AMD's Future Chips & SoC's: News, Info & Rumours.

[jdwii]

https://www.anandtech.com/show/11964/ryzen-mobile-is-launched-amd-apus-for-laptops-with-vega-and-updated-zen

All I can read there is "hot, steamy and very wild sex".

I have to admit I don't like they're aiming for ultra/super thin devices first, but I can see why they might be. All I can see in the shelves as of late from OEMs are systems that try to be sleek first and useful second. I hope AMD strikes a balance there Intel can't really get with their GPU. I can't wait for official reviews!

Also, Zen 1.5; man, if only someone would have guessed! Yes, I'm being sarcastic. EDIT: Ok, it's not the Zen core itself, but the power controls instead. So, strictly speaking, there is not a pure performance jump due to IPC. Bummer.

Cheers!

I think they have a much better product now, and they will do well as long as the price is right!

The numbers quoted by AMD itself are the ones that were posted a few months ago in the thread; or at least they're very in-line with them. So the performance of the APUs is decent, but not really breath taking. I still don't like the way the marketing teams present the data. The i7 used seemed to be really thermal limited in the notebook and i suspect it might have been limited with other factors, since the i5 was actually better in everything.

That being said, I do agree it's a good product and they need to make people realize it, so they can actually sell. I hope HP, Acer and Lenovo don't offer sucky laptops.

Cheers!

Also, the turbo core technology they have been working on since the discovery tablet is finally coming to market on tech that consumers can get.

Expect that in Zen+ and moving forward.

I would almost buy that lenovo as it stands, but single channel memory kills it for me.

2700U + 500GB SSD and about 8 GB RAM and that is all I need from a slick lightweight notebook.

Yeah but i expect manufactures to cheap out and use only one ram slot hurting the APU's performance in gpu tasks.

 

[-Fran-]

Like this?

Pay attention to the specs...

Yes, captain obvious.

EDIT: On the upside, they are explicitly calling it out in the spec as "Single Channel". And having 8GB tops kind of sucks as well. I wonder if that is a CPU restriction (which would be dumb) or just a "from factory" thing.

Cheers!

 

[gamerk316]

It's factored into their financial reports, but AMD still needs the hard physical cash to pay said debts off. That being said, they pushed the majority of their debt out a few more years, but they still don't have a ton of cash on hand at any given point in time.

Uhm... Not necessarily... I remember that one of the fundamentals on big corporation management was to *not* have cash "at hand", but have liquidity (similar, but not the same). You have your assets and all that, but you always have credit to pay for stuff in the long term and a small amount of cash for the short term.

Since you're talking about ~2020, then it could be "long term" debt, so I would imagine they would handle that with credit instead. So, this is to say, they might be in trouble if and only if, they can't get any credit. As long as a company is able to get access to credit, they'll have a way forward. The amount of "cash at hand" becomes irrelevant, unless you mean "liquidity", which is fairly close, but not quite the same.

Cheers!

But AMD doesn't have a ton of liquidity to work with; their existing debt is more then their total valuation, and they're not going to have an easy time convincing investors (who have been skittish about AMD for a while now) to give them more money just to cover its existing debt obligations. AMD did what they could already when they pushed their ~$1.2 Billion debt load that was due in 2020 out a few years, but they can only do that for so long. At some point, AMD needs to raise some actual hard cash to pay down some debt, without taking more on in the process.

 

[-Fran-]

But AMD doesn't have a ton of liquidity to work with; their existing debt is more then their total valuation, and they're not going to have an easy time convincing investors (who have been skittish about AMD for a while now) to give them more money just to cover its existing debt obligations. AMD did what they could already when they pushed their ~$1.2 Billion debt load that was due in 2020 out a few years, but they can only do that for so long. At some point, AMD needs to raise some actual hard cash to pay down some debt, without taking more on in the process.

It is an interesting topic to touch on, to be honest. You can think of these sort of debt as a Country's debt. The USA, for example, has an international debt you wouldn't believe, but no one is thinking the Country will go "bankrupt" or anything like that. Debt is something Companies know how to work with during their life and I don't think we have enough insight on their accounting to actually know what they're really doing about it. There are so many options they can take for managing the debt, that it would just be a non-issue even discussing it. It is most definitely worth mentioning (more information), but I'm starting to think it might be less relevant than AMD churning out good products to build trust (like you correctly point out and agree) with customers and investors, which are their most important asset, if you ask me.

Cheers!

