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AMD Says Upcoming Zen CPU Will Outperform Intel Broadwell-E (hothardware.com)
Reader MojoKid writes: AMD has been talking about the claimed 40% IPC (Instructions Per Clock) improvement of its forthcoming Zen processor versus the company's existing Excavator core for ages. Zen's initial availability is slated for late this year, with lager-scale roll-out planned for early 2017. However, last night, at a private press event in San Francisco, AMD unveiled a lot more details on their Zen processor architecture. AMD claims to have achieved that 40 percent IPC uplift with a newly-designed, higher-performance branch prediction and a micro-op cache for more efficient issuing of operations. The instruction schedule windows have been increased by 75% and issue-width and execution resources have been increased by 50%. The end result of these changes is higher single-threaded performance, through better instruction level parallelism. Zen's pre-fetcher is also vastly improved. There is 8MB of shared L3 cache on board now, a unified L2 cache for both instruction and data, and separate, low-latency L1 instruction and data caches. The new archicture offers up to 5x the cache bandwidth to the cores versus previous-gen offerings. However, after all the specsmanship was out of the way, AMD actually showcased a benchmark run of an 8-core Zen Summit Ridge procesor versus Intel's Broadwell-E 8-core chip, both running at 3GHz and processing a Blender rending workload. In the demo, the 8-core Zen CPU actually outpaced Intel's chip by a hair. Blender may have been chosen for a reason but this early benchmark demo looks impressive for AMD and its forthcoming Zen architecture.
You know, although a tank lager looks big from the outside, there are usually no more than a hundred or so tanks in one. So this doesn't seem like a very large rollout.
On the other hand, if one of the tanks rolled over the editor(s), that would be a service to humanity.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Pics (benchmarks) or it ain't so.
AMD has been behind Intel for about a decade now ever since Intel released their "Core" processors. Because back in the early to mid 00's AMD CPU finally were considered serious chips in the desktop environment, outpacing intel. Then it just fell further behind.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
So, like, beer and hookers at the launch?
But the question is price. To upgrade from an old sandy bridge, it's going to take 500€~ to change the CPU/Mobo and memory if going the Intel route, for what I think is a good performance improvement, but it's not worth it yet.
If they can deliver an 8 core CPU that outperforms a high end 4 Core Skylake and costs around the same, I'll nab it, thought I'm guessing getting 8 Cores for the price of 4 is out of touch with reality at release.
Even if the 4 core chips can't compete with Intel, I'm hoping they force Intel to drop the eye-gouging prices.
Yeah. Some rumors suggest that the Zen line will be disappointingly slow at launch (under 3 GHz). On the plus side, if we can get Broadwell-E performance out of a chip that costs $200, AMD will have a hit on its hands.
Why does the article's logo show Intel?
Has AMD falling so far that Slashdot can't even be bothered to show their logo anymore?
Beaten a CPU that is already out with one that isn't yet, using a benchmark of their choice. The only area where they can hope to compete is price.
Bulldozers, Piledrivers, Steamrollers, and Excavators do use diesel engines. Maybe they hired the VW software engineers too late?
The real comparison will depend entirely on price-points.
Beaten a CPU that is already out with one that isn't yet, using a benchmark of their choice.
I see you here purportedly caring about veracity...
The only area where they can hope to compete is price.
"His name was James Damore."
Well, if they actually got a CPU that can actually at least don't get shamefully annihilated by the intel offerings, they will do quite well on SoC solutions with their superior GPUs, which means nice laptop deals.
Sounds a lot like the DEC Alpha EV6 (21264)?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_21264
Oh, come now. You don't think that Intel has actually achieved a reasonable yield in their manufacturing processes, do you? That's unpossible.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Sure, 'cause a "clock-for-clock comparison" is too complicated for you to grasp...
for, let's see, a couple decades now, I welcome even the whiff of competition in this stagnant space. With Intel delivering practically non-existent top-end growth in desktop CPU performance for 5+ years now (compare an overclocked Sandy Bridge to Intel's latest to see what I mean), it's about time lowly AMD came along to give them a bump.
You're thinking pentium 4. ;p
If Zen is in the ballpark of Intel then people are going to buy it. Intel chips and especially chipsets have become too expensive and frankly, we need some competition. If the Athlon64 hadn't come along goodness knows where we'd be.
Not when their main competitors Intel and Nvidia beat them in performance while generating less heat.
Let's say that the AMD chip only reach 2GHz and is still only marginally faster at that speed, would a clock-for-clock comparison still be interesting ? What about 1GHz ? When does it stop being useful to you ?
