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]

I have seen enough on the FX 8350 which has higher clocks than the 8150 and it kind of distorts the picture, I am waiting on the 4300 v 4170 and 6300 vs 6200 so to see if PD can out performance a higher clocked BD. If it can I may just yet build a new AMD machine otherwise I will just go forward building my Maximus V Gene Z rig.

 

[robnof]

If AMD can get the business side of the equation down pat, they might just pull themselves together over the next couple of years. Trinity APUs are affordable and have mainstream potential, and if Piledriver turns out to not be the disappointment that Bulldozer was, then AMD can start to build some momentum to help them limp along to Steamroller.

If not we can all look forward to those fun premium prices Intel will shove down the enthusiasts throat as they dance on the proverbial grave of AMD.

 

[jdwii]

If AMD can get the business side of the equation down pat, they might just pull themselves together over the next couple of years. Trinity APUs are affordable and have mainstream potential, and if Piledriver turns out to not be the disappointment that Bulldozer was, then AMD can start to build some momentum to help them limp along to Steamroller.

If not we can all look forward to those fun premium prices Intel will shove down the enthusiasts throat as they dance on the proverbial grave of AMD.

Agreed this is scaring me as well.

 

[jdwii]

Good for you Amd

When i looked at it i thought Amd did quite well on the Performance side until i look at the Power ratings then i was like that processor should only cost 99.99$ because of that alone. Maybe they should stop decreasing their GPU prices and start decreasing the CPU/Server CPU's???

 

[de5_Roy]

http://media.bestofmicro.com/U/D/354901/original/Total Performance.png

Good for you Amd

(not directed to you but...)
amd's quad core is marginally faster than intel's dual core (overall). you get less performance for the hardware and similar perf for price. the extra transistors that amd biased people love so much to tout only increase power consumption and heat. before one brings overclocking into the mix, keep in mind that the cost of extra cooler lowers zambezi's perf/price unless one is capable of staying content with the noise the stock coolers make.

http://media.bestofmicro.com/P/R/356031/original/Power.png




When i looked at it i thought Amd did quite well on the Performance side until i look at the Power ratings then i was like that processor should only cost 99.99$ because of that alone. Maybe they should stop decreasing their GPU prices and start decreasing the CPU/Server CPU's???

real gamers and enthusiasts(tm) don't care about power consumption!
power is cheap in america so it's irrelevant all over the world!
piledriver will use less than that! even with overclocking!
imo, good thing the writer didn't include fps over time charts and task manager screenshots. woulda showed how much the zambezi cpus work playing gpu bound games. 😗

 

[jdwii]

I've read that twice now were are you guys getting Power is cheap? Not only do electricity bills keep going up while we keep using less power but if "power is cheap in america" i'd hate to see it in other countries.



Edit (this looks better then toms Quotes for this situation)

 

[sookster54]

Remember how expensive those 8088, 386 and 486's were? Those were before AMD and VIA got competitive in the x86 PC department, I remember paying $2500 for a basic 486/SX25, yikes but prices of new systems began to drop over the years because AMD and VIA were releasing similar spec'd systems as Intel were for cheaper. If AMD quits the race, Intel would indeed hike prices of CPUs and Intel equipped chipset motherboards, yikes again.

Something else that doesn't make much sense to me though, why are iPads still $700-800 when the best Android tablets are $350-400?

 

[de5_Roy]

AMD is imploding because management doesn’t understand semiconductors
Analysis: You can't Win by ignoring fundamentals
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/10/15/amd-is-imploding-because-management-doesnt-understand-semiconductors/

Tablets based on Hondo coming in mid-November
http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/29093-tablets-based-on-hondo-coming-in-mid-november
Vishera on water hits 5+ GHz
http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/29067-vishera-on-water-hits-5%20-ghz

edit:
useless trivia: when i read about project win, i think of charlie sheen, who, after a meltdown, found work in *gasp* fx....
sorry if i'm wrong about the network!

 

[sarinaide]

If a clown runs the show, its likely gonna be a circus, case in point. Events of the last few days have soured things a bit, not pleased not that I was anyways but AMD needs a lifeboat now in the form of a new investor and management overhauling, they need resources as well.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

I am hoping stocks crash to below the 1.00 mark, and someone with a fab and assets buy them out, if not we will be having a one player market.

