AMD Piledriver rumours ... and expert conjecture

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Reynod

Reynod

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Mar 26, 2007
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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 ...
 
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If we start paying attention to the stock value of public traded companies, we'll get crazy with speculation, hahaha. For your own health, leave that to wall street suits 😛

And regarding why AMD should sell its CPU/GPU division or itself... Why not? ARM is getting quite the traction thanks to the low power approach and high adoption rate on Android, Apple and other devices so there wouldn't be any type of monopoly on Intel, and AMD is just struggling with no funds to actually get something out of the labs into the market. Not that they're hopeless or something, but I'm sure if a big player with big pockets buys them out, they would be able to turn the table right away. It's just a matter of who would/can and if Intel would allow it.

Who know, maybe Intel is just waiting for an all times low to buy. Maybe Samsung is. Hell, even Apple could buy them, hahaha.

Cheers!
 
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Why does everyone talk about someone buying AMD's CPU business? The x86 license can't be transferred. It's legally impossible for a company to buy AMD and make x86 CPUs.

But why would anyone even want an x86 CPU business at this point. Even Intel has been trying to make strides into mobile markets and low voltage markets, and they've failed every time. If Intel can't do it, how the hell is someone else going to design a better x86 chip?

But, as far as piledriver goes, are we getting new AM3+ motherboards or not? I'm contemplating going AMD this round just because it's not that much slower than Intel and it's a lot more fun to overclock. I'd like to have some sort of idea of if I should be looking into mobos now or if I'd just be wasting my time.
 
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I kinda wish Amd and Arm would team up and be partners that would fix the issues Amd is having in the low-end and it would punch Nvidia in the face since we can have a Arm+Radeon core.

As for new AM3+ boards not really Sabertooth just made a Revision 2.0 990FX board. And its not much different than mine.

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3Plus/SABERTOOTH_990FX_R20/
 
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With the last court case settlement Intel and AMD had, it appears that the prospect of a buyer gaining access to AMD's x86 license is higher than it used to be, but at the same time, there is a lack of clarity about that which lets anyone of us know whether this could definitely happen or not.



 
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Why should nvidia being looking better than Intel?

The profits being made in the Smartphone/Tablet market, are being derived not so much from the semiconductor hardware, but from everything else.

Nvidia in my view also faces a very precarious future over this decade.
 
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Yes the smartphone market is very cut throat. We are now seeing companies like TI exiting that market. The profit margins are too thin.

HPC is where NVidia can make more money.

The only company making mad bucks there is Apple with their 100% markup over BOM cost. No other companies are getting that kind of profit.
 
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Companies like Apple and Google have the added advantage of being able to make money from services used by smartphones, so it is in their interest to get out as many smartphones into the marketplace as possible, whereas this just doesn't apply for Nvidia.
 
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They're not making more money but their in the cell phone market way more than Intel and its probably going to stay like this for 3 years or more. When Arm chips use 3.5 watts or less its going to be quite hard for Intel to do that with the same performance on the CPU and GPU not impossible but hard. I know you don't think so chad but i also don't understand why we need x86 in a Smartphone/tablet to begin with.

Edit changed Cellphone to Smartphone since its not 1990 anymore
 
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Intel are going to be improving by a far, far greater rate of knots in low powered devices than ARM will, in the years ahead.

ARM's current lead in a technical sense will almost certainly be matched in late 2013, and demolished in late 2014/early 2015.

Just check out this effort, from a far from optimal design or process, compared to what Intel will be using in 2013/14


******************************************************************************
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/smartphones/377155/motorola-razr-i

Although Intel hasn’t made much of the current range of mobile processors’ battery life, contenting itself with claiming the chip is merely “competitive”, we found the Razr i blitzed our 24-hour battery test. In combination with a 2,000mAh power pack, the Motorola finished with 76% remaining on the battery gauge, the best result we’ve seen from any smartphone in recent memory, with most modern smartphones achieving 50 to 60%.

