bulldozer | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net KitGuru.net - Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards Wed, 28 Aug 2019 12:32:12 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/cropped-KITGURU-Light-Background-SQUARE2-32x32.png bulldozer | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net 32 32 AMD settles Bulldozer class-action lawsuit for $12.1 million https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/matthew-wilson/amd-settles-bulldozer-class-action-lawsuit-for-12-1-million/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/matthew-wilson/amd-settles-bulldozer-class-action-lawsuit-for-12-1-million/#respond Wed, 28 Aug 2019 08:30:11 +0000 https://www.kitguru.net/?p=423123 The class-action lawsuit against AMD over Bulldozer and the definition of a CPU core has now come to an end.

The post AMD settles Bulldozer class-action lawsuit for $12.1 million first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Many of you will remember the AMD ‘Bulldozer' class action lawsuit, claiming that the series of FX processors were falsely advertised and overstated the number of cores on the chip. The lawsuit has been going on for around four years now but today, it officially comes to an end, with AMD reaching a settlement agreement.

The class action suit alleged that the eight-core Bulldozer FX CPUs were falsely advertised as having eight cores. This stems from the CPU's design, as while Windows would recognise each Bulldozer module as two separate cores, they shared a single FPU as well as instruction and execution resources.

Fortunately, we won't need a judge to try and rule on what is officially classed as a CPU core anymore. AMD has reached a settlement agreement, which will include a $12.1 million pay out, split roughly into $35 chunks amongst US buyers of eight-core Bulldozer chips.

The settlement comes at a good time, as in January, a judge had ruled that the lawsuit could proceed after rejecting AMD's argument that a “significant majority” of consumers agreed with its definition of a CPU core.

KitGuru Says: I didn't expect that we would still be talking about Bulldozer now in 2019 but here we are. It looks like this case can now be wrapped up, although there will be another update in the future when these class action payouts start going out. 

The post AMD settles Bulldozer class-action lawsuit for $12.1 million first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/matthew-wilson/amd-settles-bulldozer-class-action-lawsuit-for-12-1-million/feed/ 0
AMD responds to Bulldozer class action lawsuit https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/matthew-wilson/amd-responds-to-bulldozer-class-action-lawsuit/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/matthew-wilson/amd-responds-to-bulldozer-class-action-lawsuit/#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2015 23:00:43 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=274863 Over the weekend, we learned that AMD had been hit with a class action lawsuit over its Bulldozer series of processors. The complaint stemmed from claims that AMD overstated the number of cores contained in the chip, stating that while AMD advertised the CPU as having eight cores, it only really had four due to …

The post AMD responds to Bulldozer class action lawsuit first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Over the weekend, we learned that AMD had been hit with a class action lawsuit over its Bulldozer series of processors. The complaint stemmed from claims that AMD overstated the number of cores contained in the chip, stating that while AMD advertised the CPU as having eight cores, it only really had four due to a unique design that combined two discrete cores in to a single module.

Each module on Bulldozer is seen as two separate cores within Windows. However, the cores share a single FPU, along with the same instruction and execution resources. Intel CPUs on the other hand feature a different design with independent FPUs.

bulldozer

The lawsuit goes on to claim that due to this design, each core is not capable of working independently, which apparently results in performance degradation. The main point here seems to be false advertisement, as not everyone will understand the inner-workings of a CPU and would trust AMD to provide correct specification details.

These are all pretty serious allegations, which would put AMD in violation of the Consumer Legal Remedies Act in the US. After a few days, AMD has had a chance to issue a comment regarding the matter. In a statement sent out to various press outlets, AMD said: “We believe our marketing accurately reflects the capabilities of the Bulldozer architecture which, when implemented in an 8-core AMD FX processor, is capable of running eight instructions concurrently.”

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: AMD has now had a chance to deny that it misrepresented its Bulldozer CPUs, now we just have to wait and see how this plays out in the long run. Do any of you think that AMD misrepresented the core count on its Bulldozer CPU? 