The slower your chip runs the more work you can do per clock, btw.
I doubt the price point of $189 The high-bin four-core eight-thread SKU will probably come out at that price to compete with haswell and skylake i5's. Double and then some say $489 for the eight-core to compete with broadwell-E. There will probably be a 6-core SKU made more the 8-core where one or two cores didn't pass quality control for around $299 to compete with some of the desktop i7's. (poorly in single threaded performance anyways, but should do well in parallel test especially DX12 or Vulkan games. AMD really needs cash flow now and won't want to get into a price war. Anyways I think the heavy hitter will be Zen APU's with Polaris and HBM2 likely the drop Q3 next year.
AMD components run hotter for the same performance. My Intel/Nvidia machine is already a 400 watt space heater at full load. With AMD at equivalent performance it would be closer to 500 watts or more.
Good-bye
The Broadwell-E part they benchmarked against is probably a (slightly underclocked) Core i7-6900k, and it's $1100.
I'm taking wild guesses with the numbers here, but "15% slower than a Broadwell-E at a 45% lower cost and a similar TDP" is a valid market strategy. I haven't spent more than $240 for a CPU in over ten years, if in spring 2017 there are Zen parts at the $250 price point that are 15% behind the 2017 spring equivalent of the Intel i7-6700k or i7-6800k I will buy it.
Are you implying they should have asked Intel R&D to provide a chip that isn't out yet? You fanboys are scary...
So they artificially downclocked an Intel processor, and are able to *barely* beat it clock-for-clock. But that Intel processor should be running at a higher clock speed, and if they have it fixed at 3GHz then they also turned off Turbo Boost - which would have pushed the Broadwell-E chip up to 3.5GHz when all 8 cores are active. At those speeds, presumably, the Intel chip beats the AMD; if not, they wouldn't have bothered to downclock the Intel processor.
To sum up then: AMD's next-gen, unreleased processor still cannot outperform Intel's existing model. This doesn't surprise me, though: ever since Intel caught back up with (and then passed) AMD's performance - starting back with the first Core series processors - AMD has been trying to catch up... and failing. They do have a role in the low-price / budget system market, and maybe this new Zen stuff will cost a lot less than Intel's offerings. It doesn't look like it will truly rival Intel for high performance applications, though, where the fastest speed is worth a few hundred dollars more. After all, in the grand scheme of a several thousand dollar workstation a few hundred dollars isn't a huge deal - and 5, 10, or 20% performance difference could easily pay for itself over time.
William George
There was a time were mentioning problems with AMD processors on Slashdot would have been as dangerous as wearing blue in a red part of the hood in Los Angeles.
lucm, indeed.
No. Only that the outcome should be : our next-gen CPU is 20% faster/cooler/... than current gen CPUs. Being equivalent to current products is kind of disappointing.
AMD's next-gen, unreleased processor still cannot outperform Intel's existing model.
It only needs to get close and offer good value, then I'm in because of the superior GPU.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Consider this benchmark. http://www.anandtech.com/bench... wherin the 6900k K beaks the same clocked and cored Piledriver by about 300%. So what is proven in this benchmark -Zen has a 50% IPC improvement for CineBench, and that it's SMT (symmetric multi-threading) solution scales quite well in the benchmark.
The new CPU is "Zen", so the new staff might be buddhism monks :-D
Only if they are trying to be the highest performing chip on the block. Being the highest performing chip at a reasonable price point (the $200 mark is generally the sweet spot only the money is no object crowd wastes more on a cpu) is far more important.
AMD needs a more efficient core. If they have done it, bravo to them.
AMD can beat an Intel processor from Last year with their processor that is due out next year. By that time Intel will have jumped 2 generations (almost) and where will AMD be?
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
Kabylake E at Zen's (volume) launch? No way.
So they artificially downclocked an Intel processor, and are able to *barely* beat it clock-for-clock.
In other news, AMD who has been languishing behind severely in the clock-for-clock performance actually beats an Intel CPU clock for clock for the first time since the Core 2 processor.
Matching it clock for clock is a HUGE step forwards. They're beating it, just, but then 3.2 is not much more than 3, so it'd be neck and neck with that taken in to account. And I expect that AMD will do some bin sorting when the volume ramps to get higher clocking parts.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Skylake processors do not require Windows 10. They run fine on Windows 7.
Intel's newer USB controllers intentionally fucked over interactive Windows 7 (and older) installation by forcing xHCI mode. If you tried to use a keyboard or mouse over an Intel USB port it simply wouldn't work when the installer got to a certain point.