Verdict

Exceptional battery life and an enviable turn of speed make this a tempting buy if high-end phones are out of reach

******************************************************************************
 
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That's the interesting thing about Intel going to low power with a thunder (no pun intended). They can overcome the shortcomings of zipping more power with a faster CPU that can handle multiple low power states better than "simple" ARM designs. It's an interesting trade off.

Now, their ARM counterparts can hold longer battery times in not very complex loads; talk time for example.

Some tasks in smartphones cannot be accounted for mere performance, but battery life. Since ARM is going from bottom to top and Intel is going from top to bottom, ARM is kinda marking the pace for now. When Intel can snatch the overall duty with better battery life (not just benchies), they'll be on top.



The half full glass says, they're just clearing bad engies... But the half half says not a good move, haha.

Cheers!
 
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I'm really scared for them most Amd fans will say well they saw worst times but at that time they made the Athlon which saved them as we know it, ALL amd has is HSA left and that may not be enough and "IF" Intel beats them in integrated graphics Amd is done for and almost be 100% useless except for the Graphics division which is not making them money anyways.

Not to sound mean but If some Amd fans shut up and realise that all the big guys are leaving the company not to mention Amd is cutting jobs left and right again and again. Their market cap is 1/3 it was 2 years ago which even then its market cap was sad and you can't say this doesn't matter because that is just as dumb as saying Amd can be successful in the CPU market with just Laptops and Desktops. Their Server sales are low and APU's don't earn them a lot of money, From that article it talks about some things that scare me more like cutting the one area that should not be cut. I said it from the first day he took office Rory read is a complete idiot and it should be illegal for him to run a CPU corporation every since he took office all that's been happening is their market cap keeps falling he has been cutting jobs here and there he keeps making excuses instead of solutions he knows NOTHING about making CPU's and their for should not be in charge of a falling CPU company unlike Dirk Meyer who should've never been taken out of office. I thought they put this guy in their to get into the Smartphone/Tablet market since Dirk Meyer wasn't doing it fast enough, not to stay in the Laptop/Desktop market while losing badly in the server market and yawning at the Tablets.

I talk to people all the time for example i know the main network administrator in my county(He is an Instructor at my college) and he says he doesn't Buy Amd servers since they can only spend big bucks rarely and that when they do get to they get the best of the best and the best Performance per watt which isn't anywhere near Amd's world.
I also saw the Network at my college and their running 8 core Xeons as well as the skills center i went to and my home school.
I don't know anymore examples to prove Amd is losing in this area. The only thing lately i'm seeing from Amd is laptops which are great(i'm at college so i fix them for people) but not enough to keep the company making money for ever.

Intel stocks have been falling as well but the difference is their doing something about it and getting into the smartphone/tablet market sorry chad i still think x86 is dumb to have on android and still think its going to take at least 5 years before they own 50% of the market i know Intel they will charge a leg for their processors over Arm and it will increase the cost of the phone. If their lucky though they might be able to team up with Apple since they already supply them processors for their MAC's.
On top of this Intel is also worth 55X more than Amd which means a lot.

I really want Amd to succeed i love their Video cards and APU's and i used to love their CPU's as well. I hope some people at Amd are smarter than us and others on tomshardware who think Amd is just fine and dandy if not their in bigger trouble than i can imagine.
 
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A lot was foretold 10 years ago that Intel was perhaps inadvertently going to drive the x86 industry into non-existence by complete market hegemony. While in the US/North America Intel is reasonably priced, move to say my country Intel is extremely expensive, not only does a full Intel build even a petty i3 cost more than most of the populations salary minus expenses, the prices never go down if anything they go up, this while the console has evolved into the dominant mainstream platform and is getting stronger by now encroaching on the hallowed grounds deemed PC only territory, moreover developers are favoring consoles today so while I try avoid getting into doom and gloom debates that is the big thing that console fanboys said many years ago that console was going to catch and surpass on a fraction of the cost.

Hypothetically if AMD had to leave x86 PC they should focus extensively on Console, Mobility and the GPU sector which is still a lucrative one, also I would suggest AMD unify the X86 department and focus on higher end APU's.

