AMD CPU speculation... and expert conjecture

[juanrga]

Spoiler

I explicitly called some tasks, such as rendering and encoding, massively parallel. You can simply add more cores on specialized co-processors (GPUs) to infinity to improve performance of those tasks. And yes, anything to do with processing data can be made massively parallel. I'm not arguing that point. I'm arguing Juans argument that every task under the sun can be handled this way. It can't, and for those tasks, you are limited by how long it takes your serial processing to complete.

You would read your own posts and the replies:

AMD seems to be banking on all software becoming massively parallel

No. In fact, the HSA architecture is explicitly designed to deal with both serial and parallel software at once.

Are you aware that HSA requires a hardware architecture with both serial and parallel compute units?

Of course serial code will be needed for those tasks that cannot be parallelized, but those are a minority, probably the 10%.

I see that you are still confused about what HSA is and does.

 

[8350rocks]

Spoiler

Like forum cred is a reason to break an NDA. This is just for entertainment.

This is the most accurate comment about the mindset of AMD to this point...the issue is lack of opportunity to do it well, and after the BD launch, they are not keen on having another product come out that does not meet expectations.

Jim Keller is working on it...that is all I can say...(though I am also under NDA...you can read between the lines I am sure...)

Up until the launch date of Kaveri, you were still clinging to the hope that it would be SOI and not bulk. You also had no foreknowledge of Mantle, HSA, TrueAudio or TressFX. You even thought that Mantle was in the Linux version of Catalyst.

I mean, surely you can understand why any of us may be skeptical about your supposed insider knowledge. Personally, my internal BS-o-meter is waving like the Queen on a state visit.

Throw us a bone, something that will be verifiable later on (so we can look back and say, "He was right!") and not vague like, "AMD are going to release a better chip some time in 2015."

To be honest that's over Amd not telling all of their engineers the truth sorry that happens i was told that as well, the truth is not everyone has access to everything at Amd.

This pretty much sums it up...

I cannot talk about what may or may not be coming...if there is anything they deem "leakable" I will bring it up...otherwise I would not violate an agreement.

EDIT: Regarding MANTLE support for Linux, AMD has said that would be coming...as one of my top concerns for partnering as a developer is Linux/OSX support and I have assurances from very reputable sources "on high" that Linux/OSX support is indeed coming, sooner rather than later. Though I was not given a timetable specifically...

 

[con635]

The next hedt cpu from amd will be an apu imo, whats so bad about apus? If amd crammed 4 sandy bridge level x86 cores on to a good igp with hsa on fm2+ I would jump for joy. The whole point of hsa is the igp is used for parallel cpu tasks, when sw catches up apus will destroy the traditional cpu*, a dgpu can be used with an apu and with hsa 90% of the chip not going to waste and not in traditional xfire/dual graphics.
Imagine an a8 ****k, unlocked quad core with i5 2500k level x86 cores, hsa and a £70 price tag.

*or in 5 years we'll be discussing something else and the odd poster will chirp in with 'remember hsa, imagine if that had have worked, would've been amazing........'

 

[juanrga]

If you think I base my estimations of what may or may not be coming on anything I see on the internet, you are so far off base that I cannot, and will not, even begin to have the conversation with you about what you do not know.

I don't care from where you get your info: someone at AMD, internet forums, or crystal ball.

I don't care about all your predictions being wrong: your pretension that AM3 would provide an upgrade path to Steamroller-FX series; your claim Kaveri was being delayed because AMD had migrated it from bulk to 28nm FDSOI at Glofo; your claim about a AM4 mobo being ready in certain chinese website...

I care when you go here and post your typical "my contact at AMD said so, trust me".

 

[juanrga]

Spoiler

GamerK, you do realize Bulldozer was designed to be a server chip first and foremost. Meaning it was designed to run in situations where apache creates a thread and runs in on a CPU core for every request.

You have it backwards. You are thinking AMD designed 8 core CPU because they thought multi-threaded software was coming.

They basically designed a server chip, found it didn't meet most demands of current software for desktop consumers, and then tried to push developers into using more cores for things.

But as for those of you who think that the PC is dying, well.

The "PC is dying" numbers don't include DIY sales. In fact, the whole "PC is dying" thing is only referring to people who buy pre-built systems from Dell, Wal-Mart, etc.

