AMD CPU speculation... and expert conjecture

[sarinaide]

Yes, XB1's presale numbers are abysmal and to add an interesting note to the AMD v. Intel debate...it looks like Intel is "slipping". Instead of Broadwell next year, they are doing a haswell "refresh".

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/31701-intel-plans-haswell-refresh-in-q2-2014

Imagine Steamroller launching and having to compete with hasfail for a full 18 months, by which time, if broadwell does finally poke it's head out of obscurity, the Excavator will likely be hitting the shelves.

Interesting...eh?

I like how you always say hasfail as you know its amazing. Haswell is revolutionary, my brother was right biggest improvement since 2003 when pentium m cpus were released on the mobile market. My brother said my ivy bridge laptop will look 10 years old when haswell would come out and he was right lol. I wish I had waited for haswell now and the igpu has improved significantly so much so amd apus get crushed compared to intels higher end hd 5000 series igpu. I remember reading 32nm pch compared to the 65nm pch motherboard that was out for years and not only that haswell takes a lot less power on idle as well as the igpu is 2x better performanvc per watt then ivy bridge as the intel demonstration showed.

Haswell is the biggest improvement seen in years in mobile market, you could say haswell is a game changer and amd must be scared now there apus are pointless. Intel are in a position where in 2016 if haswell succesor came out intel would still be ahead of amd as they are ahead on performance per watt they can release a lot more cores cpu.

In many benchmarks the 3770K can still beat the 4770K go figure, to make matters better the first retail chips we got, the very first tested part was stable at 4.3ghz maximum, but sadly the motherboard and chip didn't get to do very much, the chip killed itself with thermals and took the motherboard with it. As for Intel HD, HD4600 may seem close on FPS but if I ran HD4600 vs my 7660D with the same RAM, the Intel system is nothing less than a stutter fest in basically everything but F1 2012 . Iris yes beats an APU but the best thing was at 1600x900 medium settings its about 4% faster than Trinity/Richland and at 1080P its basically on par with Trinity/Richland and costs around 5x more, so twice the bandwidth the tested Trinity APU's were capable of with 2133mhz RAM but such a sharp decline in FPS once the fuddy duddy iGPU components are stressed and the CPU shoulders less of the performance, I can put my bottom dollar on the fact that if a AMD APU was capable of 70GB/s bandwidth like IRIS then it will not only decimate Intel it will be competitive with AMD's very own entry level gamer discrete cards of the Pitcairn/Bonaire range. Hell even Nvidia laughed at Intel when the Iris was taughted a GT650M slayer and while at 720 it is right on with a 650M, by the time you hit 1080 the 650M is still playable at Medium/High and is about twice as fast as HD5200, that was a fail, but well done to Intel for throwing billions into Iris to beat a year old APU but sell very few, simple really, nobody buys a 4770R BGA where that is as good as it gets when you can buy a cheaper 4770K with discrete level 7770 which will still kick its butt all for less.

 

[sarinaide]

The iris pro was designed for gaming while taking very little power. Intel have the best performance per watt gpu. I doubt anyone really gets an intel igpu to play games at 1080p. Now the point of these intel igpus is to stop low end discrete gpu market and also for better thin and light machine performance like macbook air now has a lot better graphics capabilities that you can actually game now on them if you want without increasing any real thermal enbelope or power consumption. One other thing intel igpu means gaming on the go with battery is now possible due to low power consumption especially the low 15w ulv with hd 5000.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Iris-Pro-Graphics-5200.90965.0.html

Synthetic benchmarks show its on par with 650m while game performance is similar to a 640m. Considering how high end the 650m is its amazing intel gets so close with an igpu that just came out.

