AMD CPU speculation... and expert conjecture

[-Fran-]

He SPECIFICALLY said on the HW. You can do it SW, sure, through conversion of each and every CPU opcode. Doable, but slower then a HW only mechanism.

Decoder with a bypass?

The reason why CPUs don't read ARMv7/8 in X86 and vice-versa is not technical, as usual, but business/economical and legal.

You can add a big-enough decoder with the capability to read X86 and ARMv7/8 with no problems, but then your decoder will be a bloated mess and use too much die space; enough to impact the actual CPU parts that matter for performance (iGPU anyone? ). And that is leaving outside the kernel part of the OS to actually send the instructions. Go tell MS they need to modify the Windows Kernel to support that, haha. I don't really know how IBM did it, nor I do care, but it is possible to do it, just not feasible IMO. At least, not without emulation to be cost effective.

So, given that, I really don't think AMD will deliver a "hybrid" of any sort. It will be one or the other (mutually exclusive) and that's about it...

Also, palladin, you "sound" angry on every post, are you having a hard day or something? haha.

Cheers!

 

[jdwii]

Oh no X86 watch out Arm can now emulate a game from the early 90's.

 

[wh3resmycar]

uhm i wonder why folks keep on praising these consoles as "optimized" pieces of hardware. there's no magic in what they're doing.

any i5 + $150 gpu can do 900p @ 30fps with 2xAA/8xAF with contemporary games with ease. now are these consoles actually delivering more performance than conceived or less?

barely-there 1080p gaming and these machines are "optimized"? why are we kidding ourselves?

 

[8350rocks]

uhm i wonder why folks keep on praising these consoles as "optimized" pieces of hardware. there's no magic in what they're doing.

any i5 + $150 gpu can do 900p @ 30fps with 2xAA/8xAF with contemporary games with ease. now are these consoles actually delivering more performance than conceived or less?

barely-there 1080p gaming and these machines are "optimized"? why are we kidding ourselves?

They say "optimized" because it is a single hardware setup, which allows close to the metal coding. That eliminates many layers of hardware abstraction, which in turn speeds up performance from the same hardware that would normally be dealing with all sorts of abstraction layers because of the possibilities of hardware choices.

So, essentially, because all PS4 machines are the same hardware, game developers can now code specifically to take maximum advantage of that hardware without having to worry about abstracting certain features of their game through software because your choice of GPU in a PC can be one of hundreds of options.

 

[CooLWoLF]

uhm i wonder why folks keep on praising these consoles as "optimized" pieces of hardware. there's no magic in what they're doing.

any i5 + $150 gpu can do 900p @ 30fps with 2xAA/8xAF with contemporary games with ease. now are these consoles actually delivering more performance than conceived or less?

barely-there 1080p gaming and these machines are "optimized"? why are we kidding ourselves?

They say "optimized" because it is a single hardware setup, which allows close to the metal coding. That eliminates many layers of hardware abstraction, which in turn speeds up performance from the same hardware that would normally be dealing with all sorts of abstraction layers because of the possibilities of hardware choices.

So, essentially, because all PS4 machines are the same hardware, game developers can now code specifically to take maximum advantage of that hardware without having to worry about abstracting certain features of their game through software because your choice of GPU in a PC can be one of hundreds of options.

Don't bother feeding the "pc master race" trolls.

They don't understand that PC and consoles can live together with benefits to both.

 

[-Fran-]

Oh no X86 watch out Arm can now emulate a game from the early 90's.

Well, I was fairly happy when my Pentium II was able to emulate SNES games with no frame drops

Anyway... http://www.engadget.com/2014/06/01/hp-slatebook/

Tegra 4 in notebook form. Any bets?

Cheers!

EDIT: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTcwNjQ and http://timothylottes.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/re-joshua-barczaks-opengl-is-broken.html

Looks like some people have very polarized visions of the state of OGL. Interesting. Worth a read!

 

[juanrga]

He SPECIFICALLY said on the HW. You can do it SW, sure, through conversion of each and every CPU opcode. Doable, but slower then a HW only mechanism.

Decoder with a bypass?

The reason why CPUs don't read ARMv7/8 in X86 and vice-versa is not technical, as usual, but business/economical and legal.

You can add a big-enough decoder with the capability to read X86 and ARMv7/8 with no problems, but then your decoder will be a bloated mess and use too much die space; enough to impact the actual CPU parts that matter for performance (iGPU anyone? ). And that is leaving outside the kernel part of the OS to actually send the instructions. Go tell MS they need to modify the Windows Kernel to support that, haha. I don't really know how IBM did it, nor I do care, but it is possible to do it, just not feasible IMO. At least, not without emulation to be cost effective.

So, given that, I really don't think AMD will deliver a "hybrid" of any sort. It will be one or the other (mutually exclusive) and that's about it...

Also, palladin, you "sound" angry on every post, are you having a hard day or something? haha.

Cheers!

I also think that AMD will release repleacable (pin compatible) cores: either x86 or ARM but not any hybrid. (*)

(*) Except x86/ARM hybrids such as Steamroller where the ARM core runs some security background tasks.