So, imagine in your head how many people used to buy desktops before smartphones, tablets, and laptops were the main computing devices. Now imagine that the DIY market is growing enough to substantialy offset a bunch of shmucks who can't built their own computers. These internet blogs and finance sites love to grab the number of PC shipments from Dell, Gateway, etc and then go "ZOMG DESKTOP SKY IS FALLING ITS ALL OVER BUY 5 iPADS SO YOU CAN MULTITASK!!!!!" without even thinking about how accessible and easy it has become to build your own computer or how that market is basically exploding much faster than console sales are.

I could see AMD releasing an HEDT platform if they can get some form of HSA working across dGPU and dCPU. It doesn't have to be as good as HSA on an APU, but it needs to at least be better than just straight up OpenCL. Which, I think is possible. It makes more sense to release a gimped HSA and more powerful traditional computing platform.

The big thing some of you are forgetting is that HSA depends on software success. The majority of people who are into HEDT are early adopters of technology and are usually rather vocal about their purchases. They are ideal candidates for HSA. It would also provoke more companies to write more HSA software.

From a software developer's standpoint, AMD sort of needs an HSA HEDT platform. HSA exists to increase performance and an AMD APU will never be as fast as two big dCPUs and dGPUs. So the high end people will never move to APU only. Yet at the same time APU is the only thing that can do HSA and HSA is used to push performance. I don't want to beat a dead horse, but convincing people to drop traditional performance for the sake of "maybe someday you can get HSA for the software you need to use!" isn't going to work on anyone.

AMD needs HSA HEDT platform to spur software development of HSA software. Imagine if we saw HEDT platform where games ran Mantle, could access memory of each GPU and main system memory without having to copy everything to VRAM like we do for AFR, and you have another GPU doing physics and another doing global illumination calculations. It's like PhysX before Nvidia destroyed it and turned it into "lets give the part of a computer which is usually a bottleneck in games more computation to do so we can sell more chips!" (remember old PPUs?), but on steroids.

To put AMD HEDT platform into perspective for you all.

How many would switch from an Intel i7, i5 or AMD FX 3m/6c or better to AMD APU with HSA if it meant a few of your programs where HSA accelerated but you lost performance in traditional programs?

And how many of you would switch from an Intel i7, i5 or AMD FX 3m/6c or better to a platform that was HSA capable (but was less efficient at HSA than a full fledged APU) but had 5m/10c or better Steamroller or Excavator CPU with at least one Tahiti or Hawaii class GPU?

The answer is obvious to me. The second one sounds better. Perhaps HSA would be a lot slower than if you put Hawaii class GPU on the same die as 5m/10c FX class CPU, but if it ends up 40% faster than just plain old OpenCL (or CUDA for that matter) while APU is 200% faster, does it even matter? It's still faster than regular OpenCL and CUDA. Which, IMO, is a win. It is not the best that HSA can do but it should still be significantly better than no HSA at all.

But that is why I think HEDT AMD platform still makes sense. HSA depends on getting a lot of HSA capable systems up and running. And ignoring the HEDT platform, which is full of knowledgeable people who basically go on forums to advertise for free (like we're all doing now), is a massive mistake and a massive missed opportunity for AMD if they just stick to APUs forever.

1) AMD designed a server chip, but Intel also did and whereas Intel is not selling 8-cores for mainstream desktop AMD did. The reason why AMD released 6-core and 8-core for mainstream was because couldn't compete with Intel in a core to core basis:

FX-4000 (2 module) <---> i3 (2 core + HT)
FX-6000 (3 module) <---> i5 (4 core) ~ (3 core + HT )
FX-8000 (4 module) <---> i7 (4 core + HT)

2) The PC is dying. AMD is immerse in a re-direction of up to the 50% of the production to semi-custom market outside of PC. Nvidia and Intel are redirecting towards mobile.

Analyst's prediction of 7% increase in a niche enthusiasts market is not going to change the big numbers and, thus, AMD, Nvidia, and Intel will continue with their re-structuring plans towards news market outside of traditional PC.