I will also assume the only reason why no investors have bought out AMD is why buy now when it will be more expensive, as stocks drop the acquisition price will do to, I full expect a player with money to pick up AMD for rather cheap and get x86 licenses as well as full unlocking to the GPU technology.

Well engineering samples of Haswell should be available soon from that it will likely be confirmed that HD5K was intended for Mobility where the bigger jump is to be made, HD5K should be no more stronger than HD4k as what Trinity was to Llano on the IGPU front. Intel is atleast 5 years away from mainstream level graphics so there is still a window for AMD to figure out how to get a high end GPU onto the same die space as a x86 while not running to hot.

I really want Amd to succeed i love their Video cards and APU's and i used to love their CPU's as well. I hope some people at Amd are smarter than us and others on tomshardware who think Amd is just fine and dandy if not their in bigger trouble than i can imagine.
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Thats all fine and well but ironically I think it was you that posted the article about AMD's position when it comes to reviewing, there is nothing AMD can do if nobody is willing to give the products any positive light. While yes we established that x86 performance is down there are few instances where it actually makes a difference if we talk of mainstream and hardcore users they are either overclockers (AMD overclocks better) or hardcore gamers (mostly limited to GPU dependent game engines) then there is almost no difference between the $1100 Intel extreme and a lowly $200 i5 or any AMD higher end FX chip. In some benches even AMD's A10 with discrete graphics games at similar FPS that all quads do in GPU heavy titles, this is more in line with what newer game engines are focusing yet AMD will still be reviewed in bad light and that is not going to change.

It is fine and easy to come here and "ooh AMD are not going to make it" but basically everything technological is viewed in a manner that it will likely not work out, it is this same sentiment that carries over the PC industry. Well I am starting to reach the point where I actually hope it happens, once the dust settles and intel have paid the lawsuits they will then just feast on the beleaguered desktop market charging over the top because you have no choice, that will filter into the mobility market and if they end up in the phone market well that will be terrible for ARM, Samsung and Apple, those companies will not survive if Intel gets big in that sector, with the history of Intel's business tactics like AMD they will be pummeled into non-existence by a company with resources that are basically unlimited(this will be worse once intel is the only choice you have).
 
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http://www.tomshardware.com/news/AMD-Workforce-Third-Quarter-Stock-Earnings,18402.html
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/10/12/amds-layoffs-target-engineering/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57531659-75/amd-preps-layoffs-that-could-hit-30-percent-of-its-workers/

And it keeps getting worse; up to a 30% workforce reduction.

I know S/A tends to be on the "drama queen" side of reporting, but right now, if PD falls flat on its face, we really could be seeing the last major release out of AMD. They can not continue the death spiral of laying off workers to try and make a profit for long...

Right now, I'd give a 1/4 chance AMD is bankrupt within 2 years.
 
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Actually when he joind, AMD was doing quite well over all since Dirk Meyer took the helm for a short while. He finally focused it back on important things. Thats when they stopped bleeding cash like crazy.

So far Rory Read has done two things. For one he stated that AMD is no longer "competing" with Intel. Then he stated that current CPUs have enough power, and while he is right to a point (that being that software is behind CPUs) he is wrong as that you always need to push performance forward.

As for products, the AMD GPU series is good in some ways, bad in others. Cost is still very high ($500 for a HD7970) but the performance with drivers has been decent. Their CPUs are meh overall. Not sure about Trinity as I have yet to get one in our shop but I am sure its decent. But then again it will be short lived as Intel is still moving forward.



The K10.5s are still very hard to find. There is one Sempron and one Athlon II we can get, and rarely Phenom IIs. Soon we wont be able to because Trinity will make up the low to mid end CPUs and BD/PD will make up the high end.

Love the quote thoough. 260% performance increase. Its accounting for perfect scaling (we all know there is no such thing) and a 60% increase per core vs bobcat. Of course it will be interesting to see the real performance numbers.



eDRAM is nothing new. It is also on the Xeno ATI GPU chip for the 360.

What might be new is the way its implemented for Haswell, if its legit. It may be eDRAM or it may be more like a L4 cache. Hard to say.

I doubt we will see it on a DT CPU from AMD for at least another gen or two.