 

[Embra]

HP Envy x360 with Ryzen 5 2500U APU (Vega M) spotted
https://hexus.net/tech/news/laptop/111113-hp-envy-x360-ryzen-5-2500u-apu-vega-m-spotted/

Here is one with an 8gb ram stick with the option to add a second stick (16gb dual channel)
Hopefully we will see many like this. Most likely to keep the initial cost down.

 

[jaymc]

Here's an article from yesterday with info on all three laptop's.
There's Dual channel in the HP & the Acer an SSD. But NVMe in the Lenovo an only single channel ram, almost looks like a trade off.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/10/amds-ryzen-cpu-with-vega-graphics-threatens-to-blow-kaby-lake-out-the-water/

 

[-Fran-]

I've been looking at specs, leaks and prices surrounding "upgrades" for them.

These laptops will not be cheap, but at least their components don't read like garbage (4K screens is good as a checked box optional) and are absolutely on par with all the Intel laptops you will find next to them.

Single channel memory not-withstanding, this reads to be positive, at least initially. I want to know what Asus will offer on their end and how they'll configure them. I also wonder if Origin (the original OEM) will be offering AMD now. They've been tied to Intel for a lot of years, so if they start offering AMD, that means there's a shift coming.

Cheers!

 

[neblogai]

Like this?

Pay attention to the specs...

Yes, captain obvious.

EDIT: On the upside, they are explicitly calling it out in the spec as "Single Channel". And having 8GB tops kind of sucks as well. I wonder if that is a CPU restriction (which would be dumb) or just a "from factory" thing.

Cheers!

Lenovo 720S is a form-factor, and model thing. This is a laptop made for portability- tiny bezels, slim and weighs only 1.14Kg- half of the HP x360 weight. They are using single channel RAM to save space, weight and power.And this same model comes with Intel U8550, soldered 1 stick of RAM as well. I think these laptops are following the real 15TDP, so having RAM in single channel should not even hurt it, as it will not be able to supply much power for iGPU in games (continued load) anyway.

 

[jdwii]

From playing around with voltage and stability on my 1700 i knew Ryzen was going to be really competitive in performance per watt in the mobile market. Many know global foundries 14nm LP performs best around 2.5-3.0ghz for example Ryzen scales terribly with voltage when trying to reach higher frequencies.

Even my first gen R7 at 1.0V is stable at 3.0Ghz all 8 cores locked. 2.5 ghz i can go even lower.

VEGA had me worried as it would first seem like Amd lost their mind and efficiency went out the window but from what i've been reading VEGA scales pretty darn well with lower voltage as well. Can't wait to see what Raven Ridge can do on the desktop just waiting for the day when we can build a more powerful PC using a APU (with new parts) for the same or less amount of money as a CPU+dGPU setup.

 

[juanrga]

From playing around with voltage and stability on my 1700 i knew Ryzen was going to be really competitive in performance per watt in the mobile market. Many know global foundries 14nm LP performs best around 2.5-3.0ghz for example Ryzen scales terribly with voltage when trying to reach higher frequencies.

But Intel uses a different process node, optimized for efficiency, for mobile chips. We have to wait for mobile reviews.

 

[jdwii]

From playing around with voltage and stability on my 1700 i knew Ryzen was going to be really competitive in performance per watt in the mobile market. Many know global foundries 14nm LP performs best around 2.5-3.0ghz for example Ryzen scales terribly with voltage when trying to reach higher frequencies.

But Intel uses a different process node, optimized for efficiency, for mobile chips. We have to wait for mobile reviews.

Intel proves to the industry that you can have both a process node that can work extremely well on low watt devices and then scale that up to high core count CPU's with 5.0-5.2ghz of overclocking ability if you can cool it off that is lol. No excuse from global foundries to have to make two different processes to do the same thing Intel can do in one.

This is more of a dis towards Global foundries then Amd

Edit true Intel does indeed have to process nodes so really this is all on Amd i guess Amd couldn't afford it

 

[juanrga]

I will state again that Intel has two processes: one for desktop another for mobile. For 14nm those are the P1272 process (performance) and the P1273 (low-power). The same for Intel 10nm node. The CanonLake mobile chips coming this year will use the low-power version.

Also Glofo has three 14nm process nodes: 14LPE, 14LPP, and 14HP. The mistake is on AMD side, which is using a single process, 14LPP, for all chips: GPUs, CPUs, HEDT, mobile,... instead using the more adequate process for each chip.

 

[gamerk316]

But AMD doesn't have a ton of liquidity to work with; their existing debt is more then their total valuation, and they're not going to have an easy time convincing investors (who have been skittish about AMD for a while now) to give them more money just to cover its existing debt obligations. AMD did what they could already when they pushed their ~$1.2 Billion debt load that was due in 2020 out a few years, but they can only do that for so long. At some point, AMD needs to raise some actual hard cash to pay down some debt, without taking more on in the process.