3) AMD knows that APU scales up much better than dCPU+dGPU. AMD knows that dCPU and dGPU will disappear in some few years, and AMD knows that HSA doesn't work for dCPU+dGPU: complexity is increased a lot of, whereas performance is reduced by at least a factor of 10.

4) AMD will release a new HEDT platform, but it will be an APU.

On 14nm AMD can add 8 big CPU cores and 2048 GPU cores in about the same die size than current Kaveri APU.

With fast memory* that APU will be much faster than (FX-9590 + R9-280X) whereas consuming a fraction of the power.

* As mentioned before AMD is working hard on having stacked RAM ready for Basilisk APU.

 

[etayorius]

Will Carrizo have Six Cores and improved Single Threaded IPC? if so, i may just wait till Carrizo... now with MANTLE a stronger CPU seems a bit irrelevant for now, but there is the issue with FM2+ not getting more support after Carrizo.

 

[anxiousinfusion]

Carrizo remains on the 28nm process. I really think it will just be another "evolutionary" improvement. Still only four cores, and a clock bump.

 

[palladin9479]

2) The PC is dying. AMD is immerse in a re-direction of up to the 50% of the production to semi-custom market outside of PC. Nvidia and Intel are redirecting towards mobile.

Analyst's prediction of 7% increase in a niche enthusiasts market is not going to change the big numbers and, thus, AMD, Nvidia, and Intel will continue with their re-structuring plans towards news market outside of traditional PC.

3) AMD knows that APU scales up much better than dCPU+dGPU. AMD knows that dCPU and dGPU will disappear in some few years, and AMD knows that HSA doesn't work for dCPU+dGPU: complexity is increased a lot of, whereas performance is reduced by at least a factor of 10.

This is all untrue.

The PC Market is not dieing, it's reached saturation and people are only buying new systems to replace old systems. The total number of PC's present in house holds has not diminished. Further this means that increased profits from expansion are no longer possible and now increased profits must come from existing market share, this creates intense competition.

APU's definitely do not "scales up much better than dCPU+dGPU" and dGPU's will not disappear anytime in the next decade. Earlier I listed the physics on why this isn't possible, anything you can do in an APU you can do 4~5x in a separated combination. For this reason APU's will always be a value product. iGPU's are this sudden new thing, we've had them for decades. My first computer had an integrated Tseng labs VGA adapter with 512kb of video memory. ATI, S3 and even Intel have all been creating onboard graphics adapters. You can argue they have gotten progressively better but so has discrete cards. The iGPU inside the 7700 and 7850 are both fairly weak GPU's in comparison to whats available on the market for $100~120 USD, just like the integrated video adapters of the 90's and 2000's were weak vs discrete offerings.

Or are you going to try to convince me a 600mm^2 350W APU is even remotely efficient?

 

[Cazalan]

Audio has been integrated for a while as well but those looking for enthusiast quality audio still buy discrete cards.

 

[palladin9479]

Audio has been integrated for a while as well but those looking for enthusiast quality audio still buy discrete cards.

Yep and audio is a several orders of magnitude easier then 3D video.

 

[Cazalan]

On 14nm AMD can add 8 big CPU cores and 2048 GPU cores in about the same die size than current Kaveri APU.

That would be ~7.23B transistors. By some estimates the density of GF 28SHP is closer to 24nm than 28nm. You're not going to get that kind of scaling with the hybrid 14nm node which still has a 20nm back end. They could do it of course but it would be closer to the size of the PS4 APU (348mm²) rather than Kaveri (245mm²).

 

[palladin9479]

7850K is 2.41 billion transistors at 256mm^2 for 28SHP. Getting nearly 8bn transistors into a single die creates a huge engineering problem. The IBM Power 8 CPU will have 4.2bn transistors on a 675mm^2 CPU at 22nm SOI and a TDP estimated to be around 200W. Getting 8bn transistors on an affordable sub 300mm^2 100W package ain't happening anytime soon.

 

[Cazalan]

7850K is 2.41 billion transistors at 256mm^2 for 28SHP. Getting nearly 8bn transistors into a single die creates a huge engineering problem. The IBM Power 8 CPU will have 4.2bn transistors on a 675mm^2 CPU at 22nm SOI and a TDP estimated to be around 200W. Getting 8bn transistors on an affordable sub 300mm^2 100W package ain't happening anytime soon.