Some stories coming out from AMD fronts is that Steamroller is on hold, suggests potential buy out and change of direction in x86 policy. I think most of us AMD users whether fanboys or user would happily go back to K arch and figure out how to make it more efficient, modulation is never going to work unless specially coded for and that is not going to happen in any rush, as sound in theory its nothing but a waste of time right now.

My vested interest is now in a potential buyout hopefully early in the new financial year.

You might not like what a buyer would do to the company. My guess is that they'd cut it into pieces and sell them to the highest bidder. In this economy likely nobody would be interested in competing with Intel in x86, which basically leaves the GPU, SeaMicro and a few other valuable pieces..

 

[gamerk316]

You might not like what a buyer would do to the company. My guess is that they'd cut it into pieces and sell them to the highest bidder. In this economy likely nobody would be interested in competing with Intel in x86, which basically leaves the GPU, SeaMicro and a few other valuable pieces..

My thoughts exactly. Right now, an ARM license is FAR more attractive.

If AMD goes down, what I suspect will happen is a massive push to try and get ARM into the desktop world. Then we'll see MSFT put out an ARM-to-X86 software suite that will allow ARM programs to run on X86. And so on and so forth, until X86 becomes irrelevant. Will take a decade or two, but thats where things are going.

Cutting engineering doesn't make any sense if AMD plans to remain in the X86 market. Its that simple.

 

[sookster54]

IMO ARM has a potential future in the consumer market, there's already ARM equipped laptops out there now and is in just about every cell phone and tablet.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

My thoughts exactly. Right now, an ARM license is FAR more attractive.

If AMD goes down, what I suspect will happen is a massive push to try and get ARM into the desktop world. Then we'll see MSFT put out an ARM-to-X86 software suite that will allow ARM programs to run on X86. And so on and so forth, until X86 becomes irrelevant. Will take a decade or two, but thats where things are going.

Cutting engineering doesn't make any sense if AMD plans to remain in the X86 market. Its that simple.

An ARM license would be far cheaper than buying AMD, even with the stock price down to a dollar or less.

As for ARM pushing into desktop, dunno if it would scale up that well. According to an article here on THG last winter, ARM is just now getting into OoO processing, where Intel has decades of experience. So that just leaves the supposed 'legacy' burden of backwards compatibility for x86, which somebody pointed out is almost insignificant in today's billion+ transistor CPUs.

Also, x86 software currently owns the desktop space, so more likely MS would recompile Office, etc, to run on ARM desktops much like they did when Apple used PowerPC CPUs.

But I agree cutting the engineering dept is like a ship flooding the engine room - while you might avoid immediately sinking, you sure ain't gonna make much forward progress.

If the world economy doesn't improve next year and AMD continues on its present course, my bet is that they will bankrupt by 2015 as they simply won't have any products worth buying at that time..

 

[jdwii]

AMD is imploding because management doesn’t understand semiconductors
Analysis: You can't Win by ignoring fundamentals
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/10/15/amd-is-imploding-because-management-doesnt-understand-semiconductors/

Tablets based on Hondo coming in mid-November
http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/29093-tablets-based-on-hondo-coming-in-mid-november
Vishera on water hits 5+ GHz
http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/29067-vishera-on-water-hits-5%20-ghz

edit:
useless trivia: when i read about project win, i think of charlie sheen, who, after a meltdown, found work in *gasp* fx....
sorry if i'm wrong about the network!

Thanks a lot for showing that

That CEO is a joke

 

[de5_Roy]

Thanks a lot for showing that

That CEO is a joke

or
he's doing what stephen elop is doing to nokia...
just a speculation...
😗 😉

 

[gamerk316]

An ARM license would be far cheaper than buying AMD, even with the stock price down to a dollar or less.

As for ARM pushing into desktop, dunno if it would scale up that well. According to an article here on THG last winter, ARM is just now getting into OoO processing, where Intel has decades of experience. So that just leaves the supposed 'legacy' burden of backwards compatibility for x86, which somebody pointed out is almost insignificant in today's billion+ transistor CPUs.

Also, x86 software currently owns the desktop space, so more likely MS would recompile Office, etc, to run on ARM desktops much like they did when Apple used PowerPC CPUs.

But I agree cutting the engineering dept is like a ship flooding the engine room - while you might avoid immediately sinking, you sure ain't gonna make much forward progress.

