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Arch-rivals Intel and AMD Team Up on PC Chips To Battle Nvidia (pcworld.com)
Intel and AMD, arch-rivals for decades, are teaming up to thwart a common competitor, Nvidia. On Monday, the two companies said they are co-designing an Intel Core microprocessor with a custom AMD Radeon graphics core inside the processor package. The chip is intended for laptops that are thin and lightweight but powerful enough to run high-end videogames, the companies said. From a report: Executives from both AMD and Intel told PCWorld that the combined AMD-Intel chip will be an "evolution" of Intel's 8th-generation, H-series Core chips, with the ability to power-manage the entire module to preserve battery life. It's scheduled to ship as early as the first quarter of 2018. Though both companies helped engineer the new chip, this is Intel's project -- Intel first approached AMD, both companies confirmed. AMD, for its part, is treating the Radeon core as a single, semi-custom design, in the same vein as the chips it supplies to consoles like the Microsoft Xbox One X and Sony Playstation 4. Some specifics, though, remain undisclosed: Intel refers to it as a single product, though it seems possible that it could eventually be offered at a range of clock speeds. [...] Shaking hands on this partnership represents a rare moment of harmony in an often bitter rivalry that began when AMD reverse-engineered the Intel 8080 microchip in 1975.
This is what Apple should be using in future Macs. Maybe they knew of Intel plans, that's why the MacBook Air and Mac mini haven't really been updated in such a long time. It's the two Macs that will have this new CPU first.
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This is like, "Hell has frozen over" kind of news
Am I the only one who smell this as very "Apple" wanted?
I dont think AMD will be giving up any GFX secret, more likely this is AMD shipping Intel a Mobile Gfx Die to be integrated within the same CPU package.
But in any case, Why not just have Intel ship a Mobile CPU without iGPU and a Separate GPU.
And AMD, why now? When Zen is doing great, has great roadmap and potential, along with much better GFx then Intel. Why?
has frozen over.
The first two words of the article are really "Absolutely Incredible!"? It's news. It's interesting. Incredible? I don't know if I'd say it's absolutely incredible that two companies are working together to bring a product to the market. I think PCWorld might be a bit to excited about this and forgot about actual journalism.
Sent from my TARDIS
Great story bro.
Asking slashdot: Should I care at the software perfromance level if I have an AMD or an Intel.
it's been over a decade since I bought a big AMD cluster. I regretted that because I found that at that time in history while some code did run equally well on these that in general the software libraries for AMD just weren't tuned as well for these chips. Many optimizations not taken.
the main issue was that make files were just defaulting to x386 (this was pre ia64) and not special instructions. SIMD support wasn't there. And many libraries I had to use were pre-compiled to generic specs rather than optimized.
Likewise the compliers I used were faster with intel.
So I regreted that choice. I made it after carefully considering the benchmarks and raw perfromance stats. But later I understood that these benchmarking programs are the ones that got the attention for tuning and my own code would not achieve that.
Now it's a couple decades later. DOes this matter at all. SHould I not care if I have intel or AMD at the software level and just buy the computer that fits my current use patterns.
these days I'm not doing cluster work or writing much code but instead mainly blender and python and lots and lots of animation renders.
what does slashdot advise: if I see a cost difference should I risk AMD?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
What's next? Sonic on Nintendo consoles? Square-Enix games on computers?
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When a laptop is crap, you don't blame Intel, you blame the crap company that made your crappy laptop.
Maybe you just bought a 7970 from a crappy company.
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About 5 years ago INTC tried to buy NVDA. They had enough money to do it, and the offer was going to be reasonable, but there was a sticking point about who would become CEO of the combined company. Paul Otellini of Intel was about to step down, and the assumption from NVIDIA's Jensen Huang was he would become the CEO of the combined Intel-NVIDIA. But Intel's board wasn't going to have it and promoted Brian Krzanich to CEO instead. And that's the story of how Intel managed to lose a ton of money and missed opportunities in 3D graphics and Compute.
The 7970 was widely considered a good card, but you're making decisions based on an experience you had 5-6 years ago. It's entirely possible that the slow framerate was a chipset compatibility issue or your motherboard manufacture screwed up or that you needed to install some updates to your BIOS to fix a well known issue. Most of the cards have thermal sensors that shut off if the fan dies because you won't find a 100% reliable fan on GeForce cards either.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The linchpin of the Intel-AMD agreement is a tiny piece of silicon that Intel began talking up over the past year: the Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge, or EMIB. Numerous EMIBs can connect silicon dies, routing the electrical traces through the substrate itself. The result is what Intel calls a System-in-Package module. In this case, EMIBs allowed Intel to construct the three-die module, which will tie together Intelâ(TM)s Core chip, the Radeon core, and next-generation high-bandwidth memory, or HBM2.