Something seems off with the transistor count IBM provided. Maybe excluding some cache. It is crazy huge though. Palm sized!

Spoiler

The NVidia GK110 is 7.1B transistors and 561 mm² on a 28nm process.

 

[jdwii]

If you think I base my estimations of what may or may not be coming on anything I see on the internet, you are so far off base that I cannot, and will not, even begin to have the conversation with you about what you do not know.

I don't care from where you get your info: someone at AMD, internet forums, or crystal ball.

I don't care about all your predictions being wrong: your pretension that AM3 would provide an upgrade path to Steamroller-FX series; your claim Kaveri was being delayed because AMD had migrated it from bulk to 28nm FDSOI at Glofo; your claim about a AM4 mobo being ready in certain chinese website...

I care when you go here and post your typical "my contact at AMD said so, trust me".

say's the person who claims he has psychic abilities

 

[Cazalan]

Carrizo remains on the 28nm process. I really think it will just be another "evolutionary" improvement. Still only four cores, and a clock bump.

I wish they had enough money to make more than one die config. My last 3 video cards are all faster than the 8 CU they currently have in there.

 

[jdwii]

Spoiler

GamerK, you do realize Bulldozer was designed to be a server chip first and foremost. Meaning it was designed to run in situations where apache creates a thread and runs in on a CPU core for every request.

You have it backwards. You are thinking AMD designed 8 core CPU because they thought multi-threaded software was coming.

They basically designed a server chip, found it didn't meet most demands of current software for desktop consumers, and then tried to push developers into using more cores for things.

But as for those of you who think that the PC is dying, well.

The "PC is dying" numbers don't include DIY sales. In fact, the whole "PC is dying" thing is only referring to people who buy pre-built systems from Dell, Wal-Mart, etc.

So, imagine in your head how many people used to buy desktops before smartphones, tablets, and laptops were the main computing devices. Now imagine that the DIY market is growing enough to substantialy offset a bunch of shmucks who can't built their own computers. These internet blogs and finance sites love to grab the number of PC shipments from Dell, Gateway, etc and then go "ZOMG DESKTOP SKY IS FALLING ITS ALL OVER BUY 5 iPADS SO YOU CAN MULTITASK!!!!!" without even thinking about how accessible and easy it has become to build your own computer or how that market is basically exploding much faster than console sales are.

I could see AMD releasing an HEDT platform if they can get some form of HSA working across dGPU and dCPU. It doesn't have to be as good as HSA on an APU, but it needs to at least be better than just straight up OpenCL. Which, I think is possible. It makes more sense to release a gimped HSA and more powerful traditional computing platform.

The big thing some of you are forgetting is that HSA depends on software success. The majority of people who are into HEDT are early adopters of technology and are usually rather vocal about their purchases. They are ideal candidates for HSA. It would also provoke more companies to write more HSA software.

From a software developer's standpoint, AMD sort of needs an HSA HEDT platform. HSA exists to increase performance and an AMD APU will never be as fast as two big dCPUs and dGPUs. So the high end people will never move to APU only. Yet at the same time APU is the only thing that can do HSA and HSA is used to push performance. I don't want to beat a dead horse, but convincing people to drop traditional performance for the sake of "maybe someday you can get HSA for the software you need to use!" isn't going to work on anyone.

AMD needs HSA HEDT platform to spur software development of HSA software. Imagine if we saw HEDT platform where games ran Mantle, could access memory of each GPU and main system memory without having to copy everything to VRAM like we do for AFR, and you have another GPU doing physics and another doing global illumination calculations. It's like PhysX before Nvidia destroyed it and turned it into "lets give the part of a computer which is usually a bottleneck in games more computation to do so we can sell more chips!" (remember old PPUs?), but on steroids.

To put AMD HEDT platform into perspective for you all.

How many would switch from an Intel i7, i5 or AMD FX 3m/6c or better to AMD APU with HSA if it meant a few of your programs where HSA accelerated but you lost performance in traditional programs?

And how many of you would switch from an Intel i7, i5 or AMD FX 3m/6c or better to a platform that was HSA capable (but was less efficient at HSA than a full fledged APU) but had 5m/10c or better Steamroller or Excavator CPU with at least one Tahiti or Hawaii class GPU?

