AMD Reveals Single Socket For Zen CPU, APU

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we knew this almost 3 years ago just before the FM2+ socket was about to be released

At that time back in late 2013 AMD said that FM2+ would be the last "split" socket from AM3+, and that the next socket would unify the structure on AM4, supporting DDR4 ram (which is how the AM sockets always have been numbered, based on the version of the ddr ram they supported)

I guess it's nice to see their plans haven't change, but i can't help but feel like this is all too little too late at this point. The time for Zen to be launched and be relevant was probably early last year during the underwhelming broadwell release. by the time Zen comes out intel will be on the chip beyond skylake (either the refresh kaby lake or the upgrade on 10nm cannon lake), and if the promo material about Zen is to be believed it will be sitting on roughly Ivy Bridge performance (possibly Haswell level performance, though I've seen nothing to suggest it will be that good)

the Story of post 2005 AMD. too late to the game every time. Once the core2 lineup was released it took them 3 years to find a chip that could play with it (PhenomII), we're now on year 7 of the core I lineup, and they still haven't released a product that matches sandybridge. it breaks my heart since i want AMD to be competitive but i fear AMD's management has crippled the company to the point of non-competitiveness.

 
Well, yeah. The only reason AM3+ is still around if because AMD skipped a generation of high-end processors, otherwise they would already have done with with FM2.
 


They don't need to be better than Intel's latest. They only need to be as good or better than CPUs at their given price-point. If their top-end Zen CPU beats a top-end i5, but sells for $20 less, they'll get the win. They only lose the top-end market (which frankly is a smaller percentage). AMD has only been good at fighting on performance per dollar for quite a while now.
 
Well, we did already know. The crucial timing will be during Kaby Lake, which is shaping up to be a very unimpressive release, a lot like Haswell/Broadwell. If AMD releases new APUs especially... Well, if you had a choice between a chip with the performance of an Ivy Bridge i7 and the GPU on par with a 750 Ti, or a slightly more powerful Kaby Lake chip with a way weaker iGPU, I know what would go. Same with Ivy Bridge-E vs Skylake. They don't have to compete with the highest priced Intel chips. Because people don't need that much more power. I mean, people are still buying Haswell CPUs because they are cheaper than the Skylake ones. A chip with Ivy Bridge-Haswell performance will sell well if priced only a little less then Skylake, and Kaby Lake is really more like Skylake Refresh.
 
@ ingtar33

AMD's strategy has never really been to trump Intel. What has always made AMD processors great is that they come close to Intel's chips in terms of performance but are considerably cheaper (best bang for the buck). We saw this with the Athlon XP (Thoroughbred & Barton cores) and the Phenom chips but starting with Bulldozer, it felt like there was a lot of hype and pressure to finally spank Intel (which didn't turn out to be the case). However, I do agree that AMD has been focusing on and overemphasizing APU's and neglecting to re-engineer its FX line.
 
we knew this almost 3 years ago just before the FM2+ socket was about to be released

At that time back in late 2013 AMD said that FM2+ would be the last "split" socket from AM3+, and that the next socket would unify the structure on AM4, supporting DDR4 ram (which is how the AM sockets always have been numbered, based on the version of the ddr ram they supported)

I guess it's nice to see their plans haven't change, but i can't help but feel like this is all too little too late at this point. The time for Zen to be launched and be relevant was probably early last year during the underwhelming broadwell release. by the time Zen comes out intel will be on the chip beyond skylake (either the refresh kaby lake or the upgrade on 10nm cannon lake), and if the promo material about Zen is to be believed it will be sitting on roughly Ivy Bridge performance (possibly Haswell level performance, though I've seen nothing to suggest it will be that good)

the Story of post 2005 AMD. too late to the game every time. Once the core2 lineup was released it took them 3 years to find a chip that could play with it (PhenomII), we're now on year 7 of the core I lineup, and they still haven't released a product that matches sandybridge. it breaks my heart since i want AMD to be competitive but i fear AMD's management has crippled the company to the point of non-competitiveness.
Click to expand...