If the world economy doesn't improve next year and AMD continues on its present course, my bet is that they will bankrupt by 2015 as they simply won't have any products worth buying at that time..

Remember all the architectures NT *used* to support out of the box? Alpha, PPC, X86, Itanium, etc. MSFT will go where the market is, and right now, the market is mobile. Hence Win8.

If MSFT could find a way to make ARM/X86 apps coexist (easier to do for ARM on X86, obviously), that would remove a HUGE barrier to consumers. Not likely without the cloud though...

 

[jimmysmitty]

I've read that twice now were are you guys getting Power is cheap? Not only do electricity bills keep going up while we keep using less power but if "power is cheap in america" i'd hate to see it in other countries.



Edit (this looks better then toms Quotes for this situation)

Some people may not have it as bad. I have heard in some areas on the US, only one power company exists and they charge a ton and yet there is nothing anyone can do since there is no choice.

When I worked at a call center, one lady told me her electricity bill in the summer cost her $800 bucks a month, and thats more than her monthly mortgage payment.

I guess some people wont understand that. At least its not like Cali, rolling blackouts and allin the summer.

AMD is imploding because management doesn’t understand semiconductors
Analysis: You can't Win by ignoring fundamentals
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/10/15/amd-is-imploding-because-management-doesnt-understand-semiconductors/

Tablets based on Hondo coming in mid-November
http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/29093-tablets-based-on-hondo-coming-in-mid-november
Vishera on water hits 5+ GHz
http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/29067-vishera-on-water-hits-5%20-ghz

edit:
useless trivia: when i read about project win, i think of charlie sheen, who, after a meltdown, found work in *gasp* fx....
sorry if i'm wrong about the network!

I remember people stating this for BD as well and it turned out it was mainly the cherry picked ones did while most topped ouit, much like Sandy Bridge, at about 4.8GHz without any major voltage tweaking.

I would just hope they got the power down as BD doubled it when OCed.

As for AMDs management, I can say Rory Reed does not understand semiconductors. He may understand PCs/Laptops since he was in that markert for a while but I am pretty sure that if you explained how HK/MG worked or even the simple action of a transistor he would be dumb founded.

I think a CEO of a semiconductor needs to know what they are selling and how it works while also having a very good business sense, not one or the other.

 

[cgner]

Today, smartphones and tablets are slowly but surely taking over laptop business, which had previously outsold desktop business. so if anyone is scratching head about top end gaming cpus arent pushed to new performance heights like in 2000-2010, well thats why. money making has shifted.

 

[davemaster84]

I've read that twice now were are you guys getting Power is cheap? Not only do electricity bills keep going up while we keep using less power but if "power is cheap in america" i'd hate to see it in other countries.



Edit (this looks better then toms Quotes for this situation)

Well dunno in USA how cheap or expensive it is, but in my country I'd say it's pretty cheap.

 

[jdwii]

Way off topic but this is really funny this article made me laugh pretty hard how can they compare this to the Wii U?

http://www.ign.com/wikis/wii-u/DIY_Hardware_Build

 

[gamerk316]

Today, smartphones and tablets are slowly but surely taking over laptop business, which had previously outsold desktop business. so if anyone is scratching head about top end gaming cpus arent pushed to new performance heights like in 2000-2010, well thats why. money making has shifted.

Yep. Not shocked by that in the least though.

Fact is, power/heat, not performance, is what matters most now.

 

[sarinaide]

Change of management and change of direction is needed, a buyout is still the most feasible way to that.

 

[davemaster84]

Yep. Not shocked by that in the least though.

Fact is, power/heat, not performance, is what matters most now.

Tablets , smartphones yeah they are taking over the market, but enthusiasts will never change a good looking game in a 10 inch display than a monster like Bf3 or whatever in surround or a huge screen, there's no way a tablet can achieve that.

 

[sarinaide]

Again CPU markets are diverse, while yes money is in Mobility it doesn't mean the performance DT is going to just fade away, simple fact is Gaming is a very big market, cybersports and professional gaming are bigger today than its ever been in the past. Along with that I am willing to wager that around 95% of Tomshardware members bought a DT with gaming in mind.

While lower power is a bonus it is far from be all and end all, if performance is good, sadly at this juncture AMD is ticking very little.

So again I say, new management please.

 

[gamerk316]

EDIT: Double post; see below.