The answer is obvious to me. The second one sounds better. Perhaps HSA would be a lot slower than if you put Hawaii class GPU on the same die as 5m/10c FX class CPU, but if it ends up 40% faster than just plain old OpenCL (or CUDA for that matter) while APU is 200% faster, does it even matter? It's still faster than regular OpenCL and CUDA. Which, IMO, is a win. It is not the best that HSA can do but it should still be significantly better than no HSA at all.

But that is why I think HEDT AMD platform still makes sense. HSA depends on getting a lot of HSA capable systems up and running. And ignoring the HEDT platform, which is full of knowledgeable people who basically go on forums to advertise for free (like we're all doing now), is a massive mistake and a massive missed opportunity for AMD if they just stick to APUs forever.

1) AMD designed a server chip, but Intel also did and whereas Intel is not selling 8-cores for mainstream desktop AMD did. The reason why AMD released 6-core and 8-core for mainstream was because couldn't compete with Intel in a core to core basis:

FX-4000 (2 module) <---> i3 (2 core + HT)
FX-6000 (3 module) <---> i5 (4 core) ~ (3 core + HT )
FX-8000 (4 module) <---> i7 (4 core + HT)

2) The PC is dying. AMD is immerse in a re-direction of up to the 50% of the production to semi-custom market outside of PC. Nvidia and Intel are redirecting towards mobile.

Analyst's prediction of 7% increase in a niche enthusiasts market is not going to change the big numbers and, thus, AMD, Nvidia, and Intel will continue with their re-structuring plans towards news market outside of traditional PC.

3) AMD knows that APU scales up much better than dCPU+dGPU. AMD knows that dCPU and dGPU will disappear in some few years, and AMD knows that HSA doesn't work for dCPU+dGPU: complexity is increased a lot of, whereas performance is reduced by at least a factor of 10.

4) AMD will release a new HEDT platform, but it will be an APU.

On 14nm AMD can add 8 big CPU cores and 2048 GPU cores in about the same die size than current Kaveri APU.

With fast memory* that APU will be much faster than (FX-9590 + R9-280X) whereas consuming a fraction of the power.

* As mentioned before AMD is working hard on having stacked RAM ready for Basilisk APU.

Ok come on i claimed this back in the BD thread from my contact and now you are saying i'm wrong really. The dude i know from Amd told me they wished the I7 and 8 core FX BD could compete on this level but it couldn't and was positioned at the I5 2500K instead. I'm sorry juan but some things you continue to claim just don't add up not all of them but some of them.

 

[jdwii]

2) The PC is dying. AMD is immerse in a re-direction of up to the 50% of the production to semi-custom market outside of PC. Nvidia and Intel are redirecting towards mobile.

Analyst's prediction of 7% increase in a niche enthusiasts market is not going to change the big numbers and, thus, AMD, Nvidia, and Intel will continue with their re-structuring plans towards news market outside of traditional PC.

3) AMD knows that APU scales up much better than dCPU+dGPU. AMD knows that dCPU and dGPU will disappear in some few years, and AMD knows that HSA doesn't work for dCPU+dGPU: complexity is increased a lot of, whereas performance is reduced by at least a factor of 10.

This is all untrue.

The PC Market is not dieing, it's reached saturation and people are only buying new systems to replace old systems. The total number of PC's present in house holds has not diminished. Further this means that increased profits from expansion are no longer possible and now increased profits must come from existing market share, this creates intense competition.

APU's definitely do not "scales up much better than dCPU+dGPU" and dGPU's will not disappear anytime in the next decade. Earlier I listed the physics on why this isn't possible, anything you can do in an APU you can do 4~5x in a separated combination. For this reason APU's will always be a value product. iGPU's are this sudden new thing, we've had them for decades. My first computer had an integrated Tseng labs VGA adapter with 512kb of video memory. ATI, S3 and even Intel have all been creating onboard graphics adapters. You can argue they have gotten progressively better but so has discrete cards. The iGPU inside the 7700 and 7850 are both fairly weak GPU's in comparison to whats available on the market for $100~120 USD, just like the integrated video adapters of the 90's and 2000's were weak vs discrete offerings.