The post AMD responds to Bulldozer class action lawsuit first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/matthew-wilson/amd-responds-to-bulldozer-class-action-lawsuit/feed/ 91
AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/matthew-wilson/amd-faces-class-action-lawsuit-over-bulldozer-core-count-claims/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/matthew-wilson/amd-faces-class-action-lawsuit-over-bulldozer-core-count-claims/#comments Sat, 07 Nov 2015 12:10:16 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=274559 It looks like AMD has a class action lawsuit on its hands over the company's Bulldozer series of processors. The complaint stems from claims that AMD overstated the number of cores contained in the chip, the lawsuit says that while AMD advertised Bulldozer as having eight cores, it only really had four, due to the unique …

The post AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
It looks like AMD has a class action lawsuit on its hands over the company's Bulldozer series of processors. The complaint stems from claims that AMD overstated the number of cores contained in the chip, the lawsuit says that while AMD advertised Bulldozer as having eight cores, it only really had four, due to the unique design, which combined functions of what would be two discrete cores in to one module.

Each module on Bulldozer is seen as two separate cores within Windows. However, the cores share a single FPU, along with the same instruction and execution resources. Intel CPUs on the other hand feature a different design with independent FPUs.

bulldozer

The lawsuit (via: Ars Technica) goes on to claim that due to this design, each core is not capable of working independently, which apparently results in performance degradation. The main point here seems to be false advertisement, as not everyone will understand the inner-workings of a CPU and would trust AMD to provide correct specification details.

These are all pretty serious allegations, which would put AMD in violation of the Consumer Legal Remedies Act in the US. The plaintiffs in the case are seeking statutory and punitive damages from AMD. You can find a summary of the lawsuit, HERE.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: A lawsuit like this will likely take a couple of years to come to a conclusion, so we could be hearing about this for a while. Do any of you think that AMD misrepresented the core count on its Bulldozer CPU? 

The post AMD faces class action lawsuit over Bulldozer core count claims first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/matthew-wilson/amd-faces-class-action-lawsuit-over-bulldozer-core-count-claims/feed/ 77
AMD’s future ‘Bristol Ridge’ and ‘Stoney Ridge’ APUs listed in BIOS https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amds-future-bristol-ridge-and-stoney-ridge-apus-listed-in-bios-binaries/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amds-future-bristol-ridge-and-stoney-ridge-apus-listed-in-bios-binaries/#comments Tue, 29 Sep 2015 22:07:04 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=269880 An undisclosed maker of motherboards has already added mentions of AMD’s upcoming accelerated processing units in the binary of its BIOS. It is highly likely that AMD’s latest reference BIOS versions already include support of the company’s future microprocessors. As a result, mentions of the chips migrate to commercial products. Planet3DNow reports that the latest …

The post AMD’s future ‘Bristol Ridge’ and ‘Stoney Ridge’ APUs listed in BIOS first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
An undisclosed maker of motherboards has already added mentions of AMD’s upcoming accelerated processing units in the binary of its BIOS. It is highly likely that AMD’s latest reference BIOS versions already include support of the company’s future microprocessors. As a result, mentions of the chips migrate to commercial products.

Planet3DNow reports that the latest BIOS binary version PI 1.4 contains references to AMD’s “Stoney Ridge” (ST) and “Bristol Ridge” (BR) accelerated processing units that are due next year. The addition of the processors to AMD’s reference BIOS indicates that the company has already begun preparations for the launch of its new accelerated processing units.

Both “Bristol Ridge” and “Stoney Ridge” accelerated processing units will use all-new AM4 form-factor and will be made using an existing 28nm process technology. The “Bristol Ridge” integrates four “Excavator” cores, Radeon graphics based on the GCN 1.2 architecture, a dual-channel DDR4 memory controller as well as basic input/output capabilities. The “Stoney Ridge” is expected to sport two “Excavator” cores, AMD Radeon graphics with up to 192 stream processors, a single-channel DDR4 memory controller and basic I/O functions.

amd_fusion_600

The “Bristol Ridge” processors are projected to hit the market in late Q2 or early Q3 2016. The chips will offer 10 to 15 per cent higher performance than current-generation “Kaveri” chips, hence, it will not be revolutionary at all. The “Stoney Ridge” is projected to emerge in late 2016 and will be aimed at low-cost PCs.