I think it's always funny when people put all the blame on AMD management. Sure AMD has messed up, especially in the last 7 years but you have to remember, this is after they were blocked from the market by Intel.

AMD literally could not sell a superior product in the original Athlon because Intel locked them out from all the OEMs. Back in the day where few had Internet, it was a killing blow. If you cannot sell your product, you don't make money.

Ever since then AMD has had less money and as a result, has almost always been a step behind. Once again, Nvidia is doing something similar on the GPU side of things right now. GameWorks, a program Nvidia claims helps devs. make video games for the PC, has not had a single game where it has achieved that goal. AMD may not have clearcut winner cards out right now but the 20% performance hit from GameWorks really doesn't help and pretty much makes it so that no matter what card AMD releases, the Nvidia card will be faster just because it's a GameWorks title. If two company's products are no longer competing on how good each one actually is, this is no longer a healthy capitalist system.
 
Zen is addressing a new breed of CPUs that are geared more towards HSA and parallel compute to drive emerging markets such as VR and deep learning data centers. These compute farms will feed the desktop consumer market that will leverage the same underlying code and architectural engine. There's no question about the fact that this is the future trend. Saying that Zen is one year too late to the market is not correct since it's actually ahead of intel on that matter. The architecture of Zen is different and it's sole purpose is not to be 'competitive' to intel's latest but to excel in its purpose. Intel and Nvidia are trying to do the same thing but AMD has a better consolidated end-to-end platform, interconnect and open standard framework to facilitate the innovative community.
 
The tiny picture of AMD's slide combined with Tom's horrible image management detracts from the article. I don't understand why you don't use Lightboxes or something. It has only been......years that people have been complaining about this.
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Direct links to the full size images when you click on the small ones should be a minimum requirement even if they don't use JavaScript based viewers. Clicking to get an even smaller image that you have to click again to get a popup window with the full size image is just maddening. http://media.bestofmicro.com/F/R/551367/original/zen-socket.PNG
 
we knew this almost 3 years ago just before the FM2+ socket was about to be released

At that time back in late 2013 AMD said that FM2+ would be the last "split" socket from AM3+, and that the next socket would unify the structure on AM4, supporting DDR4 ram (which is how the AM sockets always have been numbered, based on the version of the ddr ram they supported)

I guess it's nice to see their plans haven't change, but i can't help but feel like this is all too little too late at this point. The time for Zen to be launched and be relevant was probably early last year during the underwhelming broadwell release. by the time Zen comes out intel will be on the chip beyond skylake (either the refresh kaby lake or the upgrade on 10nm cannon lake), and if the promo material about Zen is to be believed it will be sitting on roughly Ivy Bridge performance (possibly Haswell level performance, though I've seen nothing to suggest it will be that good)

the Story of post 2005 AMD. too late to the game every time. Once the core2 lineup was released it took them 3 years to find a chip that could play with it (PhenomII), we're now on year 7 of the core I lineup, and they still haven't released a product that matches sandybridge. it breaks my heart since i want AMD to be competitive but i fear AMD's management has crippled the company to the point of non-competitiveness.
Click to expand...

I think it's always funny when people put all the blame on AMD management. Sure AMD has messed up, especially in the last 7 years but you have to remember, this is after they were blocked from the market by Intel.

AMD literally could not sell a superior product in the original Athlon because Intel locked them out from all the OEMs. Back in the day where few had Internet, it was a killing blow. If you cannot sell your product, you don't make money.

Ever since then AMD has had less money and as a result, has almost always been a step behind. Once again, Nvidia is doing something similar on the GPU side of things right now. GameWorks, a program Nvidia claims helps devs. make video games for the PC, has not had a single game where it has achieved that goal. AMD may not have clearcut winner cards out right now but the 20% performance hit from GameWorks really doesn't help and pretty much makes it so that no matter what card AMD releases, the Nvidia card will be faster just because it's a GameWorks title. If two company's products are no longer competing on how good each one actually is, this is no longer a healthy capitalist system.
Click to expand...
This all the way.