Or are you going to try to convince me a 600mm^2 350W APU is even remotely efficient?

You have to understand where he is coming from. Its from someplace i like to call imaginationland its a beautiful place where anything is possible ranging from Intel killing off discrete cards to Amd only caring about Arm. I love this place in that place i can become anything a psychic or a person who understands the laws of physics.

 

[palladin9479]

7850K is 2.41 billion transistors at 256mm^2 for 28SHP. Getting nearly 8bn transistors into a single die creates a huge engineering problem. The IBM Power 8 CPU will have 4.2bn transistors on a 675mm^2 CPU at 22nm SOI and a TDP estimated to be around 200W. Getting 8bn transistors on an affordable sub 300mm^2 100W package ain't happening anytime soon.

Something seems off with the transistor count IBM provided. Maybe excluding some cache. It is crazy huge though. Palm sized!

Spoiler

The NVidia GK110 is 7.1B transistors and 561 mm² on a 28nm process.

Different process's and design's. General purpose CPU's are more complex then GPU's and contain many separate subsystems. Remember many things that used to be done in the north-bridge are now done on the CPU, all that logic circuitry had to move in with it. If you look at die shots of modern CPU's you'll notice that the part that does 90%+ of the work only consumes a very small space (the ALU's).

 

[de5_Roy]

i dunno about pcs dying and crap, but recent findings suggest pc games' sales surpassed console games, mainly due to games like dota 2 and LoL. and it's growing...?
http://techreport.com/news/26380/analyst-global-pc-game-sales-surpass-consoles
my pc's alive and kickin'. but i replace my phones. as in teh olde phone be dead to me. i've noticed others do the same with their own portable devices. closed, locked form-factor devices with limited usage lifetime has only one end - disposal.

In pictures: Massive EVE Online monument unveiled in Iceland's capital
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2150040/in-pictures-massive-eve-online-monument-unveiled-in-icelands-capital.html

 

[juanrga]

Will Carrizo have Six Cores and improved Single Threaded IPC? if so, i may just wait till Carrizo... now with MANTLE a stronger CPU seems a bit irrelevant for now, but there is the issue with FM2+ not getting more support after Carrizo.

The answer to your questions are "no" and "yes". However, Carrizo will be limited by a cut down to 65W TDP and lower clocks.

 

[juanrga]

2) The PC is dying. AMD is immerse in a re-direction of up to the 50% of the production to semi-custom market outside of PC. Nvidia and Intel are redirecting towards mobile.

Analyst's prediction of 7% increase in a niche enthusiasts market is not going to change the big numbers and, thus, AMD, Nvidia, and Intel will continue with their re-structuring plans towards news market outside of traditional PC.

3) AMD knows that APU scales up much better than dCPU+dGPU. AMD knows that dCPU and dGPU will disappear in some few years, and AMD knows that HSA doesn't work for dCPU+dGPU: complexity is increased a lot of, whereas performance is reduced by at least a factor of 10.

This is all untrue.

The PC Market is not dieing, it's reached saturation and people are only buying new systems to replace old systems. The total number of PC's present in house holds has not diminished. Further this means that increased profits from expansion are no longer possible and now increased profits must come from existing market share, this creates intense competition.

APU's definitely do not "scales up much better than dCPU+dGPU" and dGPU's will not disappear anytime in the next decade. Earlier I listed the physics on why this isn't possible, anything you can do in an APU you can do 4~5x in a separated combination. For this reason APU's will always be a value product. iGPU's are this sudden new thing, we've had them for decades. My first computer had an integrated Tseng labs VGA adapter with 512kb of video memory. ATI, S3 and even Intel have all been creating onboard graphics adapters. You can argue they have gotten progressively better but so has discrete cards. The iGPU inside the 7700 and 7850 are both fairly weak GPU's in comparison to whats available on the market for $100~120 USD, just like the integrated video adapters of the 90's and 2000's were weak vs discrete offerings.

Or are you going to try to convince me a 600mm^2 350W APU is even remotely efficient?

I already showed you why your physics is incorrect. I gave you some correct physics numbers.

I gave you a quote from Nvidia Research Team mentioning how they predict that dGPUs will disappear in favor of iGPUs integrated in APUs.

