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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.
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.
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?
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.
Will it be free, as in beer?
Better than free hookers. I'm not sure I'd trust those.
Given the massive layoffs and 2-year delay on 10nm...
Intel knows its in trouble. Their main two competitors (by semiconductor manufacturing market share) are TSMC and Samsung and both will have 10nm chips rolling out the door a year before Intel even begins testing its 10nm fab. Even Toshiba might beat them to 10nm.
Zen will be at process size parity with Intel and that will probably equate to similar performance, but this fact is of only minor consideration to Intel. AMD isn't even close to Intels primary competitor. AMD catching up is a symptom of a much bigger problem. This time next year Intel wont be #1 in the market any more...it will be TSMC.
"His name was James Damore."
Not when their main competitors Intel and Nvidia beat them in performance while generating less heat.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.