AMD did not comment on the news-story.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: If AMD adds support for “Bristol Ridge” and “Stoney Ridge” accelerated processing units in its reference BIOS versions, it is highly likely that the chips will actually be introduced. Since neither of APUs are game changers, it is not really important when AMD plans to introduce them. What is important is when the company intends to release its “Raven Ridge” APU with “Zen” cores and new-generation Radeon graphics adapter.

The post AMD’s future ‘Bristol Ridge’ and ‘Stoney Ridge’ APUs listed in BIOS first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amds-future-bristol-ridge-and-stoney-ridge-apus-listed-in-bios-binaries/feed/ 17
Legendary microprocessor developer Jim Keller leaves AMD https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/legendary-microprocessor-developer-jim-keller-leaves-amd/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/legendary-microprocessor-developer-jim-keller-leaves-amd/#comments Fri, 18 Sep 2015 22:21:18 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=268441 Advanced Micro Devices on Friday said that Jim Keller, a legendary microprocessor architect, will leave the company, effective immediately. Mr. Keller worked on multiple future generations of central processing units (CPUs) and system-on-chips (SoCs) at AMD, his departure will have an effect on the company’s long-term roadmap, but will not have any effect on products …

The post Legendary microprocessor developer Jim Keller leaves AMD first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Advanced Micro Devices on Friday said that Jim Keller, a legendary microprocessor architect, will leave the company, effective immediately. Mr. Keller worked on multiple future generations of central processing units (CPUs) and system-on-chips (SoCs) at AMD, his departure will have an effect on the company’s long-term roadmap, but will not have any effect on products in the next several years.

No immediate effect on product roadmap

AMD indicated that Jim Keller leaves the company after just three years to “pursue other opportunities.” Mark Papermaster, AMD’s chief technology officer, will be the acting leader of CPU architecture development group previously led by Mr. Keller. Eventually, AMD will have to find a decent replacement for the legendary chip architect.

“Deep team was in place to drive completion phase of our next-generation ‘Zen’ core and associated system IP and SOCs,” said Drew Prairie, director of corporate communications at AMD. “Jim Keller’s departure is not expected to impact our public product or technology roadmaps, and we remain on track for ‘Zen’ availability in 2016 with first full year of revenue in 2017. There are no other organizational changes related to Jim’s departure.”

amd_cpu_jim_keller

Jim Keller, a legendary CPU architect, is best known for such high-performance designs as DEC’s Alpha 21164 and 21264, AMD’s “K8” (Athlon 64/Opteron), Apple’s “Swift”, “Cyclone”, “Typhoon” as well as multiple successful PowerPC- and MIPS-based system-on-chips. After Mr. Keller completed his work on “K8”, he left AMD in 1999. He returned to AMD in 2012.

“Zen” and “K12”

At AMD, Mr. Keller was responsible for development of the company’s next-generation x86 and ARM micro-architectures, including “Zen”, “Zen+”, “K12” and others. AMD claims that microprocessors based on its “Zen” cores will offer 40 per cent higher instructions per clock performance compared to “Excavator” x86 cores.

While a micro-architecture is crucially important for success of multiple generations of products, relatively small groups of people design it. Moreover, it does not take too long to create a modern CPU micro-architecture on a high-level. What does take a long time is implementation of actual hardware blocks inside processor cores (instruction fetchers/decoders, schedulers, arithmetic logic units, floating point units, etc.), development of various “un-core” components (pre-fetchers, internal interconnections, caches, memory controllers, interfaces, etc.), design and implementation of actual chips based on the architecture and hardware blocks. As a result, CPUs that are sold today are powered by micro-architectures developed many years ago.

“Architecture decisions are many years in advance of products,” explained the representative for AMD. “As you may remember, he was a primary architect on K8. We launched that product in 2003 and he had left AMD in 1999.”

amd_ati_compass_atyt_strategy_bg

The development of “Zen” (znver1) and “Zen+” (znver2) micro-architectures – which AMD has disclosed – has been completed a long time ago. At this point Mr. Keller’s CPU architecture design team may be finalizing the third iteration of Zen (znver3) or starting high-level design of the fourth iteration of Zen (znver4). Development of the “K12” and the “K12+” micro-architectures, which share a lot of innovations with “Zen”, has been finished too. It is highly likely that the departure of Mr. Keller will not significantly affect AMD’s products due in 2016 – 2018, all products based on “Zen” and “K12” cores will see the light of day.

