AMD CPU speculation... and expert conjecture

[anxiousinfusion]

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......

Leaks of socket FM3 boards will appear long before we hear of any Carrizo release announcements.

 

[gamerk316]

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.

No one is complaining about features; GL has feature parity with DX. Heck, in some ways, it has more features. It's simply a dog to program, a dog to debug, a dog to write decent drivers for. Aside from that, it works fine.

A few new API calls does not change the fact GL is a PITA to code for. And no amount of new API calls is going to fix it. The entire programming model GL is built around is WRONG. Period.

But then again, maybe all the devs on the planet are wrong, and this guy is right. Yeah, that has to be it.

 

[de5_Roy]

Without mb news the new fx has to be am3+ or fm2+. Without the gpu there is plenty of room for l3 for a fx variant and athlon without. I would not think AMD would make fx mobile only.

because there's nothing new to add to am3+ platform. the m2 and sata express addons on new 97 series motherboard are nearly useless for majority of people. in terms of features and chipsets, the 9xx chipsets are aging well. new usb specs, vesa specs, ddr4 and hbm specs are still in flux, so is pcie 4.0 afaik. amd can't take the same chance as intel and sell motherboards with semi-complete features.

since amd has already announced cpu version of "Berlin", cpu versions of kaveri will also be available. the issue is with the timing. amd always delays, delays and just when you thought you've heard of a launch, then delays those cpus some more and then launches when they're are almost not-worth buying.

as for fx, it's simply moving/extending the brandname - possibly to signify the high end laptop skus. it's not a bad move unti you wonder how much goodwill (or the lack of it) that brandname has accumulated since zambezi.

 

[colinp]

because there's nothing new to add to am3+ platform. the m2 and sata express addons on new 97 series motherboard are nearly useless for majority of people. in terms of features and chipsets, the 9xx chipsets are aging well. new usb specs, vesa specs, ddr4 and hbm specs are still in flux, so is pcie 4.0 afaik. amd can't take the same chance as intel and sell motherboards with semi-complete features.

since amd has already announced cpu version of "Berlin", cpu versions of kaveri will also be available. the issue is with the timing. amd always delays, delays and just when you thought you've heard of a launch, then delays those cpus some more and then launches when they're are almost not-worth buying.

as for fx, it's simply moving/extending the brandname - possibly to signify the high end laptop skus. it's not a bad move unti you wonder how much goodwill (or the lack of it) that brandname has accumulated since zambezi.

When I built my mATX rig last year, trying to reuse as many of my AMD parts as possible, I had to put in a 7-series motherboard - so no SATA-III for me, and limited overclocking options etc. There are no mATX 9-series boards, all the decent 8-series have disappeared, leaving me with little choice.

As for FX, it now just means unlocked multiplier, as there is nothing else to distinguish an FX chip from the rest of the range, not L3, higher TDP or anything. Even my old Llano laptop is unlocked, but it is definitely not anything special. FX is the new "K," that's all.

 

[de5_Roy]

Spoiler

When I built my mATX rig last year, trying to reuse as many of my AMD parts as possible, I had to put in a 7-series motherboard - so no SATA-III for me, and limited overclocking options etc. There are no mATX 9-series boards, all the decent 8-series have disappeared, leaving me with little choice.

As for FX, it now just means unlocked multiplier, as there is nothing else to distinguish an FX chip from the rest of the range, not L3, higher TDP or anything. Even my old Llano laptop is unlocked, but it is definitely not anything special. FX is the new "K," that's all.

i think amd was trying to push uatx and smaller form factors for the apus while locking atx for the cpus as "high end". another reason could be the am3+ cpus' power use and heat dissipation discouraged motherboard makers to build uatx motherboards. i never figured out why amd's mobo partners didn't make uatx motherboards with 970 chipset. with 990x/fx chipset there was an excuse for multi-gpu, but 970 was suitable for uatx that way. although, o.c.-friendly uatx intel boards are rare too - gigabyte has sniper.m3 and asus has r.o.g. gene seried motherboards. typical uatx motherboards with z-chipsets have 4 phases for cpu. i can't ignore the possibility of upselling intel boards either...

 

[juanrga]

@gamerk. A pair of guys wrote criticism against OGL and a pair of guys replied. It is not everyone vs one guy, as you pretend.

 

[juanrga]

And new rumors about Apple abandoning Intel chips for ARM appear

http://www.cnet.com/news/new-round-of-rumors-point-to-macs-based-on-apple-arm-chips/

This time with market analysts estimating the loses for Intel

http://news.investors.com/technology-click/052814-702423-intc-loses-armh-wins-if-apple-makes-pc-switch.htm

Depending of the final scenario, Intel could loses between $740 millions and $6 billions in revenue.

