AMD CPU speculation... and expert conjecture

[juanrga]

@cazalan, this is a from someone watching this thread

I think your speculation/predictions are more accurate and have more base than most posting in that thread, the way some talk to you in general is just wrong imo, eg the misquotes and taking what you say out of context. At first I thought it was the language barrier but its not, I understand your English perfect, I think 'those guys' are just [...] I enjoy your posts keep posting.

I have similar quotes from more people if you insist on your personal attacks.

@noob2222, I said I would be nice and don't remind everyone which were your laughable predictions. You continue being very wrong about baselines. As a final note I find it very very very disturbing that you are comparing me to your "ex".

@jdwii, current APUs are for mainstream because (i) are bottlenecked by slow DDR3 memory and (ii) 28nm is not still the required node. I explained this plenty of times.

@wh3resmycar, What I said and what you claim I said are two different things.

 

[juanrga]

Unsurprisingly Nvidia finally admits that will not supporting MANTLE. I find lovely how Nvidia reps. contradict themselves when say one thing and five minutes after the contrary

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/nvidia-finally-officially-speaks-about-amds-mantle-will-not-support-it-no-real-benefit-using-it/

I would expect a similar official claim from Intel rejecting MANTLE support.

 

[genz]

I will say this. AMD are still managing to be competitive on the integer side of things, and with their CPUs in all new consoles, we will start to see games become increasingly optimized for their ratio of INT to FPU performance. This may end up with us seeing Intel squander it's additional FPU capability instead of the current trend of AMD having integer power to spare.

That, plus hUMA, Mantle and HSA means that AMD still does have a few cards in it's corner. AMD seriously needs a cash injection however. It hasn't realized that without marketing to a higher standard it will not survive.

 

[jdwii]

Unsurprisingly Nvidia finally admits that will not supporting MANTLE. I find lovely how Nvidia reps. contradict themselves when say one thing and five minutes after the contrary

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/nvidia-finally-officially-speaks-about-amds-mantle-will-not-support-it-no-real-benefit-using-it/

I would expect a similar official claim from Intel rejecting MANTLE support.

Never did i even think Nvidia would support Mantle i doubt many in the industry did. To be honest it surprised me when Intel asked about it.

 

[juanrga]

Relying on PD for the next two years in HEDT and Kaveri for mid-range desktop seems like suicide to me. AMD is basically going to pin the next two years on OEMs putting their products into quality devices and console sales. It might help since there's rumors of them getting a new Nintendo handheld as well, but that's not the greatest market to be in. A lot of people buy phones that can play crappy games and they're satisfied with those crappy games.

HEDT is a niche market. Moreover, last quarter results show that the CPU division continues loosing money (huge 20% revenue decrease compared to same quarter 2013).

http://www.amd.com/en-us/press-releases/Pages/press-release-2014jul17.aspx

Without a competitive CPU product, the best AMD could do is reduce loses by cutting down projects and jobs.

If a new console was win by AMD, they could receive another flow of fresh cash to remain in business up to the K12 core and its derived x86 core are ready. However, I don't expect miracles for such cores. I expect Haswell-level performance more or less.

 

[juanrga]

Unsurprisingly Nvidia finally admits that will not supporting MANTLE. I find lovely how Nvidia reps. contradict themselves when say one thing and five minutes after the contrary

http://www.dsogaming.com/news/nvidia-finally-officially-speaks-about-amds-mantle-will-not-support-it-no-real-benefit-using-it/

I would expect a similar official claim from Intel rejecting MANTLE support.

Never did i even think Nvidia would support Mantle i doubt many in the industry did.

Yeah, maybe there is some reason why my post began with "Unsurprisingly" :lol:

 

[Fidgetmaster]

It's Nvidia after all you know....I see absolutely no point in wanting or going to Nvidia GPU's...for one vastly overpriced and that price does not get you better performance either, like they want you to think they really are superior quality so higher price... Nvidia really likes to think they are so much better haha.... AMD has done a hell of a job with the 7xxx/R9 Series....good enough for me...

 

[wh3resmycar]

since i know you guys are tired of arguing with someone who supports his "predictions" with another set of predictions.

http://www.maximumpc.com/no_bs_podcast_229_nvidia_responds_amds_allegations_and_shows_shield_tablet

anybody here heard about soundcards vs integrated sound? integrated sound survives because we can live with "good enough" sound quality. the same can't be said with visuals.

so if by 2020 GPUs will be dead, can you quantify how fast APUs will be past Volta juan?