“We have a multi-generation roadmap in place to further enhance and improve the core well into the future,” said Mr. Prairie. “Our focus is on high-performance, scalable, 64-bit x86 and ARM cores.”

amd_opteron_2016_2017

CPU development pipeline

Throughout its history, Advanced Micro Devices has developed a number of breakthrough micro-architectures and technologies that were years ahead of what their competitors offered at the time. Unfortunately, AMD did not always have enough resources to pursue new opportunities. So, when AMD decided to design two micro-architectures instead of one in 2005 – 2006, it was a risky decision, which eventually negatively affected the whole CPU development pipeline at the company. Fortunately, the pipeline has been fixed by now, thanks to Mark Papermaster and Jim Keller.

In the past, AMD had multiple CPU architecture development teams based in different locations (including Sunnyvale, California; Boxborough, Massachusetts; Fort Collins, Colorado, etc.). Different teams designed and enhanced different micro-architectures and were very dedicated to their work. While this seemed to make sense in the 2000s, when the company designed only microprocessors, it would not work nowadays. As a result, Rory Read and Mark Papermaster, who joined the company in 2011 as the chief executive officer and the chief technology officer, decided to cease development of low-power/low-cost x86 cores (known as “Cats”, e.g., “Bobcat”, Jaguar”, “Puma”) and focus on high-performance scalable micro-architectures instead. Moreover, Mr. Papermaster, who worked on design of microprocessors at IBM from 1991 to 2006, eventually unified all CPU architecture development teams into one, creating a large pool of talent ready to address various challenges.

amd_fusion_semi_custon_chip_universe

Mark Papermaster re-assigned one of the teams (presumably the one located in Boxborough, Massachusetts) to finish the “Bulldozer” micro-architecture enhancements (that work was probably completed in ~2013 and then the team joined the global CPU architecture development group), making resources of the California-based CPU engineering team available to Jim Keller, who joined AMD in August, 2012.

Today, engineers at different locations work on the same projects, which should speed up development of high-performance x86 and ARM cores. For example, people at Fort Collins, Colorado, are working on energy-efficiency of AMD's future micro-architectures (e.g., “Zen”) and chip designs. AMD’s globalized micro-architecture and microprocessor development groups should be generally more agile and flexible than dedicated teams back in the days. As a result, it is logical to expect AMD to create products faster going forward. Moreover, thanks to Jim Keller’s contribution, those chips are expected to be rather competitive on the micro-architecture level.

Fixing CPU development pipeline at AMD was a key thing for the company’s future success. The strategic decision for this was made by Mark Papermaster, who handled a lot of organizational issues too. However, it was Jim Keller, who created a working mechanism that is ready to produce competitive micro-architectures for processors.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: Contemporary microprocessors contain billions of elements. Modern CPU micro-architectures are extremely complex and can only be developed by groups of talented people working together. Nonetheless, Jim Keller is a true legend in the world of microprocessors. Throughout his career, he managed design of so many successful products that without any doubts he is a brilliant CPU architect. It is a little sad to see him leaving AMD, but if you take a look at his career, he has never spent more than several years at one chipmaker. In fact, it was a matter of time for him to leave AMD. Fortunately, there is now a working global CPU micro-architecture development group at AMD, which can continue what Mr. Keller started. The main intrigue about Jim Keller now is what is next for him. Meanwhile, AMD's processor R&D is in good hands for now.

The post Legendary microprocessor developer Jim Keller leaves AMD first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/legendary-microprocessor-developer-jim-keller-leaves-amd/feed/ 31
AMD roadmap leaks: Summit Ridge, Bristol Ridge, Basilisk and Styx https://www.kitguru.net/components/anton-shilov/amd-2016-roadmap-leaks-summit-ridge-bristol-ridge-basilisk-and-styx/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/anton-shilov/amd-2016-roadmap-leaks-summit-ridge-bristol-ridge-basilisk-and-styx/#comments Wed, 29 Apr 2015 16:50:40 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=247334 An alleged AMD insider has published what it appears to be the company’s microprocessor roadmap for 2016. If the plan is accurate and AMD manages to execute it, then next year the company will release a top-to-bottom family of central processing units based on “Zen” micro-architecture as well as one chip featuring its own ARMv8-compatible …

The post AMD roadmap leaks: Summit Ridge, Bristol Ridge, Basilisk and Styx first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
An alleged AMD insider has published what it appears to be the company’s microprocessor roadmap for 2016. If the plan is accurate and AMD manages to execute it, then next year the company will release a top-to-bottom family of central processing units based on “Zen” micro-architecture as well as one chip featuring its own ARMv8-compatible “K12” cores.