 

[gamerk316]

@gamerk. A pair of guys wrote criticism against OGL and a pair of guys replied. It is not everyone vs one guy, as you pretend.

And I responded back. And numerous other people have as well. The fact OGL is barely used on Windows anymore despite once being the overwhelming majority API should tell you all you need to know about it.

Look, going from DX to OGL is like going to straight C (not C++) after a decade of using C# or Java; Its not fun. There's nothing DX can do that OGL can't, but its a LOT easier to get things going in DX. And software engineers, being the lazy people that we are, always go for ease of development.

But because we have people like you who continue to push "OGL is fine", it never gets fixed or replaced, and it falls farther into obscurity.

 

[cdrkf]

@gamerk. A pair of guys wrote criticism against OGL and a pair of guys replied. It is not everyone vs one guy, as you pretend.

And I responded back. And numerous other people have as well. The fact OGL is barely used on Windows anymore despite once being the overwhelming majority API should tell you all you need to know about it.

Look, going from DX to OGL is like going to straight C (not C++) after a decade of using C# or Java; Its not fun. There's nothing DX can do that OGL can't, but its a LOT easier to get things going in DX. And software engineers, being the lazy people that we are, always go for ease of development.

But because we have people like you who continue to push "OGL is fine", it never gets fixed or replaced, and it falls farther into obscurity.

I've been following the development of Planetary Annihilation (a successful Kickstarter project for an RTS game if you're unfamiliar with it). They're using OGL as they want cross platform support between Windows, Mac OS and Linux. The graphics engine guys have posted up quite a few blogs about it and they've found it wasn't as bad as they were expecting.

Their main gripe is how out dated OGL support it on Mac OS- meaning they have to work to a rather old version. By all accounts if you set you're base line to OGL 4.0 they could have done away with at least some of the old code that's such a pain...

 

[juanrga]

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:

wait what!? which particular game are you talking about?

i owned an xbox360. and not a single point in time did my console compete against a pc, visually or performance wise. the "optimized" console game always looked ugly (e.g. assassins creed3 which i bothered not playing in the console since it's utter crap visually)

the only exception from the previous generation is the crappy gta4 console port.

I have given you a quote from a famous game developer complaining because he could hit 60fps on a PS3 but had difficulties to hit 60fps in a 10x more powerful PC.

It is not anything exclusive of a single game. The entire industry knows that consoles are more powerful than PCs with similar hardware:

It's funny. We often have at least 10 times as much horsepower as an Xbox 360 or a PS3 in a high-end graphics card, yet it's very clear that the games don't look 10 times as good.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-03-21-pcs-have-10x-console-horsepower-amd

Your eye doesn't count for me. First, I have experience with experiment where some guys are given the same demo for both PC and console. In both it runs at same framerate (code says that) and still some guys pretended that the PC version did run at higher framerates using their expert eye. Some people see what they want to see. The placebo effect.

Also I hope that you are not comparing the visual quality of a game running in a 4GB PC against the visual quality of a game running in 256MB. Just drops the memory of your PC to 256MB and say me how fast games will run now. In fact say me if you can load some modern game. In fact say me if you can load your copy of windows.

@gamerk. A pair of guys wrote criticism against OGL and a pair of guys replied. It is not everyone vs one guy, as you pretend.

And I responded back. And numerous other people have as well. The fact OGL is barely used on Windows anymore despite once being the overwhelming majority API should tell you all you need to know about it.

Look, going from DX to OGL is like going to straight C (not C++) after a decade of using C# or Java; Its not fun. There's nothing DX can do that OGL can't, but its a LOT easier to get things going in DX. And software engineers, being the lazy people that we are, always go for ease of development.

But because we have people like you who continue to push "OGL is fine", it never gets fixed or replaced, and it falls farther into obscurity.

Nobody said that OGL is final and doesn't need improvement. Don't invent things again. What people is saying is that current latest loudly criticism against OGL are wrong and that those critics are showing their lack of experience with modern OGL.

Microsoft crippling OGL to push their own DX approach doesn't mean anything. Just because any new windows computer comes with 8 pre-installed doesn't mean that 8 is infinitely better than 7.

 

[juanrga]

What to expect at Computex?

AMD is expected to announce the mobile version of its latest mainstream processor, code-named Kaveri, at Computex. Kaveri replaces Richland, and since the desktop parts are already shipping, the basic elements--an APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) with an enhanced Steamroller CPU core and modern GCN graphics--are already well known.