Why make a high end iGPU when HD2500 is more than enough for basic usage for the majority of users, the IGPU gets put under the measure of every iGPU and that is gaming prowess, as before at 720-768 resolutions HD5200 is a beast with 50GB/s off the eDRAM and the RAM bandwidth, but we also know at lower resolutions the CPU does a lot more of the donkey work, hence at 1600x900 and 1080 Iris despite its hefty resources is only on par with AMD's APU's which tends to show how weak the iGPU really is when it takes the brunt of the load. If AMD come up with similar bandwidth addresses then a 520ish SP APU with 70GB/s+ will probably be 2-3x faster than Iris, probably HD ready as well, factor in that the GT650M will still cost less than Iris at the end while yeah its lighter on power, most people plug a laptop into a wall anyways

 

[de5_Roy]

A glimpse of future AMD graphics offerings
http://semiaccurate.com/2013/06/18/a-glimpse-of-future-amd-graphics-offerings/
moar possible info on kaveri tdp, kabini successors (yay)....
AMD evolving fast to survive in the server market jungle
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7079/amd-evolving-fast-to-survive-in-the-server-market-jungle-

 

[hcl123]

AMD's "Berlin" server processors will see Steamroller cores, 1H 2014.

http://semiaccurate.com/2013/06/17/amd-announces-seattle-berlin-and-warsaw-for-servers/

i have been waiting. so long. for something from amd about steamroller.
the speculation on the absence of 'high end' desktop(sr-fx) is mildly disappointing but it seems to be in line with amd's current execution. i didn't like comparisons with pd opteron and jaguar opteron-x vs berlin though. that's poor marketing tactics. woulda liked to see how berlin compares against llano, trinity powered opteron apus instead or kyoto/16 core pd.
berlin itself seems very promising, so i'm guessing kaveri will be quite good. overall very nice to see moar steamroller-related info out of amd. now i can't help wanting moar info on kaveri... even after seeing berlin's configuration (4c), i don't want to rule out 6 core and gddr5 (at least on the dt mobo...)....

berlin and kyoto are both APUs with is why AMD is likely comparing them. From what I read, Seatle looks to be just a cpu soc with no or very little gpu resource which are unneeded for microserver data centers. My guess for high end server cpus will be waiting for DDR4.

Not only APUs, they are a different kind of APUs. At least it is what the "slide" seems to suggest(doubt that S|A invented it).
https://semiaccurate.com/assets/uploads/2013/06/AMD-Berlin-Block-Diagram.png

Now it seems the "System I/O" is separated from the APU die... probably it will be Hypertrnasport based, and the PCIe and other interconnect will transition into the "mobo" chipset. This is remarkable and a very good evolution, maybe *in the future* (soon) we will have HTX slots for graphics adapters... or better PCIe +HTX on the same "physical" slot

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2012/0258611.html
(first hand reveal lol )

That will be very good, since AMD has a disadvantage in process size, 28nm vs 22nm intel, it can compensate that way.

also now they seem to have "lost" the *module* indication, the CPU cores are represented separately, though with the same 2MB L2 per2 cores, which seems to indicate the the module is still there, only the penalty of sharing the front-end must have been greatly reduced.

So this seems NOT to be Kaveri... this wont fit FM2 kind of sockets, which is designed to have the "System I/O" on the APU die... this could fit AM3+, or perhaps is the rumored FM3 (quite different from FM2(+))

 

[anxiousinfusion]

AMD's "Berlin" server processors will see Steamroller cores, 1H 2014.

http://semiaccurate.com/2013/06/17/amd-announces-seattle-berlin-and-warsaw-for-servers/

i have been waiting. so long. for something from amd about steamroller.
the speculation on the absence of 'high end' desktop(sr-fx) is mildly disappointing but it seems to be in line with amd's current execution. i didn't like comparisons with pd opteron and jaguar opteron-x vs berlin though. that's poor marketing tactics. woulda liked to see how berlin compares against llano, trinity powered opteron apus instead or kyoto/16 core pd.
berlin itself seems very promising, so i'm guessing kaveri will be quite good. overall very nice to see moar steamroller-related info out of amd. now i can't help wanting moar info on kaveri... even after seeing berlin's configuration (4c), i don't want to rule out 6 core and gddr5 (at least on the dt mobo...)....