AMD’s “Zen” technology will be used not only for high-performance central processing units as well as accelerated processing units, but also for system-on-chips designed for inexpensive and small form-factor applications, reveals a slide from AMD roadmap for 2016. For applications like tablets AMD intends to offer all-new system-on-chip powered by its ARMv8-compatible “K12” cores, another slide claims. All of AMD's APUs and CPUs due next year are set to be made by GlobalFoundries. Officially, the company’s plans for 2016 are expected to be presented next week, but an alleged employee of AMD published the slides on Wednesday.

“Summit Ridge”: High-performance eight-core AMD processors due next year

After years of waiting, in 2016 AMD plans to introduce its all-new high-performance processors that will replace its current-generation FX-series chips. The new CPUs are going to be based on the brand-new AMD “Zen” microarchitecture that is expected to dramatically improve performance of AMD’s offerings.

amd_roadmap_desktop_2016_zen

As reported, AMD’s high-performance desktop microprocessor due next year will be code-named “Summit Ridge”. The CPU will integrate up to eight “Zen” cores, 4MB L2 cache, 8MB of L3 cache, a dual-channel DDR4 memory controller (DDR3 support should be possible), a PCI Express 3.0 controller as well as other necessary logic. The chip will use AMD’s new FM3 form-factor.

The new central processing unit will be made using 14nm FinFET manufacturing technology at GlobalFoundries. Keeping in mind positioning of AMD FX-series chips, it is highly likely that “Summit Ridge” processors will be optimized for high clock-rates. Still, they are projected to be made using a standard fabrication process since the company is moving away from AMD-specific technologies.

Two or more “Summit Ridge” dies are expected to be used to build many-core AMD Opteron multi-chip-modules (MCMs) for servers.

“Bristol Ridge”: AMD’s first high-performance system-on-chip for desktops and laptops

This year AMD offers two different APUs for desktops and laptops: a classic “Godavari” APU that is designed to run at high clock-rates and a highly-integrated “Carrizo” that is optimized for low power consumption. Next year AMD plans to unify its design approaches and will again offer a “one size fits all” APU code-named “Bristol Ridge”.

amd_roadmap_mobility_2016_zen_k12

AMD’s code-named “Bristol Ridge” chip will be the company’s high-end APU for 2016 desktops and laptops. Highly-integrated “Bristol Ridge” accelerated processing unit will feature up to four “Zen” cores, a Radeon graphics processing unit powered by next-generation GCN architecture, full HSA 1.0 implementation, a dual-channel DDR4 memory controller (DDR3 support should be possible), an integrated input/output controller as well as AMD TrueAudio and Secure Processor technologies.

“Bristol Ridge” APUs for desktops will use the same FM3 form-factor as AMD’s high-end microprocessors.

Mobile versions of “Bristol Ridge” will feature 15W – 35W TDP, will sport FP4 BGA package and will be pin-to-pin compatible with “Carrizo” and ”Carrizo-L” APUs.

While “Bristol Ridge” accelerated processing unit is going to be made using a 14nm fabrication process, given the fact that it will be a system-on-chip – like “Carrizo” – it is highly likely that the processor will not be optimized for high clock-rates. Still, thanks to thinner process technology and new micro-architecture, “Bristol Ridge” APUs will likely offer significantly higher performance compared to existing offerings.

“Basilisk”: Small chip based on “big” architecture

For years, AMD used its low-cost/low-power micro-architectures for its accelerated processing units aimed at inexpensive and energy-efficient notebooks and desktops. In 2016, the company plans to use its high-performance “Zen” micro-architecture to build APUs aimed at basic PCs.

amd_fusion_pencil

AMD’s “Basilisk” accelerated processing unit is projected to have thermal design power of only 5-15W, but it is going to pack a punch. With up to two “Zen” cores, a Radeon graphics processing unit powered by next-generation GCN architecture, full HSA 1.0 implementation, an integrated input/output controller as well as AMD TrueAudio and Secure Processor technologies, “Basilisk” will support all the features of its older brother, “Bristol Ridge”.