 

[Fidgetmaster]

Integrated sound is one thing haha that "good enough" can be acceptable for most uses...but for real audio enthusiast some of the really nicer cards really are something amazing....

 

[jdwii]

Integrated sound is one thing haha that "good enough" can be acceptable for most uses...but for real audio enthusiast some of the really nicer cards really are something amazing....

Have to say it being a person very picky in audio the smart people do not go with sound cards they go with DAC/AMP. One that is not inside their computer with all that noise.

 

[Fidgetmaster]

True...but with even some of the affordable Cards they can give some pretty astonishing results you know, over basic integrated...

 

[Fidgetmaster]

Audio Interface/out even with Integrated...go into HiFi Tube amp/Guitar amp

Gets really interesting on some of the amazing things you can do/hear haha.

 

[colinp]

After this short return to the old times (Fight Juan! Fight Juan!), let us return to AMD products and look to the future again.

The HBM dream is gone. Despite what several sites published, including Toms, HBM is not coming to Carrizo. A friend of mine insists on that Carrizo will be only released for mobile and that Kaveri will be maintained in desktops during all 2015. Sad, very sad!

As some of you know ;-) I was expecting a clock reduction from the change from 28SHP to GF28A, but I was expecting this to be compensated by a large improvement in IPC of about ~40%

in good agreement with the famous die-shot showing a Steamroller like module but with doubled execution units

However, it seems all that was canceled and final Excavator module will be Steamroller with minor tweaks on caches and so, providing only 5--10% IPC gains. This is not enough for compensating for the clock reduction on desktops and the reason why Excavator is not coming to desktop.

On mobile, GF28A provides high enough frequencies and Carrizo will be a real improvement over mobile Kaveri, which was already very competitive against Haswell i5/i7s.

This friend also claims that Carrizo will be released late, Q3'2015. K12 will be released in 2016 and its x86 sister latter. This former roadmap for 2015 has been changed by a new rodmap showing Kaveri on desktop extending to 2015 and 2016.

As said it is all sad!

Let's look back in the THG forum time machine shall we? On 6th May, I'd noted:

Another thing to note is that Carrizo is nowhere to be seen on AMD's updated roadmap. It goes from Kaveri, Beema, Mullins and Seattle in 2014 to Project Skybridge in 2015. No Excavator, no Carrizo anywhere.

With limited resources, it wouldn't surprise me if AMD has thrown all it's chips on the table (no pun intended) for Skybridge, canned Excavator, and at most we'll see a Kaveri refresh at some point to plug any gaps until Skybridge arrives, but not a full blown Excavator/Carrizo.

And later on...

I'm betting that if we see Carrizo, it'll be to Kaveri what Richland was to Trinity.

Let's see who responded...

It doesn't say anything about Excavator canceled. In fact, it only show the 2013-2014 roadmaps. In any case I asked AMD if Carrizo/Toronto (Excavator) had been canceled. And the answer is that new plans don't affect previous x86 plans. Thus I will continue expecting Excavator x86 cores for Carrizo in 2015 and then K12 cores in 2016.

When I questioned that:

I'm not sure I ever saw a roadmap making a reference to a cancelled product.

What I do know is that there is a slide that very clearly shows Kaveri, Seattle, Beema and Mullins going directly to Skybridge with no intermediate step. What reason would they have to leave out Carrizo from that picture?

I got a dickish response:

You aren't sure, but you used that roadmap to sustain your speculation about AMD canceling Excavator and releasing a Kaveri refresh.

I asked to someone from AMD and didn't confirm your speculation.

Ah the good old [strike]imaginary friend[/strike] buddy from AMD who seems to know sweet FA!

 

[8350rocks]

i was reading this
http://www.techspot.com/article/851-virtual-desktop-gpu-acceleration/
when i read palladin's posts on "cloud".

edit2:

According to market rumours, the yield of chips made using TSMC’s 20nm process technology is pretty low, which is a problem for fabless designers of semiconductors as nowadays TSMC charges them for the whole wafer, not individual chips (i.e., they pay for both functional and faulty chips).