When the major selling point of APUs is the integrated graphics, I think AMD is content with the performance of only 4 CPU cores. I've read that Steamroller cores would consume less die space than current Piledriver cores. That new real estate may likely be dedicated to the Radeon portion of the chip.

Would be awesome if they released Steamy in line with the original roadmap: Q4 this year. Sadly though, it will probably be sometime in 2014, hopefully the first half. But if they could get Steamroller here in Q4 and Excavator here in Q4 2014 they'd really be rolling... Steamrolling Intel that is.

I wouldn't have agreed with you before Haswell parts were released but after seeing how far progress at Intel fallen, I think they need a metaphorical slap in the face to remind them that the high end is still a market.

 

[Cazalan]

steamroller FX doesn't seem to be in the making as of yet, the APU will be out this year likely.

The server roadmap looks rather sad to be honest. The focus has shifted entirely to the low end, but those are the low margin chips.

No 12/16 core Steamroller means their high end server market share will erode further as Intel releases 15C/30T Ivy.

No 8 core Steamroller even for the 1P? That's a shocker! It likely means there won't be an 8 core Steamroller FX either. The FX and Opteron 3xx0 are basically the same chips rebranded. So the Centurion may be the last of the FX line.

 

[hcl123]

http://www.techpowerup.com/img/13-06-18/AMD_2013-2014_serverroadmap.jpg
steamroller FX doesn't seem to be in the making as of yet, the APU will be out this year likely.

We will see steamroller FX drop Q4 no doubt. AMD keeps saying that.

Fx is a desktop part, and the slide is a Server Roadmap.

when Steamroller FX will be here is anyone guess i think... but would not take too long i think...

The ARM indication is what is more notorious of all, an ARM A57 is pretty good, wonder what kind of improvements ala Qualcomm they made... and what process it will be (28nm can be bulk TSMC or GF , or even FD-SOI GF -> mouth watering lol) .

So "maybe"... "maybe"... Jaguar will be THE LAST of x86 for those kind of APU... yes Seattle is *only* a CPU, but the indication at S|A includes 10Gb Ethernet integrated on die, and the Seamicro FreedomFabric support, wonder how long it will take to make it an APU also !?

https://semiaccurate.com/assets/uploads/2013/06/AMD-Seattle-Slide.png

 

[hcl123]

The server roadmap looks rather sad to be honest. The focus has shifted entirely to the low end, but those are the low margin chips.

No 12/16 core Steamroller means their high end server market share will erode further as Intel releases 15C/30T Ivy.

No 8 core Steamroller even for the 1P? That's a shocker! It likely means there won't be an 8 core Steamroller FX either. The FX and Opteron 3xx0 are basically the same chips rebranded. So the Centurion may be the last of the FX line.

Are you kidding ???...

AMD makes those "Seamicro cloud servers" which is the most exploding server market sector... they make and sell ALL of it, no depending on anyone else... The basic config has 256 cores(i think) separated trough several micro-blades.

quite energy efficient, more so if ARM based... who needs monolithic monsters with 16 cores ?

And 8 core FX or "server" is the same has before... AMD can have 16 core, quad channel DDR with MCM for 1P (per socket), which was/is already quite above intel current offerings ( 8 to 10 core). I don't see the need for more now, when is the "cloud sector" that is exploding.

 

[jdwii]

Yes, XB1's presale numbers are abysmal and to add an interesting note to the AMD v. Intel debate...it looks like Intel is "slipping". Instead of Broadwell next year, they are doing a haswell "refresh".

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/31701-intel-plans-haswell-refresh-in-q2-2014

Imagine Steamroller launching and having to compete with hasfail for a full 18 months, by which time, if broadwell does finally poke it's head out of obscurity, the Excavator will likely be hitting the shelves.

Interesting...eh?

I like how you always say hasfail as you know its amazing. Haswell is revolutionary, my brother was right biggest improvement since 2003 when pentium m cpus were released on the mobile market. My brother said my ivy bridge laptop will look 10 years old when haswell would come out and he was right lol. I wish I had waited for haswell now and the igpu has improved significantly so much so amd apus get crushed compared to intels higher end hd 5000 series igpu. I remember reading 32nm pch compared to the 65nm pch motherboard that was out for years and not only that haswell takes a lot less power on idle as well as the igpu is 2x better performanvc per watt then ivy bridge as the intel demonstration showed.