The chip will be manufactured at GlobalFoundries using its 14nm FinFET process technology, hence, expect decent clock-rates for an ultra-low-power SoC.

AMD’s “Basilisk” APUs will feature FT4 BGA form-factor, like the rest of AMD’s offerings for mobile applications in 2016.

“Styx”: The first implementation of “K12” for client PCs

AMD has been trying to address the market of media tablets with x86-based offerings since 2011, but without a lot of luck with design wins. Next year the company is going to change its strategy.

amd_fusion_chip_logo_processor

AMD’s “Styx” accelerated processing unit will be the company’s first system-on-chip to integrate the its own 64-bit ARMv8-A instruction set-compatible cores. The APU will also contain a Radeon graphics processing unit powered by next-generation GCN architecture, full HSA 1.0 implementation, built-in input/output capabilities as well as Secure Processor technology.

Thermal design power of the chip will be around 2W and the offering will naturally be aimed at tablets, emerging devices (e.g., set-top-boxes with gaming capabilities, game consoles) and ultra-low-voltage hybrids. The SoC will use FT4 BGA form-factor and will be pin-to-pin compatible with “Basilisk” and “Amur” APUs.

Just like other 2016 chips from AMD, “Styx” will be made using 14nm fabrication process at GlobalFoundries.

AMD did not comment on the news-story.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: AMD’s client PC roadmaps for next year look very promising on paper. Hopefully, AMD can execute its plans and actual performance of “Zen” will be as impressive as everyone thinks it is.

The post AMD roadmap leaks: Summit Ridge, Bristol Ridge, Basilisk and Styx first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/anton-shilov/amd-2016-roadmap-leaks-summit-ridge-bristol-ridge-basilisk-and-styx/feed/ 8
More AMD ‘Zen’ CPU details emerge: quad-core units, inclusive cache, high-speed interconnects https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/more-amd-zen-cpu-details-emerge-quad-core-units-inclusive-cache-high-speed-interconnects/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/more-amd-zen-cpu-details-emerge-quad-core-units-inclusive-cache-high-speed-interconnects/#comments Tue, 28 Apr 2015 23:00:15 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=247157 Anonymous insiders from Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday revealed more details about the company’s upcoming microprocessors based on “Zen” micro-architecture. Just as expected, the new “Zen” central processing units will be dramatically different compared to “Bulldozer” CPUs. Moreover, as it appears, AMD intends to reconsider some of the things that it has not changed for …

The post More AMD ‘Zen’ CPU details emerge: quad-core units, inclusive cache, high-speed interconnects first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Anonymous insiders from Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday revealed more details about the company’s upcoming microprocessors based on “Zen” micro-architecture. Just as expected, the new “Zen” central processing units will be dramatically different compared to “Bulldozer” CPUs. Moreover, as it appears, AMD intends to reconsider some of the things that it has not changed for decades.

Based on the slide published on Tuesday, AMD will no longer use dual-core modules with shared floating point unit and some other resources. By contrast, “Zen” cores will be organized in quad-core units that share only L3 cache as well as special high-speed links that are designed to interconnect multiple units together. It is not completely clear why AMD decided to create quad-core units, but, perhaps, the company wants to easily scale amount of cores for different types of microprocessors. For example, server chips would benefit from 8-16 cores, whereas client APUs hardly need more than four x86 cores.

amd_quad_core_zen

Each “Zen” core in the upcoming AMD chips will be equipped with 512KB L2 cache and each quad-core unit will sport 8MB of shared L3 cache. The new microprocessors from AMD will feature fully inclusive cache design, just like Intel CPUs do. Inclusive cache design means that larger caches also include data located in smaller caches (e.g., L2 contains data contained in L1). AMD’s chips have used exclusive cache design since the K6 processors in mid-nineties in a bid to maximize efficiency of its caches. The decision to reconsider cache design is another indicator that “Zen” is a brand-new architecture from AMD.

It is noteworthy that quad-core units do not integrate memory controllers.Potentially, this means that AMD will have flexibility to scale its memory interfaces depending on actual need, not because it adds cores into designs.