Because of the ensuing bitch fit and the Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers implementing their own fixes, Intel and MS were forced to release an official fix - tools for integrating the XHCI drivers into the Windows 7 installer.
Other fixes included using a PS/2 keyboard (all glory to PS/2 and its interrupts) and an optical drive (praise be to physical installation discs) or doing an unattended installation with an answer file.
AMD won't try to fuck people over with Zen. Windows 7 will be supported just as it is for their existing platforms.
My Athlon certainly heated a room up. I have a FX-8120 that makes a good bit of heat too (compared to my Intel systems (Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge)).
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Or they wanted to do a comparison against parts at the same frequency to demonstrate the IPC and architectural improvements they're talking about.
We don't know what Zen will be clocked at. We know this engineering sample runs at 3 GHz. Typically, engineering samples are clocked significantly lower than retail parts. Keep in mind that AM4 is new as well, and the motherboards in use are also test units, not mature retail units.
I wonder if it will have AMD's equivalent to Intel AMT, the Platform Security Processor. If so, it may be a no-go for some people.
How obtuse can you be. If I design a chip currently with the top of the line tools so that it can run at 1ghz, I can do more than if I was to design it with the same tools to run at 3ghz. You should try learning on the subject before commenting.
I've been running AMD's 8350 for the last 3 years with a liquid cooler(antec) and I couldn't be happier. I understand that the new wraith heatsink they developed will be more efficient, but I never trusted stock heatsinks in the past with AMD. No sudden heat surges here!
Matching it clock for clock is a HUGE step forwards.
And here I thought we had finally dispelled the notion that clock speed was all-important.
What matters is throughput per unit of time. It doesn't matter if they get throughput by using higher clock speeds or by more work per tick.
AMD is still being beaten badly at throughput.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
HBM2 will be on the high end server (maybe workstation) socket. Specs will be 16 cores (likely 12 cores possible) with a mid-sized GPU on a multi-chip-module, with eight channels of DDR 4 (unbuffered, ECC, ECC registered)
Most home users will likely not be interested, they'll prefer to go with a faster GPU for less expense on a traditional home desktop. This thing allows you 512GB RAM and a lower latency between CPU and GPU.
I speculate this may go in a Mac Pro, because there is a lot of hardware under a single heatsink.
AMD is still being beaten badly at throughput.
How on earth did you work that out? It's marginally faster clock for clock and 7% slower on clock speed. Sounds like a dead heat on throughput to me.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Intel doesn't know how to design GPUs .. thats where they need to compete. I need 8K VR gaming at 120 fps.
CPU speeds have hit a wall some time back. You may notice that Intel cannot fulfill your expectations speed-wise either.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You AMD-haters are really the most stupid morons around. Don't you realize that the only thing that AMD folding will do is that Intel improvements will vanish and Intel prices will skyrocket? Or maybe you people are into self-abuse?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Talk about not getting it, the entire point of the presentation and demo was to show that their new architecture has equivalent IPC to Intel's best.
You DO get the point of an IPC comparison, no?
The high end WS market is a small part of the market. If AMD pulls off 75-85% of the performance in a reasonable power envelope for 45-50% of the price, it is a win-win for a huge segment of the market.
Silence is a state of mime.
No x86 CPU requires Win10. The only process where MS support for a specific CPU has some impact is on installation, which may run a bit slower without that support. After that, just install the manufacturer driver to have all the support that makes a difference.
The thing about "CPU support" MS is claiming is just more FUD for the clueless to force them onto the wholly unappealing and badly broken Win10.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The Athlon was very competitive with the P3, which was an exceedingly solid processor. So it wasn't just that Intel screwed up, but AMD had a well performing product to start with.
But then ya, they really slowed down and stopped improving. They kept rehashing the same architecture over and over. They introduced new features, like 64-bit, but the computational architecture was fundamentally the same. Meanwhile Intel was hard at work making the Core series and just continually improving.
Also AMD had a real problem in that while the Athlon was a good performer, the motherboard chipsets for it were fucking garbage. So the experience of owning an Athlon was a real mixed one and turned some people off. I got burned really badly by the original Athlon and compatibility issues with their motherboards and was turned off to AMD for some time because of it.
You have no clue how engineering works. This is exactly how you do a professional benchmark.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
That is complete nonsense. You are _really_ clueless. First, you do comparisons at the same clock, anything else is unprofessional. The actual clock-rate does not matter. And second, for this type of architecture-benchmark, you always go for a "round" clock figure. Fortunately, the target for these benchmarks is people with an actual clue.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You seem to be stupid, because they just _did_ match Intel clock-for-clock.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The thing is right now, as far as I understand it, APU's are largely memory bandwidth limited for game performance rather than silicon limited, hence why Intel put 128MB of L4 (eDRAM) on thier Iris Pro lineup. There's also a potential console market as well. The Heterogeneous Compute Environment IS AMD's wet dream, but if they come up with the fast APU-APU and APU-GPU interconnect fabric to make it happen, I'd imagine that it would end up in an enthusiast system sooner rather than later.