The company briefly posted details of the new chips earlier this week, but then removed them from its site. Assuming the lineup was accurate, the mobile Kaveri lineup will include a single 17-watt A6 APU, and several 19- and 35-watt APUs for faster and larger laptops.

Interestingly it looks like AMD will for the first time use on the FX Series branding, previously reserved for its high-performance CPUs, on these mobile APUs. The move isn’t too surprising since AMD no longer has a roadmap for future CPUs, and both AMD and Intel have already been blurring the lines between their microarchitectures and brands in low-power and mainstream chips.

In April, AMD announced its latest low-power processors, known as Beema and Mullins and designed for entry-level laptops and tablets, respectively. Beema and Mullins are a relatively minor update over the previous Kabini and Temash APUs--they use the same TSMC 28nm process and basic CPU core design--and the main benefit is reduced power consumption.

http://www.zdnet.com/what-to-expect-at-computex-this-week-7000030080/

Some people here continues negating that the PC market is falling. But AMD confirms once again that

The PC market has shrunk, so our PC business has shrunk

http://www.statesman.com/news/business/amds-plan-be-less-reliant-on-pcs/nf8q6/

 

[gamerk316]

Their main gripe is how out dated OGL support it on Mac OS- meaning they have to work to a rather old version. By all accounts if you set you're base line to OGL 4.0 they could have done away with at least some of the old code that's such a pain...

Probably because Linux is stuck at 3.3? Kinda hard to baseline 4.0 if you want to support Linux...

I have given you a quote from a famous game developer complaining because he could hit 60fps on a PS3 but had difficulties to hit 60fps in a 10x more powerful PC.

It is not anything exclusive of a single game. The entire industry knows that consoles are more powerful than PCs with similar hardware:

Not "more powerful" Juan, but "Better optimized". That's what happens when you code at a lower level.

Microsoft crippling OGL to push their own DX approach doesn't mean anything.

They don't cripple OGL. It's HW accelerated, so the driver is the main driver of performance.

This is a problem, since OGL handles HW resources within the display driver, making drivers very hard to develop well.

 

[gamerk316]

And...the hits keep coming:

http://richg42.blogspot.com/2014/05/things-that-drive-me-nuts-about-opengl.html
http://www.joshbarczak.com/blog/?p=154
https://medium.com/@michael_marks/opengl-for-real-world-games-7d0f4d35891c

Note we're getting into specific examples now.

 

[Cazalan]

No one is complaining about features; GL has feature parity with DX. Heck, in some ways, it has more features. It's simply a dog to program, a dog to debug, a dog to write decent drivers for. Aside from that, it works fine.

A few new API calls does not change the fact GL is a PITA to code for. And no amount of new API calls is going to fix it. The entire programming model GL is built around is WRONG. Period.

But then again, maybe all the devs on the planet are wrong, and this guy is right. Yeah, that has to be it.

The issues with OGL would seem secondary to the issues with the state of video card drivers. Some of these screen shots are horrendous.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTcwNjU

 

[juanrga]

Some new info about AMD future products. It seems Keller team has been working hard in one of main drawbacks of AMD architectures: cache technology. It seems Keller is working in an innovative stack cache beyond the usual classical cache in current AMD chips.

Also it seems that AMD will release a new LGA socket, abandoning the current PGA approach in current CPUs/APUs.

 

[juanrga]

It is not anything exclusive of a single game. The entire industry knows that consoles are more powerful than PCs with similar hardware:

Not "more powerful" Juan, but "Better optimized". That's what happens when you code at a lower level.

And that better optimization translates better performance. A console is at least 2x faster than a PC with similar hardware.

Microsoft crippling OGL to push their own DX approach doesn't mean anything.

They don't cripple OGL. It's HW accelerated, so the driver is the main driver of performance.

Wrong:

Vista’s bundled version of OpenGL was completely crippled, forcing many devs to switch to DirectX.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/133824-valve-opengl-is-faster-than-directx-even-on-windows

People is getting mediocre soft such as DX11 because a company is playing dirty against competitors.

The issues with OGL would seem secondary to the issues with the state of video card drivers. Some of these screen shots are horrendous.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTcwNjU

Those are only the open-source drivers. They wouldn't be confused with proprietary drivers as those used in windows. E.g. the Nouveau open-source drivers have been developed by reverse engineering Nvidia proprietary drivers for linux.

If you the proprietary drivers under linux (i.e. the linux version of the windows drivers) then you don't have the above issues.

 

[gamerk316]

Final point here on this topic: An analogy: Going from DX to GL is like going from MSVC to GCC. You have to look at the people using it and scream "HOW THE HECK DO YOU LIVE LIKE THIS?".