AMD sell Intel bare dies that talk EMIB. Interesting thing is that Intel could do a deal with NVidia to supply GPU dies which use the same interface. Well except that Intel pays NVidia licence fees whereas the AMD Intel patent licensing agreement is completely one sided - AMD pays Intel but Intel gets IP rights to anything AMD invents for free.
It's not like AMD is selling Intel a synthesizable core or even a hard macro. And Intel being Intel they probably pay people to do competitor analysis on AMD stuff anyway. So getting bare dies doesn't tell them anything that they don't already know.
And as a lot of people have noted Apple use Intel and AMD GPUs but not NVidia ones. Post Itanium I think Intel regards Apple as its non commodity low volume/high margin market.
So it all makes sense. It'll be interesting to see what the chip costs and if EMIB graphics has performance and/or power advantages over PCI Express run chip to chip. With USB you can strip out the analog transceivers for HSIC
https://www.synopsys.com/dw/dw...
Could you do something similar for PCIe? Turns out you can
http://eecatalog.com/pcie/2012...
Meanwhile, modem makers were looking for a suitable interconnect for next-generation LTE networks. These networks will have air interfaces capable of throughputs beyond the 40 MB/s typically possible with HSIC USB. Further, there was a desire to deploy other SuperSpeed applications such as mass storage in a chip-to-chip environment. The SuperSpeed Inter-Chip USB (SSIC USB) group selected M-PHY as the physical layer, and developed a reference model that bridges from the PIPE 3.0 reference model to the M-PHY physical layer. This allows existing USB 3.0 IP to be quickly adapted for SSIC USB use by deleting (or disabling) the legacy USB 2.0 support, replacing the USB PIPE 3.0 implementation with a shim plus an M-PHY implementation, and making minor changes to the link layer of the USB 3.0 IP.
In September 2012, PCI-SIG and the MIPI Alliance announced an initiative to similarly adapt PCIe to run over M-PHY. Because of the work already done by the USB-IF SSIC USB group, the adaptation will likely include a similar reference model based on PIPE 3.0, simplifying early prototyping and architectural verification.
PCIe over M-PHY is likely to be quickly accepted in the Ultrabook and x86-based tablet PC market because it will allow reuse of hardware and software IP while lowering system power requirements. Adoption may be slower in smartphones and ARM-based tablets, because thereâ(TM)s less experience in using PCIe in those systems.
Of course you could do that for PCIe run chip to chip too. Still maybe you could use lower voltages over EMIB.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Putting aside AMD's very newest chip for a moment, there are basically three different kinds of use cases:
A) I want the best performance I can get within my $X budget.
B) it's a server serving many clients (lots of threads)
C) It's a single thread and I don't care how much it costs because I'm spending taxpayer money, I want the very fastest single-thread performance, cost be damned
Intel specializes in case C. Raw single-thread performance, cost be damned.
AMD will give you more cores for the dollar, so it competes well in case B, servers running many threads. AMD also traditionally costs significantly less, so it fits case A, getting the best CPU you can within a certain price range.
That's a generalization, though. It's best to compare one CPU model to another, evaluating based on the needs of your specific application and budget.
Makes sense. Intel graphics are still a failure.
Remember when the industry panicked when Intel bought Chips & Technologies and the Real3D patents?
That didn't go so well. Who else had a shoebox full of Intel i740 cards bought at fire-sale prices?
Kriston
I mean, now that they have a real chance of making a good Ryzen based APU they join forces with Intel? That surely doesn't make sense.
I wonder what the price will be like. Will it be Intel like (read: too much) or AMD (eternal underdog) like?
Didn't see that coming. I can think of a couple other tech companies I would like to see work together on projects. Not quite on topic, but I would still like to see Microsoft buy the BB10 OS, spend a year working with it, NOT fuck up the still awesome interface and bring me a phone I actually want. I use an S8+ now, but the BB Classic is still the best phone I have ever used. I never had the slightest problem running side loaded Android apps. If whatever framework was behind that can be maintained and developed, perhaps MS could write a dev kit for an Android and MS BB11 with options to compile a single code base for Android AND OR MS BB11.
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I got a free nVidia GTX 650 that was headed for the scrapyard. Runs my games at 30+ FPS just fine.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
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With this new technology announced less than two weeks ago?
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Title erroneously leads one to believe that Intel and AMD are so terrified of PC Chips (now ECS) that some teamwork is in order...
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
Looks great for desktop and server use. Does AMD have a good mobile offering at the moment?
Yes, the recently released Raven Ridge aka Ryzen Mobile.
My personal hope is for AMD to release some low-power APU's that fit between mobile & 'classical' desktop applications. Say, AM4 socket parts with around ~30W TDP to go on affordable mini-ITX boards for SFF PC's, home theatre, all-in-ones and such. Not that I would mind even lower-power mobile parts, but those tend to be thin on the ground in terms of availability for diy builds (eg. separate APU + motherboard purchase). And there's quite some space these days between laptops & the bulky PC's of yesterday.