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/graphics/display/20140722203827_AMD_Vows_to_Introduce_20nm_Products_Next_Year.html
reminds me of glofo.

You might need less salt than you think...

i know carrizo will be on bga packaging, but i don't think it'll be exclusively available for mobile pcs. i think that carrizo(65-35w parts) will show up in aio desktops, nettops/small desktops like sapphire edge, zotac zbox, gigabyte brix and may be ecs' liva pcs. it'd be even better if the higher tdp socs were socketed.
the unknown here is glofo's performance. i hope they don't screw up like they did with kaveri.

There is actually going to be a desktop platform out at that time that is not BGA, different codename, should be FM2+ compatible as well. As of yet unannounced...

 

[szatkus]

What do you think about this?

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/20nm-amd-carrizo-apu-spotted-features-fm3.html

Looks like a good fake, but something is wrong with revision. Shouldn't be "CZ-A1"?

Edit: darn, dead link...
http://imgur.com/cO2bYtU

 

[8350rocks]

Relying on PD for the next two years in HEDT and Kaveri for mid-range desktop seems like suicide to me. AMD is basically going to pin the next two years on OEMs putting their products into quality devices and console sales. It might help since there's rumors of them getting a new Nintendo handheld as well, but that's not the greatest market to be in. A lot of people buy phones that can play crappy games and they're satisfied with those crappy games.

HEDT is a niche market. Moreover, last quarter results show that the CPU division continues loosing money (huge 20% revenue decrease compared to same quarter 2013).

http://www.amd.com/en-us/press-releases/Pages/press-release-2014jul17.aspx

Without a competitive CPU product, the best AMD could do is reduce loses by cutting down projects and jobs.

If a new console was win by AMD, they could receive another flow of fresh cash to remain in business up to the K12 core and its derived x86 core are ready. However, I don't expect miracles for such cores. I expect Haswell-level performance more or less.

It is the single market in PCs that is still growing, it also generates the highest margins of any segment of the consumer PC market.

If you think AMD would abandon it, you would be wrong, I have confirmation from the person to ask for such things. AMD are going to dive back into large servers and HEDT full steam once the new uarch launches...

Still no announced codenames...

I cannot talk much more about it unfortunately at this time...however, there are some things coming.

 

[blackkstar]

Relying on PD for the next two years in HEDT and Kaveri for mid-range desktop seems like suicide to me. AMD is basically going to pin the next two years on OEMs putting their products into quality devices and console sales. It might help since there's rumors of them getting a new Nintendo handheld as well, but that's not the greatest market to be in. A lot of people buy phones that can play crappy games and they're satisfied with those crappy games.

HEDT is a niche market. Moreover, last quarter results show that the CPU division continues loosing money (huge 20% revenue decrease compared to same quarter 2013).

http://www.amd.com/en-us/press-releases/Pages/press-release-2014jul17.aspx

Without a competitive CPU product, the best AMD could do is reduce loses by cutting down projects and jobs.

If a new console was win by AMD, they could receive another flow of fresh cash to remain in business up to the K12 core and its derived x86 core are ready. However, I don't expect miracles for such cores. I expect Haswell-level performance more or less.

It is a shame, really. AMD finally gets games to be optimized around their hardware after years of Skyrim and Starcraft 2, and they squander their software advantage by not pushing HEDT.

http://usfinancepost.com/pc-still-gaming-market-is-double-compared-to-consoles-21581.html

According to Steam, AMD has a 26% market share. So that's still quite considerable compared to consoles, specially the new ones with AMD APUs inside. If they were capable of releasing a killer product and could get their market share up to 40% or so, it'd be viable. Specially considering the fact that PC gaming is expected to grow.

To crunch some numbers for you, AMD gaming CPUs are a $5.59 billion business for AMD. Gaming GPUs are a $6.45 billion market for AMD. I do not think those are niche markets for AMD given those numbers and the fact that they lost $36 million last quarter. I realize the gaming market is stretched over time, but it's still not so niche. AMD has some room to grow there and considering Intel's Broadwell plans, the time is ripe.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/cpus/

The split between dual and quad is nearly even and it practically takes up the entire market. To be honest with you, by the time 2015 or 2016 rolls around, we'll be up to our necks in console ports that use 6 to 8 cores and all those dual core folks are going to need an upgrade. AMD coming along with 14nm parts in that time frame with 8 core being the low end and 16 core being the high end would really do well.