One part of the company cannot hold up another in this industry where both take considerable resources for R&D and production. I said this before, actually quite a while back when the HD 4870/5870 werre doing well but people dismiss it.

A company can take small losses in one section so long as they start to turn into profits. But after continued and heavy losses for multiple quarters, it tends to pull down on the entire company.

It would be like saying Intels CPU market makes enough money to support their chipset, motherboard, IGP, network interface, USB, etc (Intel does a ton of stuff) and thats just not true. Intel invests in tech that everyone will use and benefit from, hence the Intel-Micron NAND partnership for SSDs or their network card productions.

Either way, AMD cannot survive like this. They need a vialble CPU product that can truly push Intel instead of something thats "good enough" (per Reed) or good for certain market aspects.

I remember a time when AMD was the king of the crop in low, mid, high, extreme and server markets. They held it all. But now their APUs are good for budget no GPU gaming and thats about their only market in CPUs really.

It is fine and easy to come here and "ooh AMD are not going to make it" but basically everything technological is viewed in a manner that it will likely not work out, it is this same sentiment that carries over the PC industry. Well I am starting to reach the point where I actually hope it happens, once the dust settles and intel have paid the lawsuits they will then just feast on the beleaguered desktop market charging over the top because you have no choice, that will filter into the mobility market and if they end up in the phone market well that will be terrible for ARM, Samsung and Apple, those companies will not survive if Intel gets big in that sector, with the history of Intel's business tactics like AMD they will be pummeled into non-existence by a company with resources that are basically unlimited(this will be worse once intel is the only choice you have).
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Suprisingly its more than what people see, especially on forums or reviews. The industry looks at the product and looks at a lot of factors. Major companies for instance look at performance, power usage (power is a major factor) and cost all together. Right now Intel has the best overall for that. AMD used to.

As for Intel killing AMD, they wont. AMD is doing a good job at that themselves. Intel has even slowed their "Tick/Tock" down a bit, originally it was every Q4 was a new arch or new process. Now its Q2.

As for the other companies, they are much to largeto be killed and most are in different markets. Apple strives on mainly the iPhone/iPod while their PCs use Intels CPUs right now. Samsung does consumer electronics (their TVs are awesome and I want one of their fridges) along with their own NAND and ARM based CPUs.

I could go on but its been a pretty dismal day for AMD.

Hope the news picks up.
 
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Pretty much anything lower than the HD7970 is getting price cuts. Killing us because by the time we even sell a AMD GPU, the price we have to sell at is at or below our buying cost. Short of the HD7970 I bought, I don't know if we have sold one recently.



Its all a bunch of crap. Honestly tablets are a fad, much like laptops. Well laptops were not a fad but there was also a time when the desktop was going to dissapear because of the laptop.

Still nVidia and Intel have the capital to survive and branch into other markets. Intel can easily start "renting" their FAB out to other companies. AMD cannot. nVidia has a stronger hold in GPGPU with CUDA and them being on most software "approved" list (a customer wouldn't buy a GTX670 or HD7950 becaus the GTX570 was on the Adobes "approved" list, yet the HD7950 has much better GPGPU performance).

AMD is the one who will hurt the most from this "PC is doomed" prophecy.
 
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All they need to do is get their butt back in servers i also want that CEO out but that would be a bad move right now as that would lower their stock even more, As for sarinaide no one is going to buy something that is worse then something else that is cheaper just to support a company and i just don't get why Amd is doing the crap they are right now i mean why the hell hasn't the improved Bob cat cores been released yet when do they plan on releasing it on 28nm die not 3 year old fabrication that way they can have some good Performance per watt, Sell it extremely competitive for tablets.

I'm hoping steamroller really does fix the issues their having on the server side of things and bring some actual Performance per watt to the table. If tomorrow Amd said their going to release enhanced bob cat cores on 28nm die their stock would probably go up 10-15% and if they release it on time they would also make their stock holders happy and the company wont have to worry as much about going bankrupt. Also they need to cut corners everywhere except the Engineers and sales people, financial advisers(not marketing).
 