Lately, AMD made news for their well received Zen CPUs and lackluster Vega GPUs.
So... let's pair an Intel CPU with an AMD GPU...
The AMD Raven Ridge GPU performance is said to be on the same level as Intel's current offering, which is pretty bad, but the CPU is quite good.
TBH, it kind of makes sense : Intel CPUs have good single thread performance, and dedicated AMD GPUs are better than Intel's offering, combining them can be good for mid-range gaming, but still, weirdest partnership ever...
Wouldn't something like this fall afoul of cartel laws?
It's not like nVidia's putting out desktop processors or anything.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
what about more pci-e intel???
Except it's not. This really is amazing news to me, and they definitely will blow a big hole in the budget gaming market.
If you're no willing to spend a few seconds to think about whether your workload is multithreaded, and you are willing to spend more money than needed, get Ryzen.
A difference between C and D is that in the case of D, whole you're willing to spend 10 times as money as you should, that still doesn't tell you whether you should spend lots of money on 16 AMD cores or on 4 Intel cores.
If your workload is heavily multithreaded (servers), AMD will likely give you tell best performance, at *whatever* your budget is, because AMD will give you more cores. If you want to spend a lot, you can get dual Ryzens, 32 cores running 64 threads simultaneously.
If your workload is single-threaded and CPU-bound, Intel is probably a better bet.
> I don't want got get into a situation where I have to carefully study all the archane nuances to get the best results.
That sucks, because the BEST result does in fact depend on a number of factors. You can get a GOOD result with the newest CPUs from each manufacturer. AMD cpus provide far more different motherboard options, so they are more likely to be the best fit if you want lots of Pcie cards, or a tiny enclosure, or anything unusual.
I jumped back up here from my answers further down in the thread to see if you have any hints about your use case.
You can turn on GPU rendering in Blender, in which case your GPU becomes more important and your CPU becomes less important. This article is about Intel using graphics technology from AMD because AMD is so far ahead in GPUs, but you likely have a separate video card.
Blender uses threads efficiently, meaning CPU cores, so for Blender you want a CPU with at least 8 cores. That favors AMD for Blender work.
You also said â lots and lots of animation renders". What software are you using for those? If it mostly uses the GPU, that's where you should focus your attention (and check for settings for that in your software!). If your renderer uses many threads, AMD is probably going to be the winner for you, especially Ryzen. If your renderer is single-threaded, Intel is likely to be the better choice.
This assumes you're happy with a pretty typical motherboard. There are more chipsets and a wider variety of *different* motherboards available for AMD.
Release your register level specs and get proper Linux kernel support, like a professional product.
What good is a top notch GPU if it shares memory access with the CPU? I would assume it matters in some cases, but I'm not sure to what extent. As I do a lot of iterated render to texture, I feel much safer with a fairly basic discrete GPU with its own fast RAM, than the latest and greatest integrated one.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I would agree, I would probably avoid the AliExpress because the GPU is important to you. "Lots of animation renders" sounds like you may want to look at whether the software you use uses GPU rendering and if so, via which API - opengl? If opengl, most of the major brands will have reasonably good support.
Other than that, I'm more of a software guy; I don't stay up on the latest hardware. I just know, from a software perspective, that some software will take full advantage of multiple cores, some will not. Some will use the GPU, some won't, and some has a setting to choose.
If I chose the AMD, I'd probably upgrade to the 8 core for a few dollars more than the 4 core. An AMD processor with 4 cores is, to, me, like a pickup truck with a 4-foot bed - missing the point. So I'd either get lots of cores (Ryzen) or fast cores (Intel). A possible exception would be if you're leaving room to upgrade - Ryzen all use the same socket, so you could get a 4-core now with plans to get an 8-core later after prices drop.
Either way, if you're currently using an old laptop, you'll probably see a major improvement.
I noticed you have both SSD and HD systems on your list. You'll want an SSD for the OS. You may also want a big HD for storing final copies of media, but an SSD will be far better for working files. The very cheapest SSDs use triple-level NAND (tlc). You probably want to avoid that and use double level, known as multilevel or MLC.
Two things:
1) Is it legal to gang-up on another competitor like this? Am I (hearing) merger/take-over plans coming?
2) AMD may want to beware the possible Trojan partnership here!
Just saying...
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Yeah the M.2 PCIe drives are attractive. I would have bought one two days ago if it weren't for the fact that the machine I was putting the drive only has two PCIe slots. You'll need a $12 adapter to put that drive in a PCIe slot. M.2 has pins for PCIe, USB, and SATA. A particular device may use/require any of those interfaces. That is unless you get a mobo with a M.2 NVMe slot.
You may have a couple second delay at boot while interface is initialized, which doesn't seem like much but it may eat up the entire improvement in boot time over SATA from having a faster transfer. In the 2 seconds that it take4s to initialize the interface, the SATA drive could have transferred a GB of data - all your boot files.