If you read my link, you'll also see that research shows that people who buy gaming PCs also do a lot of content creation. Meaning that AMD getting HSA to those users is very important. Video editing, transcoding, streaming, rendering, compiling, etc all GPGPU accelerated with HSA, or with a big, fat CPU would be excellent in that market.

The market is stagnant. I had an i7 920 before I upgraded to FX 8350. And the only reason I did it was because I wanted something new to overclock and the 8350 was a lot faster rendering. If all I did was game, the i7 920 would still be an awesome chip when overclocked and I'd still be using it.

 

[8350rocks]

What do you think about this?

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/20nm-amd-carrizo-apu-spotted-features-fm3.html

Looks like a good fake, but something is wrong with revision. Shouldn't be "CZ-A1"?

Edit: darn, dead link...
http://imgur.com/cO2bYtU

A0 makes sense, though it should not be CX-A0.

Also, something strikes me as odd, considering what I know about carrizo...it does not mesh.

 

[szatkus]

What do you think about this?

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/20nm-amd-carrizo-apu-spotted-features-fm3.html

Looks like a good fake, but something is wrong with revision. Shouldn't be "CZ-A1"?

Edit: darn, dead link...
http://imgur.com/cO2bYtU

A0 makes sense, though it should not be CX-A0.

Also, something strikes me as odd, considering what I know about carrizo...it does not mesh.

Also at this point I would except "Eng_something", not concrete model name.

 

[cdrkf]

I wonder if the Carrizo being bga only stems from a misunderstanding regarding memory. AMD have repeatedly used dual memory controllers, so it's quite plausible that Carrizo will include a DDR3 / DDR4 controller. The result is they offer a DDR3 version to fit the existing FM2+ socket for desktop (where dGPU is common), and DDR4 bga package for mobile (where the increased power efficiency and better memory bandwidth compared to low power DDR3 so-dims will make a big improvement).

Toronto --> DDR4 enabled
Carrizo --> DDR3 enabled

There is not bandwidth improvement: Toronto/Carrizo support up to 2400MHz DDR.

There *is* a potential bandwidth improvement in mobile- as currently mobile only supports up to DDR3 1866 due to power constraints, so if the increased efficiency of DDR4 allows DDR4 2400 on a mobile platform there is a big up side. On the desktop, no there is no improvement to be had because desktop isn't power constrained.

 

[8350rocks]

What do you think about this?

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/20nm-amd-carrizo-apu-spotted-features-fm3.html

Looks like a good fake, but something is wrong with revision. Shouldn't be "CZ-A1"?

Edit: darn, dead link...
http://imgur.com/cO2bYtU

A0 makes sense, though it should not be CX-A0.

Also, something strikes me as odd, considering what I know about carrizo...it does not mesh.

Also at this point I would except "Eng_something", not concrete model name.

Exactly...as well as other issues I see with that screen shot...

 

[con635]

http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/FM2A88X%20Extreme6+/?cat=CPU

Heres the 65w apus, interesting they're listed 'steamroller' not 'steamrollerB', could there be tweaks other than clock speed?
I was thinking about the link Juan posted a few pages back re hsa/gpu accel. in photoshop and maybe amd need alot more of that type of thing atm, it would really boost reviews and forum opinions, help people recommend them and sell some chips.

 

[gamerk316]

Integrated sound is one thing haha that "good enough" can be acceptable for most uses...but for real audio enthusiast some of the really nicer cards really are something amazing....

Have to say it being a person very picky in audio the smart people do not go with sound cards they go with DAC/AMP. One that is not inside their computer with all that noise.

Generally yes, but some of the discrete audio cards beat similar priced amps straight up. Lets face it, amp quality audio @ $99 (Creative Soundblaster Z), or dedicated headphone cards for ~$160 (ASUS Phoebus/STX) beat amps at that price. Nevermind these cards are much easier to mod.

 

[blackkstar]

You guys can forget about discussing the 6 core Carizzo APU. It's a clever OCN photoshop job.

 

[gamerk316]

Yup A good ruse from the overclocking.net crowd.
http://www.overclock.net/a/a-troubling-trend

I

To be fair, our own AMD fanboys would have run with it, given the chance.