AMD CPU speculation... and expert conjecture

[Cazalan]

^^^^ But the game is reported to use 4 cores very well on the PC and i'm guessing if its like watch dogs 8. When looking at the graphics its some of the best i've ever seen in my life.

Not really even into these games anyways tried them and said no several times now but it is very popular.

The game was rushed by the looks of it.


"Assassin’s Creed Unity runs poorly and is stuffed full of bugs, on consoles and PC"

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/193975-assassins-creed-unity-runs-poorly-and-is-stuffed-full-of-bugs

 

[jdwii]

Man i keep saying this but please don't mess up my far cry 4 AHH. I have faith since its running on the same engine as 3.

I get like 40-55fps in some bad spots in 3 at ultra and fxaa(my favorite AA for most games)

Next week we should have 4

 

[etayorius]

Man i keep saying this but please don't mess up my far cry 4 AHH. I have faith since its running on the same engine as 3.

I get like 40-55fps in some bad spots in 3 at ultra and fxaa(my favorite AA for most games)

Next week we should have 4

One Word for you:


UBISOFT.

 

[jdwii]

http://wccftech.com/amd-20nm-gpus-horizon-tsmc-ramps-20nm-production/

“20nm is an important node for us. We will be shipping products in 20nm next year and as we move forward […],” said Lisa Su, senior vice president and chief operating officer of AMD. “If you look at our business, it is quite a bit more balanced between the semi-custom, embedded, […] professional graphics […] as well as the more traditional sort of client and graphics pieces of our business. [20nm] technology plays in all of those businesses.”

 

[colinp]

There seems to be some talk here of AMD jumping from TSMC to Glofo/Samsung for GPUs. Is that actually happening?

 

[8350rocks]

There seems to be some talk here of AMD jumping from TSMC to Glofo/Samsung for GPUs. Is that actually happening?

Yes...

@jdwii: Samsung is already rolling out 20nm chips, however, if you are buying production time on that line, would you use the older or newer process that line will produce? Samsung has 3 foundries that can produce 20nm, and those same 3 will also produce 14nm FinFET.

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/34537-globalfoundries-and-samsung-team-up-for-14nm-finfet

Samsung will offer 14nm FinFET from S2 Fab in Austin Texas

Hmm, I know another tech company with HQ in Austin...trying to think of the name...I am sure it will come to me...

 

[blackkstar]

About the Nvidia is doomed thing just remember how long Nvidia had ATI beat with the 8800Gtx took Amd 2 gen's i think(Ati 4870) to beat it. If i remember correctly Nvidia was going to skip 20nm and go for 16nm FinFET however from the sounds of it that will probably not happen for 2 years perhaps we might see a couple of products from Nvidia being built with it but not the whole generation.
Old but still from 2014
http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/nvidia-may-skip-20nm-process-technology-jump-straight-to-16nm/

Mobile parts from Nvidia using 16nm in 2015
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/tsmc-apple-nvidia-denver-finfet,27538.html

http://www.kitguru.net/apple/anton-shilov/samsung-to-produce-14nm-finfet-chips-for-amd-apple-qualcomm-report/

"It is very intriguing what AMD could produce at Samsung using 14nm process technology. In case AMD indeed manages to make a mobile SoC at 14nm FF node in the first half of next year, it could probably finally enter the market of tablets with a rather competitive offering. Unfortunately, based on AMD’s roadmap, it only plans to release 20nm project Skybridge accelerated processing units and SoCs next year. While it is possible that AMD could make a surprise with a 14nm chip, the company is not known for surprises…"

My main concern from Amd is they are to quiet and the history of that is never good(either won't be out for awhile or they have a dud), when the 7970 was finished Amd rushed it as soon as possible to show it off since they knew they had a winner.

If it wasn't for Jim keller and now Samsung i wouldn't have to much faith left for Amd

In the past, AMD and Nvidia were both on TSMC and on the same process (generally). So you had situations where AMD (or Nvidia) was behind and they had no choice but to improve the architecture.

If 14nm GloSung blows 16nm TSMC out of the water, or for some reason Nvidia is stuck on 28nm for high end chips for some time, it's going to be a bloodbath. Because even if GCN is awful compared to Maxwell, the node advantage means cramming a lot more transistors on the chip, and if AMD is really lucky it'll clock better too.