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And that is the legacy of Hector Ruiz, IMO. Mostly likely due to a cascading chain of unfortunate events starting with the 10-month delays of first Llano and then Bulldozer thanks to that exclusive contract with GloFlo that Hector pushed along with the spinoff, which ate into their market lifetimes before the next generations of Trinity and Piledriver appeared, which means AMD didn't have much of a chance to recoup the R&D expenses for Llano and BD. I know AMD (well John Fruehe anyway) said they were keeping mum on BD and then PD so as to avoid the Osborne effect, but it happened anyway apparently.

There is a rather large slump in the market and AMD is getting hit pretty hard. Investors are just panic selling for no reason as well since the general tone is bad for months and any small thing sets them off. Intel isn't doing that great either losing 30% of its stock value since the launch of ivy. Everybody is jumping ship because of the supposed post PC era thats suppose to come.
Click to expand...

Well one good reason, according to the S/A article, is that it's the engineering side of AMD that is getting the 30% workforce cuts. I know engineers get paid a lot more than marketing people, but this is going to seriously impede any R&D if true, and affect AMD far into the future. I would not be very surprised if those OBR rumors about AMD cancelling Steamy and Exxy turn out to be true, and AMD concentrate on the low-power side.

Plus the world economy could get considerably worse before it gets better. 3 top issues that come to mind are China & Japan embargoing each other due to those oilfield islands in the South China Sea, which would not only seriously hurt both of them since they are the region's top two trading partners. Also Europe may see the EC dissolve as Germany is tired of carrying Spain, Greece, Ireland, etc. That would drive markets way down more than just the troubled countries going bankrupt which they are sure to do if no more EC bailouts forthcoming. And finally if Israel goes after Iran's nuke capability, you'll see chaos in the oil markets and $10 a gallon gas here depending on how long the strait of Hormuz is closed to shipping.

Kinda funny but for the first time ever, I saw an ad at the local Sam's Club for a 1-yr supply of food (canned & dried of course) for one person, on sale for ~$800. So now we have Sam's Club (division of Walmart) targeting the survivalists?? Things must be getting serious..

Oops, forgot about the Dems and Repubs not agreeing on a budget by January and the US going deeper into recession as a result..
 
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There used to be a time when product launches were the highlight of the year.
We finally get Trinity desktop and Vishera in the same month and now these cuts.

I'm seeing this happen at other companies. New execs come in and think decisions that worked for companies 10 years ago will still work today. They can say this is how XYZ company did it.

Outsourcing work to China 10 years ago was a huge cost savings. India was cheap too. So much work has been outsourced to these areas it's saturated. The talent is dried up and you're competing for the same talent. The cost of outsourcing to these areas is high enough it's not worth it to start now.

Some companies are starting to get it and bringing work back to USA.
 
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I would not be terribly surprised to see OBR's prediction that AMD will cancel Steamy & Exxy come true. One possible hint of that is the fact that AMD is canceling the GCC compiler support for Steamy, according to the Phoronix article that De5_roy linked above.. But yeah laying off a third of the engineers means almost assuredly that stuff like Steamy gets pushed way outl although S/A thinks its mostly the GPU engineers that are slated to go. If that turns out true, then the rumors about a culture clash between AMD and ATI would seem to be credible as well.

My bet is that AMD concentrates on the low-power end as the path to their CPU future.
 
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I read the article. By "Drop" it meant ADDED IN the compiler.

This is GOOD! And there are comments that explain SR in more detail.


"Here's some code comments from within the patch that explain a little about how the Bulldozer v3 scheduling is done:

The bdver3 contains three pipelined FP units and two integer units. Fetching and decoding logic is different from previous fam15 processors. Fetching is done every two cycles rather than every cycle and two decode units are available. The decode units therefore decode four instructions in two cycles.

Three DirectPath instructions decoders and only one VectorPath decoder is available. They can decode three DirectPath instructions or one VectorPath instruction per cycle.

The load/store queue unit is not attached to the schedulers but communicates with all the execution units separately instead.

bdver3 belong to fam15 processors. We use the same insn attribute that was used for bdver3 decoding scheme.
"
 
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