I gave you a SC13 slide from Intel showing how their current Phi discrete card will be replaced by a standalone 'CPU' the next year. I gave you three links with Intel and others people predicting that gaming dGPUs will be killed in some few years.

I also mentioned you that AMD, Nvidia, and everyone else in the research community is designing APUs for supercomputers, because a dCPU+gGPU doesn't scale up. I already explained you why doesn't scale up.

I already gave details of the ultra-high-performance APUs currently designed by AMD and Nvidia. I repeat: the Nvidia one is rated at 300W and has a size of 290mm.

I got finally the design by Intel for exascale. Their expected die size is 400 mm^2. I could give more details if anyone is interested.

The PC market is dying

http://news.yahoo.com/pc-dying-death-thousand-cuts-040011100.html

Gardner last reports admits it is "the worst decline in PC market history."

And each player in the traditional PC market has a plan to migrate to alternative markets.

Microsoft plan are tablets and phones.

Logitech pivoted to tablets

http://qz.com/170096/pcs-are-dying-so-logitech-pivoted-to-tablets-and-had-a-surprisingly-profitable-quarter/

Apple did to tablets and phones

http://www.cultofmac.com/273905/pc-market-dying-even-apple-apple-plan/

Intel did to phones/tablets and buzzyword "internet of things"

Nvidia did to tablets/phones and embedded (cars) and is transforming itself from a graphics PC company to a mobile company:

If you need any more evidence that we have moved into a post-PC era, the quote from NVIDIA President and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang should be a clear indication for you. [...] Huang also dropped numbers about how NVIDIA was doing with an increase of 13% bringing the company $1.2 billion from just this last quarter. It was mentioned that the Tegra line, was making up for the downturn in PC sales numbers.

http://www.droid-life.com/2012/11/09/president-of-nvidia-says-a-great-tablet-is-better-than-a-cheap-pc/

AMD transition outside of the dying PC market has been explained again and again and again and again, but some people don't get it still. I will repeat it once again:

Now on the last stage, AMD is transforming from a company where 96% of its revenue relied on the dying PC, into one that will incorporate its products into high-growth markets that will make up 50% of its revenue by the end of 2015

CEO Rory Read shines light on this transformation to the public

Earlier this month, Rory Read was able to enlighten the public on this transition thanks to interviews by Bloomberg and CNBC. Spiking shares by as much as 6% that day, it was clear that this transition, along with Rory's confidence was not common knowledge. Rory heavily emphasized on how AMD was transforming its company's dependency from primarily on the PC into a business model that features a half-PC, half-diverse product portfolio, which focuses on high-growth markets, such as dense cloud servers, gaming, medical, semi-custom chips, and more. This is a very promising approach, as the old AMD was risky because all it took in a weakening PC market to be knocked out was a set of inferior products - which is exactly what happened. Plummeting PC sales, along with Intel's superior product lineup blew AMD near extinction.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/2115183-a-new-amd-is-emerging

 

[juanrga]

On 14nm AMD can add 8 big CPU cores and 2048 GPU cores in about the same die size than current Kaveri APU.

That would be ~7.23B transistors. By some estimates the density of GF 28SHP is closer to 24nm than 28nm. You're not going to get that kind of scaling with the hybrid 14nm node which still has a 20nm back end. They could do it of course but it would be closer to the size of the PS4 APU (348mm²) rather than Kaveri (245mm²).

Yes this HEDT APU would be close to 300mm² than 250mm², but I still obtain sub-300mm² in a first estimation (which already includes the 20nm back-end).

For the sake of comparison, the FX-8000 CPU is about 315mm² and it is not the larger x86 CPU in the market.

 

[juanrga]

1) AMD designed a server chip, but Intel also did and whereas Intel is not selling 8-cores for mainstream desktop AMD did. The reason why AMD released 6-core and 8-core for mainstream was because couldn't compete with Intel in a core to core basis:

FX-4000 (2 module) <---> i3 (2 core + HT)
FX-6000 (3 module) <---> i5 (4 core) ~ (3 core + HT )
FX-8000 (4 module) <---> i7 (4 core + HT)

2) The PC is dying. AMD is immerse in a re-direction of up to the 50% of the production to semi-custom market outside of PC. Nvidia and Intel are redirecting towards mobile.