What is scary to me is that Nvidia is talking about mobile parts using 16nm in 2015. To me that's saying that they're doing the best they can. If 20nm is not so good, and Nvidia is boasting about 16nm mobile chips instead of all chips or high performance chips, that means there's a chance Nvidia will be on 28nm for high performance desktop parts for all of 2015. If that happens, Nvidia is in some serious trouble in 2015. If you assume perfect scaling, a 600mm^2 28nm chip on 14nm is only 150mm^2. Realistically I'd expect around 200mm^2 to 300mm^2. But regardless, that would put GM200 chips up against ~$200 price range sub 300mm^2 chips.

I do agree with you about AMD not keeping secrets, but they have changed. Look at R9 290x and R9 295x2 launches.

I don't like macs at all but this source is stating we'll see volume production of 14nm LPE chips in late 2014 or early 2015. http://www.macrumors.com/2014/07/01/samsung-globalfoundries-apple-a9-2015/

Which means that february to may launch of 14nm AMD GPUs is probably not out of the question. And if Nvidia is still on 28nm for a while, well, there's going to be a lot of buyer's remorse and bitter fanboys in forums.

 

[szatkus]

I don't like macs at all but this source is stating we'll see volume production of 14nm LPE chips in late 2014 or early 2015. http://www.macrumors.com/2014/07/01/samsung-globalfoundries-apple-a9-2015/

"risk production in the fourth quarter of 2014 and small volume production in early 2015"

Small volume. Not mass production. And even with that you have to add few months to date of start of mass production to release any product.

Which means that february to may launch of 14nm AMD GPUs is probably not out of the question. And if Nvidia is still on 28nm for a while, well, there's going to be a lot of buyer's remorse and bitter fanboys in forums.

Well... A9 is smaller than GPU. Larger chips are more difficult to produce. Don't expect 14/16nm Radeons before 2016.

Actually it would be cool if they released Radeons, Zen CPUs and APUs at the same time

 

[Cazalan]

And yet leak after leak is saying 20nm isn't feasible for large GPUs.

http://wccftech.com/tsmc-achieves-16nm-finfet-plus-risk-nvidia-gpus/


"Samsung 20nm reserved for internal use"
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?doc_id=1323929

 

[8350rocks]

And yet leak after leak is saying 20nm isn't feasible for large GPUs.

http://wccftech.com/tsmc-achieves-16nm-finfet-plus-risk-nvidia-gpus/


"Samsung 20nm reserved for internal use"
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?doc_id=1323929

20nm is basically going to end up a ULP only node. It is going to be for tiny ULP SoCs for mobile devices. No SHP or HPP+ type nodes will come on 20nm at this point. There are far more positives for going the full shrink to the next node and it is basically already done to this point.

 

[szatkus]

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/36284-20nm-node-broken-for-gpus

Pretty good explanation why 20nm is bad for big chips.

One of FD-SOI presentation included detailed scheme what's wrong with 20nm transistors (without FinFET), but I can't find it now :/

 

[jdwii]

^^^ Good article

So Nvidia has Amd beat until 2016 WOW. Sucks i was hoping to see new products that don't consume lots of power. Unless of course Amd is going to revamp their products on 28nm and possibly do what Nvidia did.

Edit for big chips what if it was decent enough for smaller chips with 1.5 billion transistors or less? I guess we are talking about 250-260X type performance probably a 150$ Card.

 

[szatkus]

^^^ Good article

So Nvidia has Amd beat until 2016 WOW. Sucks i was hoping to see new products that don't consume lots of power. Unless of course Amd is going to revamp their products on 28nm and possibly do what Nvidia did.

Edit for big chips what if it was decent enough for smaller chips with 1.5 billion transistors or less?

TSMC's 16nm probably will be slightly earlier than 14nm. So 16nm Maxwell in the end of 2015 is feasible.

 

[szatkus]

Edit for big chips what if it was decent enough for smaller chips with 1.5 billion transistors or less? I guess we are talking about 250-260X type performance probably a 150$ Card.

Mobile GPUs are usually much lower clocked. PowerVR is 650MHz at 28nm. GCN at 4.5W 28nm SoC is 500MHz CU. Frequency ~ power relation isn't linear.

 

[8350rocks]

@jdwii:

No, should not take to 2016 AMD has new parts coming sooner than that. Good news though, 20nm should be great for notebook SoCs. Which are on track.