 

[Fearnot]

Some more data about http://ifitcanreachspace.com/

When countdown hits zero the page will change to "AMD's most advanced APU ever. Welcome to Earth".

It's AMD FX

http://www.tweakpc.de/forum/news/96552-countdown-laeuft-amd-will-hoch-hinaus.html
A guy on a german forum extracted thumbnails from the webpage.

 

[juanrga]

Oh no X86 watch out Arm can now emulate a game from the early 90's.

Really? Then do you believe the guys selling ARM servers with x86 emulator built-in will be used to play 90's games? :lol: This sounds as when people here claimed that APUs are only for cheap gaming, when everyone else knows that server APUs (e.g. Berlin) are used for something completely different.

 

[de5_Roy]

It's AMD FX http://img.tweakpc.org/images/2014/05/29/thmb3.jpg

http://www.tweakpc.de/forum/news/96552-countdown-laeuft-amd-will-hoch-hinaus.html
A guy on a german forum extracted thumbnails from the webpage.

It's AMD FX!!
Running hotter than earth's Mantle
So hot, it won't burn up on re-entry
Instead
It'll burn a hole in the atmosphere
Sorry, environment.
/haiku

 

[esrever]

Maybe more FX APUs?

 

[8350rocks]

We dont really have any more details about the upcoming FX Series, apart from the fact that you will definitely be seeing a new high performance x86 (x86-64) architecture within two years.

http://wccftech.com/amd-fx-series-comeback-two-years-apu-14-confrence-roadmaps/

*still cannot say more*

Juan is still going to somehow try to say I do not know what I am talking about...whatever.

 

[8350rocks]

Maybe more FX APUs?

The new "FX" branded Kaveri Mobile is what that will be...2.7 GHz quad SR cores with 3.6 GHz turbo (tweaked turbo core 3.0)

 

[de5_Roy]

Maybe more FX APUs?

likely.
intel is rumored to launch new unlocked i5, i7 and an anniversary edition of unlocked pentium (be !@#$ing still, my beating heart) tomorrow. this may be amd's way of declaration... of something. it'd be crazy if amd launched unlocked apus for laptops undercutting intel's XM series.

 

[juanrga]

uhm i wonder why folks keep on praising these consoles as "optimized" pieces of hardware. there's no magic in what they're doing.

any i5 + $150 gpu can do 900p @ 30fps with 2xAA/8xAF with contemporary games with ease. now are these consoles actually delivering more performance than conceived or less?

barely-there 1080p gaming and these machines are "optimized"? why are we kidding ourselves?

8350rocks already gave a fine answer above. But I want to comment in two parts that he left out. First that consoles don't use the same hardware than PCs, but custom (optimized hardware). E.g. The PS4 has a custom GPU that is internally named R10000. This GPU has several improvements that you don't find in any Radeon GPU for PCs. PS4 architect already gave talks about the improvements.

Also, first gen games for consoles are irrelevant. Consoles hardware is fixed, unlike PCs where you can upgrade. Thus, performance in consoles is obtained from subsequent code optimization for same hardware. You will start to see the real performance of current consoles in the future.

What is happening now is just what happened with previous PS3/360. First games barely did pass but last games were so optimized for the hardware that those consoles could compete against modern 10x more powerful PCs:

It is extremely frustrating knowing that the hardware we've got on the PC is often ten times as powerful as the consoles but it has honestly been a struggle in many cases to get the game running at 60 frames per second on the PC like it does on a 360

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/314566/carmack-extremely-frustrated-that-pc-is-10-times-as-powerful-as-ps3-360/

I don't think this time we will see consoles competing against 10x more powerful PCs, because approaches as MANTLE will reduce the gap between consoles and PC. I still expect the PS4 will compete against 2--4x faster powerful PCs.

 

[CooLWoLF]

Maybe more FX APUs?

The new "FX" branded Kaveri Mobile is what that will be...2.7 GHz quad SR cores with 3.6 GHz turbo (tweaked turbo core 3.0)

I cannot wait for these to come out. I was very close to buying an i7 laptop; now I am waiting.

 

[juanrga]

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTcwNjQ and http://timothylottes.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/re-joshua-barczaks-opengl-is-broken.html

Looks like some people have very polarized visions of the state of OGL. Interesting. Worth a read!

OGL vs DX is similar to AMD vs Intel, linux vs Windows...

When gamerk began posting links about people hating OGL I remained silent because I was expecting the reactions. You mention one, another is from Graham Sellers:

When he was asked "So you're saying the people who have been criticizing lately aren't experienced enough with GL to give criticism?"

His answer was "YES".

He also said

You know, when people _keep_ posting cr*p about what you work on every day...

I think I might have to write another blog post soon. It's been a while, and I have a few things to say. About stuff, you know.

Some criticisms may be valid if you compare c.2009 GL vs. DX11. Not valid for 4.4.

Much criticism is based on dated knowledge. Too much "GL doesn't have X" where X was added recently.