It is an interesting topic to touch on, to be honest. You can think of these sort of debt as a Country's debt. The USA, for example, has an international debt you wouldn't believe, but no one is thinking the Country will go "bankrupt" or anything like that. Debt is something Companies know how to work with during their life and I don't think we have enough insight on their accounting to actually know what they're really doing about it. There are so many options they can take for managing the debt, that it would just be a non-issue even discussing it. It is most definitely worth mentioning (more information), but I'm starting to think it might be less relevant than AMD churning out good products to build trust (like you correctly point out and agree) with customers and investors, which are their most important asset, if you ask me.

Cheers!

You can take on near infinite debts on the provision that all the debtors are confident they'll get paid on schedule. The danger as you take on more debt is those same debtors get worried, and start demanding their money NOW. Same logic applies to markets: You can sell nothing but hopes and dreams, provided the investors believe they'll make a profit on it. But once they question what you're selling, things can turn bad in a hurry.

Which is why reports like this tanks AMD stock in a hurry: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/amd-stock-price-falls-after-report-predicts-cryptocurrency-slowdown/

 

[-Fran-]

But AMD doesn't have a ton of liquidity to work with; their existing debt is more then their total valuation, and they're not going to have an easy time convincing investors (who have been skittish about AMD for a while now) to give them more money just to cover its existing debt obligations. AMD did what they could already when they pushed their ~$1.2 Billion debt load that was due in 2020 out a few years, but they can only do that for so long. At some point, AMD needs to raise some actual hard cash to pay down some debt, without taking more on in the process.

It is an interesting topic to touch on, to be honest. You can think of these sort of debt as a Country's debt. The USA, for example, has an international debt you wouldn't believe, but no one is thinking the Country will go "bankrupt" or anything like that. Debt is something Companies know how to work with during their life and I don't think we have enough insight on their accounting to actually know what they're really doing about it. There are so many options they can take for managing the debt, that it would just be a non-issue even discussing it. It is most definitely worth mentioning (more information), but I'm starting to think it might be less relevant than AMD churning out good products to build trust (like you correctly point out and agree) with customers and investors, which are their most important asset, if you ask me.

Cheers!

You can take on near infinite debts on the provision that all the debtors are confident they'll get paid on schedule. The danger as you take on more debt is those same debtors get worried, and start demanding their money NOW. Same logic applies to markets: You can sell nothing but hopes and dreams, provided the investors believe they'll make a profit on it. But once they question what you're selling, things can turn bad in a hurry.

Which is why reports like this tanks AMD stock in a hurry: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/amd-stock-price-falls-after-report-predicts-cryptocurrency-slowdown/

That's the market! haha.

I remember AMD being downgraded from their credit rating a few years back. Have they gone back to AAA? If they do, whatever we say of doom and gloom will be moot officially.

Cheers!

 

[gamerk316]

But AMD doesn't have a ton of liquidity to work with; their existing debt is more then their total valuation, and they're not going to have an easy time convincing investors (who have been skittish about AMD for a while now) to give them more money just to cover its existing debt obligations. AMD did what they could already when they pushed their ~$1.2 Billion debt load that was due in 2020 out a few years, but they can only do that for so long. At some point, AMD needs to raise some actual hard cash to pay down some debt, without taking more on in the process.

It is an interesting topic to touch on, to be honest. You can think of these sort of debt as a Country's debt. The USA, for example, has an international debt you wouldn't believe, but no one is thinking the Country will go "bankrupt" or anything like that. Debt is something Companies know how to work with during their life and I don't think we have enough insight on their accounting to actually know what they're really doing about it. There are so many options they can take for managing the debt, that it would just be a non-issue even discussing it. It is most definitely worth mentioning (more information), but I'm starting to think it might be less relevant than AMD churning out good products to build trust (like you correctly point out and agree) with customers and investors, which are their most important asset, if you ask me.

Cheers!

You can take on near infinite debts on the provision that all the debtors are confident they'll get paid on schedule. The danger as you take on more debt is those same debtors get worried, and start demanding their money NOW. Same logic applies to markets: You can sell nothing but hopes and dreams, provided the investors believe they'll make a profit on it. But once they question what you're selling, things can turn bad in a hurry.

Which is why reports like this tanks AMD stock in a hurry: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/amd-stock-price-falls-after-report-predicts-cryptocurrency-slowdown/

That's the market! haha.