Analyst's prediction of 7% increase in a niche enthusiasts market is not going to change the big numbers and, thus, AMD, Nvidia, and Intel will continue with their re-structuring plans towards news market outside of traditional PC.

3) AMD knows that APU scales up much better than dCPU+dGPU. AMD knows that dCPU and dGPU will disappear in some few years, and AMD knows that HSA doesn't work for dCPU+dGPU: complexity is increased a lot of, whereas performance is reduced by at least a factor of 10.

4) AMD will release a new HEDT platform, but it will be an APU.

On 14nm AMD can add 8 big CPU cores and 2048 GPU cores in about the same die size than current Kaveri APU.

With fast memory* that APU will be much faster than (FX-9590 + R9-280X) whereas consuming a fraction of the power.

* As mentioned before AMD is working hard on having stacked RAM ready for Basilisk APU.

Ok come on i claimed this back in the BD thread from my contact and now you are saying i'm wrong really. The dude i know from Amd told me they wished the I7 and 8 core FX BD could compete on this level but it couldn't and was positioned at the I5 2500K instead. I'm sorry juan but some things you continue to claim just don't add up not all of them but some of them.

Under your belowed Windows, which is terribly coded, badly threaded, and doesn't understand the CMT architecture a FX-8350 suffers against an i5 or even an i3. Under a modern and efficient operative system as linux, which is very well threaded, and CMT aware, the FX-8350 is toe to toe with an i7-3770k.

The i7 wins in FP tasks and the FX wins in integer tasks. The average being the i7 only about a 10% faster.

Everyone who owns an 8-core FX and use it in both Windows and linux knows how well the chip runs under linux.

Similar stuff about games. On badly threaded games, the 8-core has difficulties to stand against an i3. On well threaded games? The FX outperforms the i5 and matches the i7.

 

[gamerk316]

GamerK, you do realize Bulldozer was designed to be a server chip first and foremost

I win. The forums now accepts my analysis from the initial BD reveal.

Under your belowed Windows, which is terribly coded, badly threaded, and doesn't understand the CMT architecture a FX-8350 suffers against an i5 or even an i3. Under a modern and efficient operative system as linux, which is very well threaded, and CMT aware, the FX-8350 is toe to toe with an i7-3770k.

I'm assuming you're referring to this:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_fx8350_visherabdver2&num=1

By a quick review, Intel wins overall 9-7-3 (W/L/T). Though its worth noting many of the benchmarks can be run in Windows, with the SAME RESULTS, blowing a hole in your "The OS is the problem" theory. AMD problem is, depending on workload, you need to handle CMT differently. In light threaded tasks, you need to schedule on one module if you can, so you can turbo clocks. In highly threaded tasks, you need to schedule on as many modules as you can and avoid the 2nd modules 20% performance hit. And since the OS doesn't know ahead of time what type of workload you have, there is a 50% chance the scheduler will be wrong. The BD scheduling patch basically made the scheduler treat CMT the same as HTT, improving the highly threaded workload case, but reducing performance for the single threaded workload case.

Its also worth noting the tests AMD wins are the tests that are naturally well threaded, which is expected.

The main argument against BD has always been "Why does a newer processor with a 600MHz speed advantage and twice as many cores generally only do almost as good as a chip produced by Intel two years ago?". That's why BD has been so underwhelming. Part of that is because some people hyped the arch to death, promising an Intel killer. BD was never going to be that.

Similar stuff about games. On badly threaded games, the 8-core has difficulties to stand against an i3. On well threaded games? The FX outperforms the i5 and matches the i7.

Even though "well threaded" games like BF4 favor Intel?

 

[gamerk316]

Also, as far as Phi goes: I still remember the Larrabee 'discussion' (to put it nicely) I had with JDJ, and predicted it would tank due to performance woes. It did.

What Phi essentially is, like Larrabee, is a bunch of serial processors (Modified P5 arch) wired together. Which makes it more flexible then GPU's, but ends up costing it performance in comparison due to the lack of specialized hardware. Its essentially large scale multicore CPU architecture, that will "Do better" in massively parallel tasks, but never as good as a dGPU simply due to the basic design premise. Its a dead-end arch, and the wrong approach to parallel computing.