 

[juanrga]

Some more data about http://ifitcanreachspace.com/

When countdown hits zero the page will change to "AMD's most advanced APU ever. Welcome to Earth".

It's AMD FX

http://www.tweakpc.de/forum/news/96552-countdown-laeuft-amd-will-hoch-hinaus.html
A guy on a german forum extracted thumbnails from the webpage.

I already said in an old post

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/352312-28-steamroller-speculation-expert-conjecture/page-269#13391625

that AMD will release FX APU.

 

[juanrga]

We dont really have any more details about the upcoming FX Series, apart from the fact that you will definitely be seeing a new high performance x86 (x86-64) architecture within two years.

http://wccftech.com/amd-fx-series-comeback-two-years-apu-14-confrence-roadmaps/

*still cannot say more*

Juan is still going to somehow try to say I do not know what I am talking about...whatever.

Maybe more FX APUs?

The new "FX" branded Kaveri Mobile is what that will be...2.7 GHz quad SR cores with 3.6 GHz turbo (tweaked turbo core 3.0)

You may be masochistic because I ignore you, but you always provoke me to put you in your place again and again. Ok. Then let me say that your posting history shows that you either post nonsense or just repost info that I did post before.

E.g. you are now posting a pair of details about the new FX APU Kaveri mobile, when the day 25 May I posted number of CPU cores, number of GPU cores, Radeon model, L2 Cache, TDPs, memory frequencies.... and not only for the new FX APUs but also of its sister A10, A8...

The funny part is that you are not the first who pretends to gave new info, when it is a copy of info that I gave before same new info. Someone before pretended the same (check above link) He was also sarcastic as you, and he was also replied adequately as you now.

 

[Fearnot]

The funny part is that you are not the first who pretends to gave new info, when it is a copy of info that I gave before same new info. Someone before pretended the same (check above link) He was also sarcastic as you, and he was also replied adequately as you now.

Easy on your victim complex I don't even know who you are. It was just something I saw online that fit with your post as a verification.

 

[8350rocks]

We dont really have any more details about the upcoming FX Series, apart from the fact that you will definitely be seeing a new high performance x86 (x86-64) architecture within two years.

http://wccftech.com/amd-fx-series-comeback-two-years-apu-14-confrence-roadmaps/

*still cannot say more*

Juan is still going to somehow try to say I do not know what I am talking about...whatever.

Maybe more FX APUs?

The new "FX" branded Kaveri Mobile is what that will be...2.7 GHz quad SR cores with 3.6 GHz turbo (tweaked turbo core 3.0)

You may be masochistic because I ignore you, but you always provoke me to put you in your place again and again. Ok. Then let me say that your posting history shows that you either post nonsense or just repost info that I did post before.

E.g. you are now posting a pair of details about the new FX APU Kaveri mobile, when the day 25 May I posted number of CPU cores, number of GPU cores, Radeon model, L2 Cache, TDPs, memory frequencies.... and not only for the new FX APUs but also of its sister A10, A8...

The funny part is that you are not the first who pretends to gave new info, when it is a copy of info that I gave before same new info. Someone before pretended the same (check above link) He was also sarcastic as you, and he was also replied adequately as you now.

The first part confirms what I have been saying all along...they are NOT done with x86 HEDT. Yet you insist they are. While the same article mentions that AMD intends for the ARM cores to only operate in embedded and server space. Yet you contend it is intended for DT...?

 

[juanrga]

@Fearnot. In my response to 8350rocks I was referring to my reply to collinp. I will give the link again

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/352312-28-steamroller-speculation-expert-conjecture/page-268#13373357

 

[con635]

Why would amd make the countdown hype for mobile kaveri when the details of it are already on their site in public view, I'm hoping its carizzo either ready to sell early or a good in depth demo of it. Something strange about kaveri just makes me think carizzo will arrive early or something different is waiting up the amd sleeve, eg wheres the rest of the kaveri lineup? the a a8 7600 got reviewed then disappeared, only 2 a10s on sale here (uk) and nothing else. One can dream, eh? Probably just me falling for the marketing hype again.
I really want upgrade soon from my trinity apu but dont feel kaveri is worth the upgrade atm with no hsa software and its price tag here, atm theres the 130£ 7850k or the 130£ i5 3570K......

 

[juanrga]

The first part confirms what I have been saying all along...they are NOT done with x86 HEDT. Yet you insist they are. While the same article mentions that AMD intends for the ARM cores to only operate in embedded and server space. Yet you contend it is intended for DT...?

AMD abandoning x86 HEDT is FUD that you and others here did spread when I showed that your prediction about a supposed forthcoming Steamroller FX CPU for AM3+ was wrong. The other guy even pretended to convince us that AMD was now only a "software company".

We know that AMD is not abandoning HEDT. I have been saying this to you since October 2013 and even before:

Who said you that AMD are abandoning HEDT? The above post says the contrary.

Similar comments about your new pretension about the K12 being intended for DT. This is just another thing made in your head...

 

[juanrga]

Why would amd make the countdown hype for mobile kaveri when the details of it are already on their site in public view

Because someone at AMD did a mistake and published what wouldn't be published.