Haswell is the biggest improvement seen in years in mobile market, you could say haswell is a game changer and amd must be scared now there apus are pointless. Intel are in a position where in 2016 if haswell succesor came out intel would still be ahead of amd as they are ahead on performance per watt they can release a lot more cores cpu.

Sometimes its nice to have a good laugh thank you.

 

[sarinaide]

Yes, XB1's presale numbers are abysmal and to add an interesting note to the AMD v. Intel debate...it looks like Intel is "slipping". Instead of Broadwell next year, they are doing a haswell "refresh".

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/31701-intel-plans-haswell-refresh-in-q2-2014

Imagine Steamroller launching and having to compete with hasfail for a full 18 months, by which time, if broadwell does finally poke it's head out of obscurity, the Excavator will likely be hitting the shelves.

Interesting...eh?

I like how you always say hasfail as you know its amazing. Haswell is revolutionary, my brother was right biggest improvement since 2003 when pentium m cpus were released on the mobile market. My brother said my ivy bridge laptop will look 10 years old when haswell would come out and he was right lol. I wish I had waited for haswell now and the igpu has improved significantly so much so amd apus get crushed compared to intels higher end hd 5000 series igpu. I remember reading 32nm pch compared to the 65nm pch motherboard that was out for years and not only that haswell takes a lot less power on idle as well as the igpu is 2x better performanvc per watt then ivy bridge as the intel demonstration showed.

Haswell is the biggest improvement seen in years in mobile market, you could say haswell is a game changer and amd must be scared now there apus are pointless. Intel are in a position where in 2016 if haswell succesor came out intel would still be ahead of amd as they are ahead on performance per watt they can release a lot more cores cpu.

Sometimes its nice to have a good laugh thank you.

I didn't want to be quite as blunt

 

[hcl123]

I like how you always say hasfail as you know its amazing. Haswell is revolutionary, my brother was right biggest improvement since 2003 when pentium m cpus were released on the mobile market. My brother said my ivy bridge laptop will look 10 years old when haswell would come out and he was right lol. I wish I had waited for haswell now and the igpu has improved significantly so much so amd apus get crushed compared to intels higher end hd 5000 series igpu. I remember reading 32nm pch compared to the 65nm pch motherboard that was out for years and not only that haswell takes a lot less power on idle as well as the igpu is 2x better performanvc per watt then ivy bridge as the intel demonstration showed.

Haswell is the biggest improvement seen in years in mobile market, you could say haswell is a game changer and amd must be scared now there apus are pointless. Intel are in a position where in 2016 if haswell succesor came out intel would still be ahead of amd as they are ahead on performance per watt they can release a lot more cores cpu.

Haswell is very good *BUT* at the chipset level... only it came too late, it doesn't matter that much anymore, 2 to 3x baterries capacity are on the market also.

As a CPU is also a failure, ~10% improvement for a "tock" is pretty low, quite a lame upgrade. On the GPU side is a good improvemnet, but how can 160 ALUs (not quite but comparable) compete with 384 of AMD in GCN format, or the "mobile" (edit) GPUs of both AMD and Nvidia. Be sure for "notebooks" haswell will have still a discrete GPU.

 

[sarinaide]

Iris is a marketing nightmare, not only is it more expensive than a entry level gamer discrete option build but delivers significantly less performance at resolutions people want. 1080 Laptop monitor is standard now and they will be shipping Iris off at 1366x768 resolutions to jockey frames, pretty hopeless. I think Iris will be the last effort of that kind by Intel or they risk ballooning die size and increasing power despite shrinking the node and it has no market as Nvidia showed. Iris is about as good as a HD6670 but then again so is a 5800/6800K at far less cost and simpler process.

