AMD Piledriver rumours ... and expert conjecture

[Reynod]

We have had several requests for a sticky on AMD's yet to be released Piledriver architecture ... so here it is.

I want to make a few things clear though.

Post a question relevant to the topic, or information about the topic, or it will be deleted.

Post any negative personal comments about another user ... and they will be deleted.

Post flame baiting comments about the blue, red and green team and they will be deleted.

Enjoy ...

 

[sarinaide]

Well if you rule out the FX 4 and FX 6 generations the FX 81XX gen run pretty much like a i5 except in power consumption but that is expected from a chip with more cores and bigger die process.

 

[de5_Roy]

^^ and moar transistors too!

 

[sarinaide]

Well it wasn't half as bad as the original transistor count, but yes. Lest us also not forget that AMD will always look more crude in design due to the apparent lack of wealth that the competitor possesses, the best example I can make.

Ferrari F1/McLaren/Red Bull Racing compared to Marussia Virgin Racing, HRT and Caterham, the degree of technology is differing so you can't really compare at engineering level. Same thing here, you just really cannot compare AMD to Intel and not so at metal level that is where the money starts to show.

 

[bemused_fred]

Post flame baiting comments about the blue, red and green team and they will be deleted.

Green? I can't see what you could say here that would annoy Nvidia.

 

[sarinaide]

Green? I can't see what you could say here that would annoy Nvidia.

Well you could tell them that the "Radeons are faster than you"

 

[bemused_fred]

Well you could tell them that the "Radeons are faster than you"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-50N52l5eE

 

[gamerk316]

Well it wasn't half as bad as the original transistor count, but yes. Lest us also not forget that AMD will always look more crude in design due to the apparent lack of wealth that the competitor possesses, the best example I can make.

BD was hardly crude, but I still believe AMD made the wrong design tradeoffs. Doubling the Integer Cores = Good for severs, but less good for general users. AMD doubled down on their server side, where they are still very competitive with Intel.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

From the front page article (well actually on the 2nd page news now 😛) http://www.tomshardware.com/news/arm-globalfoundries-soc-fab-chips,16871.html

Globalfoundries agreed to fine-tune its production process to the "next-generation" ARM Cortex processor and Mali graphics processor technologies. The goal is to shorten the time-to-market for processor designers and help them quickly migrate to 3D FinFET transistors and reduce the likelihood or production problems.

ARM has been much more aggressive pitching the importance of FinFET recently. While 20 nm processor prototypes have been taped, for example, by Cadence in late 2011, commercial 20 nm FinFET processors are not expected to arrive until 2014/2015.

So (1) this explains why GF was downplaying the importance of FinFETs as recently as last winter - they are far, far behind Intel, and (2) if AMD is going with FinFETs at 20nm, they had better hope TSMC is ahead of GF. Otherwise Excavator will be facing whatever Intel CPU comes after Bridgewell - the 14nm "tock" CPU.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

^ Also, this explains in part why AMD went with the dense cell libraries from ATI for their CPU designs - achieving up to 30% power reduction without having to wait for a process shrink. They will probably catch up with Intel in that regard (seeing as how SB on 32nm is way smaller than BD's die size).

 

[mayankleoboy1]

http://www.geeks3d.com/20120830/geforce-gtx-780-gk110-in-preparation/

gtx780 in preparation.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

Otherwise Excavator will be facing whatever Intel CPU comes after Bridgewell - the 14nm "tock" CPU.

pure carnage for AMD, then.

 

[cgner]

AMD = Best bang for the buck

Yep. Hence why use them

Well if you rule out the FX 4 and FX 6 generations the FX 81XX gen run pretty much like a i5 except in power consumption but that is expected from a chip with more cores and bigger die process.

idk about that. Even in multithreaded benches it struggles against Intel 4 cores.

 

[cgner]

From the front page article (well actually on the 2nd page news now 😛) http://www.tomshardware.com/news/arm-globalfoundries-soc-fab-chips,16871.html

Globalfoundries agreed to fine-tune its production process to the "next-generation" ARM Cortex processor and Mali graphics processor technologies. The goal is to shorten the time-to-market for processor designers and help them quickly migrate to 3D FinFET transistors and reduce the likelihood or production problems.

ARM has been much more aggressive pitching the importance of FinFET recently. While 20 nm processor prototypes have been taped, for example, by Cadence in late 2011, commercial 20 nm FinFET processors are not expected to arrive until 2014/2015.

So (1) this explains why GF was downplaying the importance of FinFETs as recently as last winter - they are far, far behind Intel, and (2) if AMD is going with FinFETs at 20nm, they had better hope TSMC is ahead of GF. Otherwise Excavator will be facing whatever Intel CPU comes after Bridgewell - the 14nm "tock" CPU.

Son, all u do is come here and bash AMD and tell us how good and amazing and holy Intel's overpriced products are. Why do u even bother coming here?

 

[jdwii]

Son, all u do is come here and bash AMD and tell us how good and amazing and holy Intel's overpriced products are. Why do u even bother coming here?

Intel used to be overpriced but now their not to bad now, Just like Amd was over priced by around 50% when the 8150fx came out, 220$ for a Gaming processor isn't to bad actually if i had one thing to complain about Intel it would be how they lock their processors if they didn't do that Amd would be worthless at almost any price.