I remember AMD being downgraded from their credit rating a few years back. Have they gone back to AAA? If they do, whatever we say of doom and gloom will be moot officially.

Cheers!

AMD's bond rating is currently B3 (Moodys) and B- (SAP). So not even remotely good.

 

[adamsleath]

https://www.pcwelt.de/a/mindfactory-amd-schlaegt-intel-auch-im-september,3448323

amd cpu's still outselling intel cpus at mind factory for the month of September.

 

[gamerk316]

https://www.pcwelt.de/a/mindfactory-amd-schlaegt-intel-auch-im-september,3448323

amd cpu's still outselling intel cpus at mind factory for the month of September.

Which isn't surprising. AMDs new product offers a larger performance leap over it's previous products than Intel does, so there's pent up demand from prior AMD customers.

The more important question: How many people are going from Intel to AMD? That's the new sales AMD needs to grow and turn a profit. Their current user base alone isn't enough for them to turn a long-term profit.

In short: Let's see how the trend holds over the next few months.

 

[-Fran-]

Ah, AMD is still in B rating. They need to get into a higher credit rating to have some confidence from investors and banks, most definitely. It's obvious, but it is rarely mentioned whenever I see people talking "options" for AMD.

Anyway, it's been a couple of months already after Ryzen, so they still topping charts, even with the huge Intel slap (Covfefe Lake) it's no small feat IMO. It's a trend I really hope stays so they can build a bit more money to survive longer, but more importantly for the above. They sell more and build in orders, they can give more confidence to everyone that can lend money to keep them afloat.

Cheers!

 

[juanrga]

amd cpu's still outselling intel cpus at mind factory for the month of September.

As mentioned before, Mindfactory.de is AMD channel. So AMD fans purchasing AMD chips. Nothing to see here.

We already have Q3 results for both companies. Numbers show that Zen has virtually zero impact on Intel sales. Only a minority of people has purchased AMD chips instead Intel chips. Most sales for AMD come from people that only purchase AMD. And those worldwide sales happened when AMD had a core-count advantage: 8-core Zen vs 4-core Kabylake; 16-core Zen vs 10-core Skylake.

AMD marketshare starts to reduce again now the new CoffeLake and Skylake-X models have eliminated the small advantage that Zen had in multithread performance.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/market_share.html

The more important question: How many people are going from Intel to AMD? That's the new sales AMD needs to grow and turn a profit. Their current user base alone isn't enough for them to turn a long-term profit.

In short: Let's see how the trend holds over the next few months.

Numbers show that a minority of people are moving from Intel to AMD. Most sales for AMD products are coming from AMD people upgrading their old Phenom II and Bulldozer/Piledriver.

For next months, AMD predicts a double-digit reduction in sales/revenue for Q4.

 

[8350rocks]

Spoiler

amd cpu's still outselling intel cpus at mind factory for the month of September.

As mentioned before, Mindfactory.de is AMD channel. So AMD fans purchasing AMD chips. Nothing to see here.

We already have Q3 results for both companies. Numbers show that Zen has virtually zero impact on Intel sales. Only a minority of people has purchased AMD chips instead Intel chips. Most sales for AMD come from people that only purchase AMD. And those worldwide sales happened when AMD had a core-count advantage: 8-core Zen vs 4-core Kabylake; 16-core Zen vs 10-core Skylake.

AMD marketshare starts to reduce again now the new CoffeLake and Skylake-X models have eliminated the small advantage that Zen had in multithread performance.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/market_share.html

The more important question: How many people are going from Intel to AMD? That's the new sales AMD needs to grow and turn a profit. Their current user base alone isn't enough for them to turn a long-term profit.

In short: Let's see how the trend holds over the next few months.

Numbers show that a minority of people are moving from Intel to AMD. Most sales for AMD products are coming from AMD people upgrading their old Phenom II and Bulldozer/Piledriver.

For next months, AMD predicts a double-digit reduction in sales/revenue for Q4.

This is contrary to everything I am seeing in the market. Lots of Sandy Bridge users are going to Ryzen at this point, as are lots of the i3 crowd.

 

[adamsleath]

amd cpu's still outselling intel cpus at mind factory for the month of September.

As mentioned before, Mindfactory.de is AMD channel. So AMD fans purchasing AMD chips. Nothing to see here.

We already have Q3 results for both companies. Numbers show that Zen has virtually zero impact on Intel sales. Only a minority of people has purchased AMD chips instead Intel chips. Most sales for AMD come from people that only purchase AMD. And those worldwide sales happened when AMD had a core-count advantage: 8-core Zen vs 4-core Kabylake; 16-core Zen vs 10-core Skylake.