 

[jdwii]

"As a CPU is also a failure, ~10% improvement for a "tock" is pretty low,"

That number is less and its worse at overclocking. To me this is just a complete failure for a CPU just like bulldozer(in pure performance no other factor)

I still say what i said earlier who needs 12 hour battery life in a laptop unless they're on a plane ride all the time and that is not the majority of the market and no one is buying windows 8 tablets at our store and like i said my friend at staples said the same thing. So give me more performance not less for more hours of battery life that 90% of people don't use. 6 hours is more than enough for battery life, i personally think its just an excuse to not make anything better except improvements in fabrication which is only 1 side of things.

Also i wonder how much money those laptops with the "high-end" Intel super extreme graphics will cost???? i can get a A10 Laptop for 500$ right now that will last 5-7 hours easily doing normal consumer things and probably last 3 hours in pure gaming.

Edit

Also when coming into the 700+ market you can get a discrete video card and pair it with a I5 or sometimes even an I7 so the only way Intel has anything in that area is in ultrabooks(which Amd jaguar will price them down to 330-400$) or if they price their laptops at 400-650$, even right now people can get a A8 laptop for 400$.

 

[sarinaide]

That or Intel is attempting to monopolise the OEM's by isolating AMD and Nvidia in a all intel platform or ultrabooks. As you can see Nvidia has taken particular disapproval to this move, basically Intel milking the cow, but this can backfire.

 

[montosaurous]

I still say what i said earlier who needs 12 hour battery life in a laptop unless they're on a plane ride all the time and that is not the majority of the market and no one is buying windows 8 tablets at our store and like i said my friend at staples said the same thing.

Tablets probably don't sell well because people either already have them or are smart enough to avoid them anyways. Besides, you gotta wait until viruses, toolbars and all that other crap becomes mainstream on tablets so the idiots who bought them can say "HUR DURR MY TABLET IS TOO OLD TO FUNCTION" when they load it up with malware, and it's from 2011. Honestly the fact that most people are complete idiots and manage to break things no matter how many times you fix it makes me want to go into programming instead of IT or networking.

 

[Cazalan]

That or Intel is attempting to monopolise the OEM's by isolating AMD and Nvidia in a all intel platform or ultrabooks. As you can see Nvidia has taken particular disapproval to this move, basically Intel milking the cow, but this can backfire.

When you go to SoC the whole point is for power reduction and cost savings. You're not plugging in high power peripherals to those parts. You get SATA/USB/HDMI ports only. The higher end PC platform is saturated. They have to drive down costs much further to try and get the other half of the world population to get "plugged in".

NVidia and AMD are both designing 64bit ARM chips. They can have a PCIe port to support their compute cards if they want.

 

[Cazalan]

And 8 core FX or "server" is the same has before... AMD can have 16 core, quad channel DDR with MCM for 1P (per socket), which was/is already quite above intel current offerings ( 8 to 10 core). I don't see the need for more now, when is the "cloud sector" that is exploding.

Apparently it's not quite above Intel enough, because AMDs server sales have fallen to 5%. They used to have much higher numbers. Intel is upping their core count by 50% to keep pace with IBM/Oracle.

 

[sarinaide]

That or Intel is attempting to monopolise the OEM's by isolating AMD and Nvidia in a all intel platform or ultrabooks. As you can see Nvidia has taken particular disapproval to this move, basically Intel milking the cow, but this can backfire.

When you go to SoC the whole point is for power reduction and cost savings. You're not plugging in high power peripherals to those parts. You get SATA/USB/HDMI ports only. The higher end PC platform is saturated. They have to drive down costs much further to try and get the other half of the world population to get "plugged in".

NVidia and AMD are both designing 64bit ARM chips. They can have a PCIe port to support their compute cards if they want.

Or AMD and Nvidia will continue to evolve their mobile GPU's to the point a entry level discrete card uses less power than Iris and beats it tenfold.