 

[szatkus]

http://www.sisoftware.eu/rank2011d/show_run.php?q=c2ffcdfbddbcdde0d1e8d8ebd9e9cfbd80b096f396ab9bbdcef3cb&l=en

[strike]APU with HBM, nice![/strike]

Not APU, just very small GPU

 

[szatkus]

I found also AMD HSA Device which has interesting spec...

http://www.sisoftware.eu/rank2011d/show_run.php?q=c2ffcbfddbbadbe6d7e2d3f587ba8aacc9ac91a187f4c9f1&l=en

 

[blackkstar]

Well, can we at least get a grip on what process nodes are coming out? Things are confusing because we normally just had to worry about TSMC for GPUs and now we have GloSung and TSMC

For TSMC
28nm: good for GPU
20nm: Coming very soon but bad for GPU
16nm FinFET: Late 2015 or early 2016

GloSung:
32nm SOI: Good for CPUs, bad for GPUs
28nm bulk: used for low power mobile designs, maybe not as good as 28nm TSMC for GPU because it's a trade off process between what CPU and GPU needs
20nm ?bulk?: Only good for low power designs with low frequency and small dies
14nm FinFet: risk production for Apple A9 in Malta late 2014 or early 2015

I suppose we'll know soon enough. A full shrink from 28nm to 14nm is massive and if AMD can beat Nvidia to a lower node, Nvidia is in dire trouble. But the inverse can happen as well if TSMC beats GloSung to sub 20nm and it's good for GPUs.

 

[colinp]

I'm not sure that AMD will be leaving TSMC lock stock and barrel just yet.

 

[de5_Roy]

AMD releases embedded Gizmo 2 developer board
http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/36299-amd-releases-embedded-gizmo-2-developer-board

don't know if it was posted already:

AMD Is Prepared To Release A Complete User-Space Open-Source Stack For HSA
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgzMzc

 

[szatkus]

Well, can we at least get a grip on what process nodes are coming out? Things are confusing because we normally just had to worry about TSMC for GPUs and now we have GloSung and TSMC

For TSMC
28nm: good for GPU
20nm: Coming very soon but bad for GPU
16nm FinFET: Late 2015 or early 2016

GloSung:
32nm SOI: Good for CPUs, bad for GPUs
28nm bulk: used for low power mobile designs, maybe not as good as 28nm TSMC for GPU because it's a trade off process between what CPU and GPU needs
20nm ?bulk?: Only good for low power designs with low frequency and small dies
14nm FinFet: risk production for Apple A9 in Malta late 2014 or early 2015

I suppose we'll know soon enough. A full shrink from 28nm to 14nm is massive and if AMD can beat Nvidia to a lower node, Nvidia is in dire trouble. But the inverse can happen as well if TSMC beats GloSung to sub 20nm and it's good for GPUs.

They usually offer few flavors of their process (for example TSMC 28nm: HP, HPM, HPC, HPL, LP). Don't assume that one vendor is better for GPU or CPU.

 

[Cazalan]

Well, can we at least get a grip on what process nodes are coming out? Things are confusing because we normally just had to worry about TSMC for GPUs and now we have GloSung and TSMC

Difficult to do when neither wants to admit to delays. If people think its just Intel with 14nm yield problems they're sorely mistaken.

UTEK recently outed Samsung with a 3 month delay on an order. https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/3998-samsung-14nm-one-delayed.html

"Due to the continued low yield in FinFET devices for the past two years, we have seen a reduction in new LSA bookings in subsequent shipments"

 

[8350rocks]

Well, can we at least get a grip on what process nodes are coming out? Things are confusing because we normally just had to worry about TSMC for GPUs and now we have GloSung and TSMC

Difficult to do when neither wants to admit to delays. If people think its just Intel with 14nm yield problems they're sorely mistaken.

UTEK recently outed Samsung with a 3 month delay on an order. https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/3998-samsung-14nm-one-delayed.html

"Due to the continued low yield in FinFET devices for the past two years, we have seen a reduction in new LSA bookings in subsequent shipments"

20nm planar FD-SOI would have been a better bet for solid yields...but whatever...all the foundries want to chase intel...cest la vie

 

[jdwii]

Perhaps they are trying to rush things to quickly instead of making smaller jumps. 2013 4th Quarter was the 290X release data might have to wait, until that time next year for anything from Amd on the dGPU market.

 

[esrever]

I doubt we would have to wait till Q4. My guess is they have more stuff on 28nm if that is the case.