AMD Talks Steamroller: 15% Improvement Over Piledriver

[tecmo34]

At today's Hot Chips Symposium, Mark Papermaster, Senior Vice President and CTO, AMD, talks about the upcoming "Steamroller" Microarchitecture

AMD Talks Steamroller: 15% Improvement Over Piledriver : Read more

 

[Maxx_Power]

That would be nice. Hopefully it will be launched on time.

 

[fedelm]

First and foremost, let's hope Piledriver can deliver on the desktop, especially after the bulldozergate. If it does, then this is excellent news.

I want AMD to be able to give intel a run for its money performance-wise. Doesn't have to match the i-xxs, just provide a decent, reliable and affordable option.

Cheers.

 

[Pinhedd]

Good.

It sounds like they've learned a lot from Bulldozer. If they can keep pulling off 15-20% improvements in 10-12 month intervals than perhaps AMD can still be a viable competitor to Intel

 

[aznshinobi]

I feel like with Piledriver and Steamroller AMD will finally be able to put some pressure on Intel.

 

[dalethepcman]

If the 5-10% scheduling efficiency and 20-30% increase in ops along with the increased clock rates comes out to a 25-30% increase in performance then AMD will be in a happy place, and so will the consumer. If this turns out to be a bust, it would be really really bad for the industry unless your name in Intel.

 

[redyellowblueblast]

Us AM3+ users never received any Piledriver based CPUs. Are we getting Steamroller instead?

 

[leeashton]

well we currently know that trinity on the mobile platform out performs any intel Chip, so AMD has the mobile performance crown

 

[vistaofdoom]

[citation][nom]leeashton[/nom]well we currently know that trinity on the mobile platform out performs any intel Chip, so AMD has the mobile performance crown[/citation]
Good troll there...

 

[pharoahhalfdead]

Will it be 32nm or 22nm? It would be nice if AMD could get away from 32nm in a swift, timely fashion. Let's hope they don't stay here for four years like they stayed at 45nm.

 

[cscott_it]

In addition to all of this, they re-acquired one of their lead designers from the K8 days who co-authored their original x64 endeavor. As we all recall, those were some major wins for AMD. The gentlemen had been a lead designer for Apple's mobile segment, so his chops are still in pretty good shape.

Even if this generation does fail, I have a feeling they will be doing something right in the next 5 years.

 

[teh_chem]

Outside of the ultramobile segment, I mostly scoff when I see the words "performance improvement" preceding the words "per watt." Improving PPW is fine and dandy if you're talking about largely battery-powered devices. I like how the title conveniently leaves that important part out.

 

[A Bad Day]

I'll believe it when I see the benchmarks.

 

[wiyosaya]

Good.

It sounds like they've learned a lot from Bulldozer. If they can keep pulling off 15-20% improvements in 10-12 month intervals than perhaps AMD can still be a viable competitor to Intel

The trouble is, Intel is not standing still. If the improvements in Intel's subsequent gen chips keep pace with AMD's, then the performance gains in AMD chips will be a moot point. In theory, Intel may remain the better buy.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see AMD maintain viability because of the competition it gives Intel, however, at this point, AMD is a reasonable margin behind Intel and has a lot of ground to make up. Many hardware sites, including this one, maintain that Intel currently has the "value buy" processors at most price points.

I am holding out hope that AMD's rehiring of the guy behind K6 and AMD64 means that they are going back to the drawing board for future generation processors that have yet to be announced. If AMD learned its lesson that marketing hype alone cannot make a great processor, then they might just keep such a plan quiet.

So where's the fingers crossed smilie??

In the meantime, it will be a while before I build again, so I will keep an eye on developments, however, without plans to buy.

 

[Ragnar-Kon]

Not to go totally off topic or anything... but Papermaster is an AWESOME last name.

 

[grimworld]

Where are my college degrees when I need them? (to understand this article fully)
Better start learning CPU giberish

As always if the end result means "faster" then I´m a happy reader.

 

[nuclearrage]

At today's Hot Chips Symposium, Mark Papermaster, Senior Vice President and CTO, AMD, talks about the upcoming "Steamroller" Microarchitecture

AMD Talks Steamroller: 15% Improvement Over Piledriver : Read more

I'm still waiting for AMD to release somthing that runs 15% faster than my Phenom II 980BE , sorry , I have been a long time fan of AMD , but I call BS on this until I see benchies!

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]hasten[/nom]It's be nice to know that actual performance of (desktop) Piledriver. Who knows what 15% on that could be... He's describing a hypothetical increase in performance to a product none of us have seen.[/citation]

Look at Trinity benchmarks. That's Piledriver without any L3 and it beats Bulldozer. Piledriver on the desktop is probably a considerably better improvement than AMD's 10-15% number.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]pharoahhalfdead[/nom]Will it be 32nm or 22nm? It would be nice if AMD could get away from 32nm in a swift, timely fashion. Let's hope they don't stay here for four years like they stayed at 45nm.[/citation]

Probably 32nm. AMD doesn't need to move on because they can simply keep fixing Bulldozer's many design implementation flaws and AMD can't move on until other fab companies are ready for that anyway. Unlike Intel, AMD has to rely on other companies doing their job to get a new process node ready.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]teh_chem[/nom]Outside of the ultramobile segment, I mostly scoff when I see the words "performance improvement" preceding the words "per watt." Improving PPW is fine and dandy if you're talking about largely battery-powered devices. I like how the title conveniently leaves that important part out.[/citation]

More performance per watt means more thermal headroom and that probably means more overclocking potential. AMD is likely to increase stock clocks as necessary anyway even if they don't improve performance per Hz by much. Unlike Netburst, AMD's modular architecture is actually good at what it is intended to do and can clock extremely high without a problem while having a lot more performance at a given clock frequency than Netburst did. AMD can increase the clocks every time that they decrease power consumption and they can do other things too. Performance, not just power efficiency, will almost definitely continue improving from now on with AMD.

 

[spentshells]

I'm starting to feel like bulldozer with an additional 2 years of fab and RND developments is going to be just fine and I may even make a server out of one yet

 

[spentshells]

I also have a feeling that bulldaozer was a great name for the arch, maybe if they keep feeding it fab refinements, die shrinks and clock speed it may live up to it's name.

 

[johnners2981]

I'm not expecting it to be better than intel's offerrings but at least be better than the phenom IIs.

It was quite disappointing amd went backwards with bullldozer

 

[falchard]

Good job AMD at deselling your upcoming piledriver desktop cpus.

I think we found the person who comes up with all the awesome architecture names. Surely the one who comes up with Bulldozer, Piledriver, and Steamroller must be a Papermaster.

 

[nforce4max]

Lol @ falchard for "Papermaster"

Personally BD was a huge let down and not counting on PD to be much better. I am very skeptical about the improvements until some benches come out.