 

[Cazalan]

Not only APUs, they are a different kind of APUs. At least it is what the "slide" seems to suggest(doubt that S|A invented it).
https://semiaccurate.com/assets/uploads/2013/06/AMD-Berlin-Block-Diagram.png

Now it seems the "System I/O" is separated from the APU die... probably it will be Hypertrnasport based, and the PCIe and other interconnect will transition into the "mobo" chipset. This is remarkable and a very good evolution, maybe *in the future* (soon) we will have HTX slots for graphics adapters... or better PCIe +HTX on the same "physical" slot

The slide isn't that different from the Piledriver APU. What they now call "System I/O" used to be referred to as the Platform Controller Hub. It performs the same functions anyway.

They probably will add Hyertransport for Excavator if they want to have a 2P-4P APU.

 

[lilcinw]

/snip

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2012/0258611.html
(first hand reveal lol )

/snip

This is the most interesting link I have seen in this thread for some time. Thanks!

I assume this is AMD's response to Xeon Phi (where is Phi btw?) and will be relegated to servers for HPC work. If I am not mistaken the patent was filed prior to the SeaMicro acquisition so I wonder if this is still a planned product or if Freedom Fabric has usurped it.

 

[cowboy44mag]

Not to change the topic too dramatically, but did anyone else catch this:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/AMD-A10-6800K-Overclock-APU,23108.html

A10-6800K overclocked to over 8GHz on all cores. Impressive as I wouldn't have believed an APU able to overclock like that. Also 1.992 vcore - holy cow!! Even I wouldn't have believed an AMD APU or CPU could handle that kind of vcore without instant death.

The Richland APU is more capable than I gave it credit for, makes one wonder what Kaveri will be capable of. Still waiting for any information on Steamroller FX though!!

 

[Ranth]

lilcinw
(where is Phi btw?)

Apparently taking top500 in performance (However not in efficiency)
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7075/june-2013-top500-list-published-xeon-phi-takes-top-spot

 

[-Fran-]

Not to change the topic too dramatically, but did anyone else catch this:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/AMD-A10-6800K-Overclock-APU,23108.html

A10-6800K overclocked to over 8GHz on all cores. Impressive as I wouldn't have believed an APU able to overclock like that. Also 1.992 vcore - holy cow!! Even I wouldn't have believed an AMD APU or CPU could handle that kind of vcore without instant death.

The Richland APU is more capable than I gave it credit for, makes one wonder what Kaveri will be capable of. Still waiting for any information on Steamroller FX though!!

The fine print on that is throttling.

Cheers!

 

[Cazalan]

/snip

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2012/0258611.html
(first hand reveal lol )

/snip

This is the most interesting link I have seen in this thread for some time. Thanks!

I assume this is AMD's response to Xeon Phi (where is Phi btw?) and will be relegated to servers for HPC work. If I am not mistaken the patent was filed prior to the SeaMicro acquisition so I wonder if this is still a planned product or if Freedom Fabric has usurped it.

Why is it every time I read a patent application nothing looks novel. They're putting relays in front of a connector to switch from DC coupling to AC coupling. Big deal.

They really should just shut down the patent office. It's become a joke.

 

[juanrga]

A classical game of RIP-OFF, which is usually what they do with intel, above $1000 pieces (brrr... insane!), and the FX (high clock) should land very close to the performance of HPDT of intel, specially on Linux (if not pass).

The 8350 @ stock is already able to compete with extreme 3960X thanks to advances in GCC 4.8. The Centurion with its 20% more performance would win in several benchmarks and destroy the 3770k.

The irony is that some demos at E3 were running on real Xbox1 whereas others run in a high-end gaming PC with a GTX-780. This seems to confirm my prediction that the minimum PC for matching a next gen console is a i7 + GTX-780

But heres my point: If the games were optimised for AMD/AMD, why demo on Intel/NVIDIA? And if optimized for consoles then ported over to the PC, then why demo the PC version?

But I doubt that any first gen game was optimized. Optimization is left for latter years, by two reasons (i) developers need time to learn the new hardware/software and (ii) optimization is as games evolve in a console ecosystem (in contrast, the PC ecosystem relies heavily in hardware upgrades).

I think games that run on PCs were simply ports.