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CERN Engineer Details AMD Zen Processor Confirming 32 Core Implementation, SMT (hothardware.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the next-generation-PC dept.

MojoKid writes: AMD is long overdue for a major architecture update, though one is coming later this year. Featuring the codename "Zen," AMD's already provided a few details, such as that it will be built using a 14nm FinFET process. In time, AMD will reveal all there is to know about Zen, but we now have a few additional details to share thanks to a computer engineer at CERN. CERN engineer Liviu Valsan recently gave a presentation on technology and market trends for the data center. At around 2 minutes into the discussion, he brought up AMD's Zen architecture with a slide that contained some previously undisclosed details. One of the more interesting revelations was that upcoming x86 processors based on Zen will feature up to 32 physical cores. To achieve a 32-core design, Valsan says AMD will use two 16-core CPUs on a single die with a next-generation interconnect. It has also been previously reported that Zen will offer up to a 40 percent improvement in IPC compared to its current processors as well as symmetric multithreading or SMT akin to Intel HyperThreading. In a 32-core implementation this would result in 64 logical threads of processing.

9 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Catch up to Intel? by SultanCemil · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So is this actually going to catch up to Intel? It'd be great to have meaningful competition in the CPU space again....

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    Cemil.
  2. They don't need to be up there by future+assassin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just 90% there at 50% cheaper. I'm 100% happy with my A10 5800K for way cheaper of what it would have cost me to go with Intel. Late 2016 the year of AMD.

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    by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
    1. Re:They don't need to be up there by eriks · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This. The A10-7800 in my rig is as power-efficient (at idle) as a similarly spec'd intel i5 box would be, has superior on-die graphics (which admittedly, I barely use) and came in about $300 less for mITX mainboard, proc & memory. I could have paid $1000 or more extra for a high-end intel i7 workstation, which would have given me maybe 30% higher performance (at best), that for the most part I'd never notice. AMD wins as far as I'm concerned, and they should make some inroads in the server space with ZEN.

    2. Re:They don't need to be up there by alvinrod · · Score: 5, Informative

      AMD has a technology they call dual graphics so their APUs could work in conjunction with a discrete GPU, similar to how you can Crossfire two discrete GPUs together already. It's probably more geared towards notebooks where the APU can get by driving the display and the GPU can sit idle. One review found that it could give substantial performance increases for some games, but it depends on driver support as well as where the performance bottleneck is at.

    3. Re:They don't need to be up there by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You might want to look up "AMD Zerotech" as its that way right now if you buy an AMD APU/CPU and pair it with an AMD GPU. With Zerotech if you use that particular setup it will turn off the discrete when not needed giving you the lower power usage of the APU and will then fire up the discrete when you have a task the APU cannot handle. Likewise if you have an AMD CPU it will turn down the GPU when not needed and simply use the GPUs baked in video encoder/decoder along with the frame buffer while turning the rest off.

      I have an AMD FX-8320E paired with an R9 280 and I'm currently only pulling 8w from the CPU with 5 tabs and a video running and the GPU has idled down to practically nothing (my gauges only go down to 300/150 on GPU/memory speed so I cannot tell you how slow its actually running) with the GPU completely cool to the touch and the entire system completely silent.

      I have to say I'm deliriously happy with the performance and power usage of my setup, last time I put it on my Kill-A-Watt it was pulling less than the Q6600 that I had been using at the shop as an office box, and thanks to Zerotech while the system stays nice and frosty and sips power when I'm just surfing and watching vids it can still scale up to 4Ghz on the CPU and 940/1250Mhz on the GPU/memory respectively in less than a second and if I want even more? I just flip on the overclock and can shoot up to 4.4Ghz without breaking a sweat. considering I paid less than $650 for this system with 16GB of RAM,a gaming board, 3TB of HDD, a BD burner, the R9 280 AND an SSD? The bang for the buck is just insane, no way you could build an Intel system with those specs, no way in hell.

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      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    4. Re:They don't need to be up there by 0111+1110 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This has always been AMD's angle in the business. Well, sorta. Fifteen years ago or about, their angle was to be as good for cheaper in the middle range of CPUs. Intel still had the upper hand for top chips.

      Were you living in a cave between 2000 and 2006? AMD was generally preferred by enthusiasts and gamers during Intel's infamous Pentium4/Itanium/Netburst/Rambus period for at least the first few years of the new millenium. It wasn't really until 2006 with Core (Conroe) replacing Pentium that Intel finally took back the lead they had in the 90s. They released the excellent Pentium M CPU in 2003 but that was a mobile chip. Only one or two highly specialized and expensive motherboards supported it. Intel finally realized that the whole Pentium 4 development branch was itself an inefficient long pipeline cache miss, but by the time they did AMD was already the market leader in the enthusiast bleeding edge market segment.

      At best Intel could have claimed to be tied with AMD in certain benchmarks, but most gamers and enthusiasts were going for AMD CPUs. During this period AMD CPUs often sold for equal or higher prices as well. Although Rambus RDRAM was ridiculously expensive and raised the cost of the Intel platform a great deal.

      Take a look at this Extremetech article . Maybe that will jog your memory a bit.

      Also note Intel's naive optimism with respect to Moore's Law:

      Justin Rattner, Intel Fellow and director of Microprocessor Research at Intel Labs, predicts 10GHz by middle of the decade (which I read as end of 2005 to early 2006)

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      Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
  3. Re:More and more cores? by mikael · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They'll do research and try and raise clock speeds, but the amount of heat required and the amount of cooling required is proportional to the square of the clock speed. The faster you try and change the state of something (electric charge), the more heat is generated. They might be able to switch to optical computing then the heat problem goes away. Maybe they'll get more efficient CPU's with fewer transistors and more parallelization.

    But, it's far simpler to just add more cores as transistor sizes shrink by a half every year or two. That's guaranteed.

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    Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
  4. Re:More and more cores? by sexconker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That's guaranteed.

    Surely you weren't saying sizes shrink by half every two years is guaranteed. Intel is already saying they won't be able to reach the process shrink goal in 2 years this time around. Around 5nm the shrink will turn into a research project just as challenging as the clock frequency issue. You can't pack carbon atoms closer than ~0.2nm nevermind features. A small protein molecule is 3nm in diameter. A significant drought of Moore's law is coming.

    They could simply go back to the larger die areas we had only 10 years ago. It just means performance won't be "free" as time goes on. If you want a better chip you need a bigger chip and it'll cost more because you get less out of a wafer. There's plenty of fucking room on ATX boards and micro ATX boards and even mini ITX boards. And if you want to stick with tiny footprints like the Intel NUCs or the Google/Amazon/Intel "stick it in your HDMI port" shits, you can stack vertically or incorporate your RAM into the die.

    I have a suspicion AMD will produce a part with HBM 2 incorporated into the APU die, resulting in a product that is literally a system on a chip, and finally realizes the shit they've been harping on about with regards to HSA. The GPU and the CPU have buckets of memory and all live together holding hands, sharing resources, talking to each other openly, helping each other build a deck or patch some drywall or whatever else the program asks them to do. Mayb we'll see something at E3 2017.

  5. SMT = Simultaneous MultiThreading, not Symmetrical by AcidPenguin9873 · · Score: 4

    SMP = Symmetric Multi Processing. "Symmetric" refers to the fact that all of the CPUs are considered "equal" by the OS and each has full access to DRAM, IO devices, etc.

    SMT = Simultaneous MultiThreading. "Simultaneous" refers to the fact that a single CPU core can process multiple execution threads at the same time.

    Someone from AMD's marketing department needs to take CPU architecture 201.