Based on unofficial information, AMD’s code-named “Summit Ridge” processors will sport eight “Zen” cores (i.e., two quad-core units), a dual-channel DDR3/DDR4 memory controller and a PCI Express 3.0 x16 controller.

AMD did not comment on the news-story.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: In the past couple of days we learned a couple of new things regarding topology and architecture of AMD's upcoming “Zen” processors. Unfortunately, we still have no idea about their performance…

The post More AMD ‘Zen’ CPU details emerge: quad-core units, inclusive cache, high-speed interconnects first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/more-amd-zen-cpu-details-emerge-quad-core-units-inclusive-cache-high-speed-interconnects/feed/ 3
Diagram of AMD’s ‘Zen’ CPU core leaks: six integer pipes, two 256-bit FPUs [UPDATED] https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/diagram-of-amds-zen-cpu-core-leaks-eight-cores-two-256-bit-fpus-confirmed/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/diagram-of-amds-zen-cpu-core-leaks-eight-cores-two-256-bit-fpus-confirmed/#comments Tue, 28 Apr 2015 01:46:47 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=246932 UPDATE: The original story stated that it described an implementation of an AMD microprocessor based on “Zen” micro-architecture. In fact, the story describes one “Zen” core. Although there are a lot of rumours about AMD’s next-generation code-named “Zen” microprocessors, there are not a lot of official or even semi-official details about the chips. On Monday an …

The post Diagram of AMD’s ‘Zen’ CPU core leaks: six integer pipes, two 256-bit FPUs [UPDATED] first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
UPDATE: The original story stated that it described an implementation of an AMD microprocessor based on “Zen” micro-architecture. In fact, the story describes one “Zen” core.

Although there are a lot of rumours about AMD’s next-generation code-named “Zen” microprocessors, there are not a lot of official or even semi-official details about the chips. On Monday an alleged AMD employee posted what appears to be a slide from AMD’s presentation containing a block diagram of one “Zen” microprocessor core.

The block diagram, which details a core of AMD’s “Summit Ridge” microprocessor, reveals that the execution unit will have six integer pipelines as well as two non-shared 256-bit floating point units (FPUs). Previously it was reported that the “Summit Ridge” chip has eight cores, dual-channel DDR4 memory controller as well as 95W thermal design power. The image was published in Planet3DNow.de forums by an anonymous poster.

amd_fusion_apu_chip_1

At present AMD’s FPU features two 128-bit FMAC (fused multiply–add capability) pipelines that can be unified into one large 256-bit-wide unit if one of the integer cores dispatches an AVX instruction. While this approach technically works for AVX and floating-point operations, it is not very efficient: AVX execution is dramatically slower on AMD’s chips compared to Intel’s chips.

amd_zen_official

Two 256-bit FPUs mean that AMD’s future microprocessors based on “Zen” micro-architecture will significantly improve performance in applications that use floating point units as well as heavily rely on AVX instructions. Moreover, theoretically, two 256-bit FPUs could support 512-bit AVX instructions.

AMD did not comment on the news-story.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: It looks like AMD plans to reveal the first official set of details about “Zen” at its financial analyst day next week. It is very likely that in addition to basic things about the new processors, the company will also disclose more details about the CPUs. Given the fact that AMD should already have the first working samples of “Summit Ridge”, it is possible that AMD will also demonstrate the chips in action.

The post Diagram of AMD’s ‘Zen’ CPU core leaks: six integer pipes, two 256-bit FPUs [UPDATED] first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/diagram-of-amds-zen-cpu-core-leaks-eight-cores-two-256-bit-fpus-confirmed/feed/ 15
32-core AMD Opteron to feature quad-die MCM design https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/32-core-amd-opteron-to-feature-quad-die-mcm-design/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/32-core-amd-opteron-to-feature-quad-die-mcm-design/#comments Fri, 24 Apr 2015 02:56:24 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=246478 Advanced Micro Devices will continue to use multi-chip-module design for its upcoming AMD Opteron processors. This should greatly help the company to reduce its development and manufacturing costs, but may affect performance of its central processing units for servers. The forthcoming AMD Opteron processors with up to 32 cores based on the “Zen” micro-architecture will …

The post 32-core AMD Opteron to feature quad-die MCM design first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Advanced Micro Devices will continue to use multi-chip-module design for its upcoming AMD Opteron processors. This should greatly help the company to reduce its development and manufacturing costs, but may affect performance of its central processing units for servers.