BTW, in GCC's case, we now have LLVM/CLANG, as it was easier to make a new compiler then it was to "fix" GCC. I simply believe GL should get the same treatment, for the same reason.

 

[gamerk316]

People is getting mediocre soft such as DX11 because a company is playing dirty against competitors.

Technically, Windows doesn't ship with a GL driver. Just like it doesn't ship with many drivers. And no, there's no reason the devs can't include the latest one with their games when they ship, so that's a VERY poor argument to make.

It's also important to remember here: Valve is NOT porting their games to GL, they are going through a DX-to-GL wrapper. The DX programming model and internal structures are maintained, but the objects and API calls are converted to their corresponding GL counterparts at runtime. Which is going to yield a TOTALLY different result then doing a native GL port using the GL programming model.

 

[gamerk316]

And, as expected, MSFT is finally unifying all its OS's in Win9:

http://www.dailytech.com/Microsoft+Moonshot+Windows+9+Will+Unify+PC+Xbox+Phone+and+Tablet+OSes/article34992.htm

I will say this: the new management there *seems* like it knows what its doing so far. But i have a hard time seeing them pulling this off the first time through.

 

[juanrga]

And...the hits keep coming:

http://richg42.blogspot.com/2014/05/things-that-drive-me-nuts-about-opengl.html
http://www.joshbarczak.com/blog/?p=154
https://medium.com/@michael_marks/opengl-for-real-world-games-7d0f4d35891c

Note we're getting into specific examples now.

You give the links to Joshua Barczak and Michael Marks’ reply to Timothy, but you forget to give the link to Timothy reply

You give the link to Rich Geldreich but again forget to give the link to reply

You also avoid other links and quotes given in defense of OGL.

People is getting mediocre soft such as DX11 because a company is playing dirty against competitors.

Technically, Windows doesn't ship with a GL driver. Just like it doesn't ship with many drivers. And no, there's no reason the devs can't include the latest one with their games when they ship, so that's a VERY poor argument to make.

I gave you a link mentioning how Microsoft cripple OGL and forced devs. to switch to DX already in Vista. You deleting the link and ignoring it doesn't change anything. Once most devs were forced to use DX, Microsoft can now try to attack the user side, by not including OGL in Windows by default. Precisely this is the argument given in a new defense of OGL:

However, the biggest issue in my view is not a technical one, but a political one. On Windows, out of the box, you do not get an OpenGL driver (but you do get a D3D one for most GPUs). And no, actual people out there do not update their drivers.

http://aras-p.info/blog/2014/05/31/rant-about-rants-about-opengl/

Thus as I said before DX popularity doesn't rely on technical reasons, but it is largely political and about what happens behind closed doors to cripple competition.

 

[gamerk316]

I gave you a link mentioning how Microsoft cripple OGL and forced devs. to switch to DX already in Vista. You deleting the link and ignoring it doesn't change anything. Once most devs were forced to use DX, Microsoft can now try to attack the user side, by not including OGL in Windows by default

Windows doesn't ship with a XInput driver by default. That hasn't stopped every major title in the past 5 years from supporting the Xbox 360 controller out of the box. Devs are free to include any requite drivers in the install; that's how its ALWAYS been handled, including with the (many) expansions to DX over the years.

Update your GPU driver once on Windows, and you get instant GL 4.4 compatibility. Even going back to XP. I fail the see what the problem is.

 

[juanrga]

Update your GPU driver once on Windows, and you get instant GL 4.4 compatibility. Even going back to XP. I fail the see what the problem is.

The problem is well explained in the link that I gave to you.

 

[anxiousinfusion]

Some new info about AMD future products. It seems Keller team has been working hard in one of main drawbacks of AMD architectures: cache technology. It seems Keller is working in an innovative stack cache beyond the usual classical cache in current AMD chips.

Also it seems that AMD will release a new LGA socket, abandoning the current PGA approach in current CPUs/APUs.

Source?

 

[juanrga]

Some new info about AMD future products. It seems Keller team has been working hard in one of main drawbacks of AMD architectures: cache technology. It seems Keller is working in an innovative stack cache beyond the usual classical cache in current AMD chips.

Also it seems that AMD will release a new LGA socket, abandoning the current PGA approach in current CPUs/APUs.

Source?

http://www.google.com/patents/US20140143497

http://www.google.com/patents/US20140043768

 

[juanrga]

And after AMD MANTLE now comes Apple METAL

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/06/apple-gets-heavy-with-gaming-announces-metal-development-platform/

This is another reason why AMD must release MANTLE for linux.