 

[jdwii]

From the front page article (well actually on the 2nd page news now 😛) http://www.tomshardware.com/news/arm-globalfoundries-soc-fab-chips,16871.html

Globalfoundries agreed to fine-tune its production process to the "next-generation" ARM Cortex processor and Mali graphics processor technologies. The goal is to shorten the time-to-market for processor designers and help them quickly migrate to 3D FinFET transistors and reduce the likelihood or production problems.

ARM has been much more aggressive pitching the importance of FinFET recently. While 20 nm processor prototypes have been taped, for example, by Cadence in late 2011, commercial 20 nm FinFET processors are not expected to arrive until 2014/2015.

So (1) this explains why GF was downplaying the importance of FinFETs as recently as last winter - they are far, far behind Intel, and (2) if AMD is going with FinFETs at 20nm, they had better hope TSMC is ahead of GF. Otherwise Excavator will be facing whatever Intel CPU comes after Bridgewell - the 14nm "tock" CPU.

We all know Global foundries is one of the reasons why Amd is in their mess, and i know i like TSMC a lot better but they can't seem to get it right either half the time. Heck even Intel had issues with their 22nm (over hyped 3d transistors).

 

[viridiancrystal]

http://www.geeks3d.com/20120830/geforce-gtx-780-gk110-in-preparation/

gtx780 in preparation.

Somehow I can't quite see this ever being real. It may just be I don't want to, but probably not.

 

[gamerk316]

Dear god, look at that HS. GPU's have really come a long way in the past decade...

 

[fazers_on_stun]

http://www.geeks3d.com/20120830/geforce-gtx-780-gk110-in-preparation/

gtx780 in preparation.

2880 cuda cores - wonder how much juice that beast consumes??

 

[fazers_on_stun]

Son, all u do is come here and bash AMD and tell us how good and amazing and holy Intel's overpriced products are. Why do u even bother coming here?

Well sonny if "U" don't like reading it, I suggest "U" stop coming here 😛.

I've been a member here since 2006, and I link news and reviews. What exactly do "U" bring to the table, eh?

 

[-Fran-]

Well sonny if "U" don't like reading it, I suggest "U" stop coming here 😛.

I've been a member here since 2006, and I link news and reviews. What exactly do "U" bring to the table, eh?

Come on fazers, don't fall for that, lol.

I've been around since... 2000 I think and it doesn't really matter 😛

Regarding the power consumption from the GTX780, I'd say a good 280W+ if not more. Does the PCIe 3 bring a bigger power ceiling?

Cheers!

 

[fazers_on_stun]

We all know Global foundries is one of the reasons why Amd is in their mess, and i know i like TSMC a lot better but they can't seem to get it right either half the time. Heck even Intel had issues with their 22nm (over hyped 3d transistors).

True - it would have been better for AMD to have stuck some sort of clause requiring Intel to fab some percentage of their CPUs in the settlement back in 2009. At least TSMC seems headed in the right direction, with their recent 5% investment in ASML, plus they also used gate-first HKMG like Intel did, contrary to GF's gate-last which GF is abandoning in favor of gate-first for the next node.

As for the "overhyped 3d transistors", remember this is first-gen and designed for low power primarily.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

Come on fazers, don't fall for that, lol.

I've been around since... 2000 I think and it doesn't really matter 😛

Regarding the power consumption from the GTX780, I'd say a good 280W+ if not more. Does the PCIe 3 bring a bigger power ceiling?

Cheers!

You're right of course - shame on me for falling for newbie flamebait 😛

Actually I lurked here since about 2000 as well, when Thomas Pabst owned the site and wrote articles. Wonder whatever became of him after he sold the site - went back to medicine?

 

[-Fran-]

No idea, fazers.

And regarding the manufacturing process chat: not a chance in hell Intel would give AMD access to their Fabs. At least, not without a court order or something, lol. Even more when the strongest part of their advantage is process.

Cheers!

 

[viridiancrystal]

Come on fazers, don't fall for that, lol.

I've been around since... 2000 I think and it doesn't really matter 😛

Regarding the power consumption from the GTX780, I'd say a good 280W+ if not more. Does the PCIe 3 bring a bigger power ceiling?

Cheers!

well, even with the power throughput of PCIe 3 up to 150 watts, I'm still willing to bet it will take 2 8pins, maybe more. It does have 2x as many transistors of a 680, which draws nearly 200 watts.

I'm really not sure about this chip for desktop use.

 

[jdwii]

No idea, fazers.

And regarding the manufacturing process chat: not a chance in hell Intel would give AMD access to their Fabs. At least, not without a court order or something, lol. Even more when the strongest part of their advantage is process.

Cheers!

Be cool if they did but i certainly wouldn't blame Intel for not allowing it. Also this is the only site i even go to for forums, The people here are a lot better then other sites. Oh yeah and the mods are way cooler, i still can't believe overclock.net block leaks before the NDA was up on bulldozer. And i find AnandTech to be nothing but a whole butch of Intel fanboys including most of the writers. Tomshardware writers/mods have a nice balance to them.