If you look at it, Only low-end laptops have AMD chips, all of them have lower-than-Full-HD screens, and are just cheap crappy systems. But that is enough to take away the blame from Intel from shutting down OEMs. AMD has very competent chips, but it's very hard to find them in products, and I don't blame the market for it.

I see the same going for Nvidia, always working with proprietary tech, very close to developers, shutting down the competition from within.

The problem is that it takes a very long time to discover the issue, and the only penalties are financial, which Intel laughs at (a billion? cash or card?). If forbidden sales or other hard restrictions were applied, I doubt they would do it.
 


They have time to work that out later. For now, they need to devote all their resources to the mainstream desktop market.
 
Probably okay, but AMD has no solution to compete with Intel Atom low powered solution.
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The Nolan chip has been out for a while now. And just like Tue past. Intel is cocky blocking them. Never mind snapdragon chips are arguably better of you take power consumption out of the equation.
 
I miss the socket 7 days of computers. Back when new cpus were coming out doubling the power every year or every other year. And they were all a drop in replacement without having to buy a new motherboard and new ram every time you upgraded. (i would end up building more comptuers with my old cpus and whenever i wanted new ram)

Obviously you dont want to get stuck on the same motherboard forever, and never have any get faster buses/interfaces. But its annoying to have to buy a new mobo/ram every time you want to upgrade the cpu.

So, ya 1 socket instead of 3, im all for it. But id much rather have 1 socket to rule them all for at least 3 generations. Assuming you have generations of actual meaningful progress in cpus and not this worthless 5%-10%/year that intel has considered just fine over the last 8 years or so.
 
Given that the unified socket will include the follow-up to AM1 as well, I'm intrigued as to the possibility of $50 motherboards supporting top-of-the-line CPUs. That might be a killer in the entry level gaming market, at least. Less than $200 for a mobo+high end APU for esports and light gaming? Wow. Or similarly, $200 for a mobo+multicore Zen CPU to match a mid-to-high GPU in the $200-300 range? For users looking for the most bang for their buck (a market that doesn't need multi-GPU support, m.2, USB 3.1, overclocking or other fancy features), this would blow Intel out of the water.
 
There are a lot of hard core AMD people out there that were forced to go Intel because of the lack of a comparable models to the Sandy Bridge and later models. If these can at least hang with the Haswell many will gladly give them a try especially if they are at the right price..
 
ZEN is AMD getting back to single core power. DX if used to work multiple computes among multiple cores was ever done as they were led to believe (they bet on it.. oops.. ) single core power wouldn't have been an issue where as having more cores meant more overall power. Different companies, different budgets and different ways about doing things.. DX12 is supposed to help with multi-core use which would mean the lessor powered but more multiple cores of AMD would have, should have reigned supreme. While I doubt they'll match power Ghz to Ghz with intels newest chips, i think it'll pull them out of their slump at least and allow former AMD lovers to accept 'close enough' as let's face it, a 7 year old process is just not up to par anymore when a core2duo/quad can nearly match the same performance.
 
I'm still rooting for AMD to pull a rabbit out of their hat. I've always been a fan, I used to run AMD chips for years, from the k5 to phenom. Intel has taken a huge lead in the past decade, AMD hasn't released anything high end in years, so its hard to get hyped. If they can hit one out of the park, and be a strong number 2 CPU choice, Intel should finally feel some pressure to make some more improvement than they've been showing lately.
 
Given that the unified socket will include the follow-up to AM1 as well, I'm intrigued as to the possibility of $50 motherboards supporting top-of-the-line CPUs.
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I imagine there will be limitations even if the socket is the same. For example a $100 board might be able to run every AM4 chip out there, but an entry level (think AM1 replacement) ITX board might "only" support up to certain wattages. Still, this isn't really a problem per-se, and I suspect most boards will support all the stock-clocked chips just fine. As you point out, features like overvolting/overclocking and fancy features will still create a market for mid and high end boards.
 
My phenom x4 975 is still strong enough on full HD. I wanted to upgrade but the intel motherboard-processor combo was to expensive for the increase it yields.

If AMD closes the gap, a price war will start. Intel will play their old game with the OEM's. A battle for survival.
 
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