Well, maybe entertain the notion that the problem is on your side? Because to everybody else that is rather obvious at this time.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Zen is a new architecture designed by Jim Keller, the same guy who designed the AMD Sledgehammer and Apple A4/A5 mobile processors. It shouldn't run as hot as Bulldozer/Piledriver/etc.
You are seriously taking that line?
That's a pretty massive shift of the goalposts to get price-performance numbers to work the way you want instead of the way they are likely to be.
AMD has had a manufacturing process disadvantage for years. Add to that the Bulldozer architecture was designed for high-end servers were multi-threaded integer performance was the main concern and power consumption back then wasn't really a priority. Zen is a whole new architecture so it should be optimized differently.
Hardly surprising since the Bulldozer and derived processors have a shared FPU between each two cores. Zen just replicates the FPU unit. I'm more interested in how it runs multi-threaded integer benchmarks. The FPU heavy applications I use nearly all run on the GPU anyway.
Zen is a ready CPU redesign in case you did not hear about. AMD just showed it actually has more IPC than Intel in a heavy FPU benchmark which was were they were weakest to begin with.
Intel's biggest competitor has not been AMD for at least 10 years. It has been their own existing base - the new Intel CPUs have been unable to displace the existing Intel CPUs, once they went multi-core. Intel's newer CPUs like Skylake only have a chance if they are priced attractively.
This sounds eerily familiar to WinXP and SATA. Have Disk, will BSOD.
Indeed, integer performance is what I look for in a CPU too. There are large swathes of applications that have little to no need for floating point.
That is not to say that the Piledriver's (or whatever's) FPU is in any way deficient. I'm not sure why it's getting the bad rap it gets. Is it because compilers emit 80-bit FP maths by default? [1] (The FPU can't do the 64/64bit split then, so it effectively runs at 'half speed'. Or so I guess.)
[1] I recall there being some medium-size brouhaha happening a number of years ago when GCC decided to move to 80-bit over 64-bit for most FP operations. Even when the value will be truncated down to 64 bits anyway.
"Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 58 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment" -- slashdot, driving users away.
Zen probably won't be able to beat the very best chips that Intel has to offer. And it's going to lag a bit more in single threaded benchmarks; part of Zen's strength is in multithread performance. But it's going to be far more competitive then the company has been for years. Combine that with appropriate pricing and they will have a winner. They won't be able to charge $1000 or more for any of the Zen products but they can still enjoy healthier margins than they've been able to get for the FX line or for the current A-series APUs.
As for choosing Blender, they probably deliberately chose something that makes full use of all the cores and that uses the FPU heavily; those are AMD strengths. And also an application that isn't built with an Intel compiler. Intel's compilers are known for producing code that works badly on AMD processors.
Only if they are trying to be the highest performing chip on the block. Being the highest performing chip at a reasonable price point (the $200 mark is generally the sweet spot only the money is no object crowd wastes more on a cpu) is far more important.
AMD needs a more efficient core. If they have done it, bravo to them.
I'm running a 2009 processor that runs at 49C / 90watts. Its fast enough for desktop work, but not as a server with database. I am looking forward, as the other gentleman stated, to not spending more than $250. I want a mother board that supports the current technology and supports 6 sata 2 or 3 drives. Is it a dream, or future version possibility, that the MB will come with 16Gig ddr4 type ram soldered to the MB? If there is that possibility, I would plop down my credit card for such a combo now
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Let me put it this way for you: let's say you have a choice of two cars, a Porsche for $60000 and a Ferrari for $100000. A Porsche has a top speed of 260km/h and Ferrari has a top speed of 300km/h. Also, Porsche consumes a bit less fuel. Which one would you choose? Do you go for more expensive car just because you like Ferrari even though you don't need a 40km/h faster car? And it's certainly better to have a car that consumes less fuel, too. That's the problem I have with Intel fanboys. I really, really don't care if my car is a *bit* slower. It's not an earth-shattering difference. But I do care if I save some money and use it for something more important than having a 10% faster CPU, you know? It's a ridiculous pissing competition. What's the really most important thing these days is price and performance/watt ratio, nothing else. I couldn't care less about the 10% more speed. That's the last point people should consider nowadays.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
They did, and they did.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife