News AMD's Zen 5 chips pack in 8.315 billion transistors per compute die, a 28% increase in density

[Admin]

AMD's Ryzen 9000 'Eldora' CCD has the same die size as Ryzen 7000 'Durango' CCD, but Ryzen AI 300 'Strix Point' is massively larger than Hawk Point.

AMD's Zen 5 chips pack in 8.315 billion transistors per compute die, a 28% increase in density : Read more

 

[usertests]

It's interesting that the die area barely budged, despite the increase in transistor density. Effects of its new full AVX-512 support and similar changes?

I think AMD has a few obvious choices for its future mainstream core chiplets. Keep it at 8 cores but shrink it, potentially packing more of them on each socket, increase CCX to 10-12 cores, or go to 16-cores dual-CCX like Zen 4c.

Core chiplet die areas could shrink if they manage to migrate all/most L3 cache off the chiplet and 3D stack it. Or they could use the area savings to include more cores. Maybe 70-75mm^2 is an optimal size.

 

[bit_user]

It's interesting that the die area barely budged, despite the increase in transistor density.

The Zen-era cores have traditionally been smaller than competing Intel cores, in transistor count. So, AMD had a bit more margin for increasing core complexity.

I think AMD has a few obvious choices for its future mainstream core chiplets. Keep it at 8 cores but shrink it, potentially packing more of them on each socket, increase CCX to 10-12 cores, or go to 16-cores dual-CCX like Zen 4c.

I expect the mainstream will probably go with hybrid composition. My reasoning is that a mix of core types would improve performance per area, while simultaneously reducing thermal density.

 

[usertests]

I expect the mainstream will probably go with hybrid composition. My reasoning is that a mix of core types would improve performance per area, while simultaneously reducing thermal density.

If you mean a dual-CCX chiplet with (for example) 8x Zen cores and 8x ZenC cores, that might be a tough sell since AMD has been reusing the same core chiplets between desktop and server, and I doubt server customers are as interested in hybrid.

However, rumors are pointing toward AMD being willing to make more types of chiplets. For example, "Standard", "Dense Classic", and "Client Dense" cores for Zen 6, and there was a rumor somewhere that Strix Halo would not use the exact same chiplets as desktop despite having Zen 5 cores (not 'C').

 

[bit_user]

If you mean a dual-CCX chiplet with (for example) 8x Zen cores and 8x ZenC cores, that might be a tough sell since AMD has been reusing the same core chiplets between desktop and server, and I doubt server customers are as interested in hybrid.

Yes, that's what I meant.

Whether they do it probably has to do with whether their mobile CPUs stay monolithic. If they can share these chiplets between two markets, they don't necessarily have to be desktop + server. Even if they can't, probably the desktop market is big enough for them to consider it.