AMD marketshare starts to reduce again now the new CoffeLake and Skylake-X models have eliminated the small advantage that Zen had in multithread performance.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/market_share.html

The more important question: How many people are going from Intel to AMD? That's the new sales AMD needs to grow and turn a profit. Their current user base alone isn't enough for them to turn a long-term profit.

In short: Let's see how the trend holds over the next few months.

Numbers show that a minority of people are moving from Intel to AMD. Most sales for AMD products are coming from AMD people upgrading their old Phenom II and Bulldozer/Piledriver.

For next months, AMD predicts a double-digit reduction in sales/revenue for Q4.

intel fanboi much????

intel's X series is seriously overpriced, and the small sales reflect this.

"AMD people"

ill throw in a "nothing to see here" because someone else posted it.

 

[jdwii]

amd cpu's still outselling intel cpus at mind factory for the month of September.

As mentioned before, Mindfactory.de is AMD channel. So AMD fans purchasing AMD chips. Nothing to see here.

We already have Q3 results for both companies. Numbers show that Zen has virtually zero impact on Intel sales. Only a minority of people has purchased AMD chips instead Intel chips. Most sales for AMD come from people that only purchase AMD. And those worldwide sales happened when AMD had a core-count advantage: 8-core Zen vs 4-core Kabylake; 16-core Zen vs 10-core Skylake.

AMD marketshare starts to reduce again now the new CoffeLake and Skylake-X models have eliminated the small advantage that Zen had in multithread performance.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/market_share.html

The more important question: How many people are going from Intel to AMD? That's the new sales AMD needs to grow and turn a profit. Their current user base alone isn't enough for them to turn a long-term profit.

In short: Let's see how the trend holds over the next few months.

Numbers show that a minority of people are moving from Intel to AMD. Most sales for AMD products are coming from AMD people upgrading their old Phenom II and Bulldozer/Piledriver.

For next months, AMD predicts a double-digit reduction in sales/revenue for Q4.

Simply not true and in no way can be 100% proved eitherway as the claim is purely anecdotal. For one in the past year i heard a lot of sandy users upgrading i mean a lot of them from linustechtips forums and at overclocker.net as well as toms own forums.

Enthusiasts are however a small market so it really doesn't matter anyways.

 

[juanrga]

In the past I analyzed Mindfactory.de sales and I demonstrated that most RyZen sales didn't come at expense of Intel sales. Only a small percentage of people moved from Intel to AMD in the Mindfactory channel. We now have worldwide data for both companies. We have data for AMD and we have data for Intel. I asked this yesterday to an analyst,

Me: "So Q3 numbers confirm the analysis of Mindfactory.de sales. Most of people purchasing AMD is people that doesn't purchase Intel. Intel Q3 numbers barely affected by AMD."

Analyst: "Correct. Pretty much zero impact"

Same thoughts confirmed by another analyst: "Intel had a good quarter too, the new AMD chips are having only minimal impact."

intel's X series is not overpriced and the sales/popularity reflect this. Intel is not reducing pricing. AMD is reducing prices. The overhyped Threadripper 1950X just got a huge price discount to $880 this week. I was just checking another kind of data on HWbot and I discovered that there is about one 1950X customer for each ten customers of the i9-7900k. I do not claim that the i9 is selling at a 10x better pace than ThreadRipper. But it is evident that the i9 is selling rather well despite all the bad press, biased reviews, and invalid claims about thermal paste and tempts of the overclocked i9.

Enthusiasts is, indeed, a small market. But the same trend is observed at cheaper price points. I just checked Amazon data. Among the top ten best-selling CPUs only two are RyZen models. R5 1600 in #3 and R7 1700 in #8. And despite supply problems CoffeLake i7/i5 are already in positions #2 and #4 of the list. The #1 in top sales continues being the old Kabylake 7700k.

 

[juanrga]

https://hothardware.com/news/amd-epyc-2-64-cores-128-threads-and-256mb-l3-cache

It seems my prediction of 6-core CCX for Zen2 has been just refuted. Either AMD goes for 8-core CCX modules or will maintain the same 4-core configuration and will add four CCX modules per die.

The quadrupling of L3 cache could help to mitigate the latency problems when accessing main RAM, but in the other hand, this seems to imply that Zen2 core size will be similar to Zen.

 

[adamsleath]

x-series is overpriced (my opinion based on data)
price/performance graphs easily show this.

but sales is sales. value adding marketing can convince people regardless. and who am i to determine intel's pricing structure? no-one.
intel is a juggernaut, market leaders, but this is a trite comment. both AMD and Intel have influenced each other through the years.