AMD systems remains to be seen. Until the exact purpose of this technology is known, we can only speculate. If it is an implementation of Microsoft’s DirectStorage technology, it will be available to all Radeon-powered systems. If it isn’t we could be looking at something that is unique to AMD and a lot more interesting.
Moving forward, AMD wants to increase their market share within the gaming notebook market, and that means that they will need to find unique ways to make their technology more appealing to buyer. Smart Access Storage and other AMD Advantage technologies are a way that AMD can differentiate themselves from their competitors, especially given the fact that they can create powerful CPUs and powerful graphics solutions. AMD can search for optimisations that Intel and Nvidia can’t, at least until Intel catches up to AMD within the GPU space.