The forthcoming AMD Opteron processors with up to 32 cores based on the “Zen” micro-architecture will consist of up to four eight-core dies known as “Summit Ridge”, reports Fudzilla. Each “Summit Ridge” chip has a dual-channel DDR4 memory controller, therefore, the new Opteron chips will feature an eight-channel memory sub-system. Nowadays AMD uses two eight-core and six-core dies in order to make 16-core and 12-core Opteron processors, respectively. Other developers of server chips, such as IBM, also use MCM approach to build high-end server processors.

amd_opteron_6300_hand

Design of an advanced microprocessor that will be made using a FinFET process technology costs north from $150 million without the cost of photomasks needed for production. It makes a great sense for AMD to use “Summit Ridge” dies for desktops and workstations for its upcoming Opteron chips for servers. However, topology of the new AMD Opteron processors and dual-socket platforms will get very complex because of the multi-die MCM implementation.

Each “Zen” core in the new AMD Opteron systems will have to maintain cache coherency with other cores no matter where they are physically located. As a result, AMD will have to introduce an ultra-high-bandwidth interconnect technology for its upcoming chips that will be fast enough to maintain cache coherency and provide unified memory access to all processing cores.

AMD’s next-generation Opteron processors will feature a land grid array (LGA) packaging as well as up to 140W thermal design power.

AMD did not comment on the news-story.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: While it is logical for AMD to build its server chips using desktop-class dies, not everything looks that simple. At least on paper, the topology of AMD’s next-generation dual-socket server platform resembles that of an octa-socket platform based on the company’s HyperTransport technology from 2002-2003. That platform has never made it to the market, even though HyperTranport technology itself is still used (it was renamed to Direct Connect architecture at some point). Perhaps, Jim Keller, the lead architect behind AMD K8 (x86-64) and HyperTransport, decided to give a successor of coherent HyperTransport another try in an ultra-complex platform architecture? Everything is possible at this point, but it remains to be seen how high performance of such platform will be.

The post 32-core AMD Opteron to feature quad-die MCM design first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/32-core-amd-opteron-to-feature-quad-die-mcm-design/feed/ 6
Next-gen AMD Opteron chips to feature up to 32 cores https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/next-gen-amd-opteron-chips-to-feature-up-to-32-cores/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/next-gen-amd-opteron-chips-to-feature-up-to-32-cores/#comments Tue, 21 Apr 2015 01:09:40 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=245958 Advanced Micro Devices currently commands less than two per cent of the world’s server CPU market, but next year it plans to start recapturing its share from Intel Corp. with new Opteron microprocessors based on “Zen” micro-architecture. According to a media report, AMD’s next-gen server chips offer unprecedented amount of cores and should be pretty …

The post Next-gen AMD Opteron chips to feature up to 32 cores first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Advanced Micro Devices currently commands less than two per cent of the world’s server CPU market, but next year it plans to start recapturing its share from Intel Corp. with new Opteron microprocessors based on “Zen” micro-architecture. According to a media report, AMD’s next-gen server chips offer unprecedented amount of cores and should be pretty competitive.

AMD’s highest-performing Opteron microprocessors due next year will integrate 32 cores with simultaneous multithreading technology, according to a report from Fudzilla. Each core will feature 512KB L2 cache (16MB L2 cache in total) and the whole chip will also sport 64MB of unified L3 cache. The central processing unit is also projected to have eight DDR4 memory channels capable of handling 256GB of memory per channel.

amd_opteron_6300_g34

At present it is unclear whether the upcoming many-core AMD Opteron products will be monolithic, or will use multi-chip-module (MCM) design like today’s server processors from AMD.

The upcoming AMD Opteron processors will rely on brand-new platform with a new core-logic set. The chipset is projected to support PCI Express 3.0, Serial ATA, four 10Gb Ethernet controllers and so on.

AMD did not comment on the news-story.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: 32 core processors should offer loads of advantages for server workloads. Still, it remains to be seen what Intel plans to offer next year. Nowadays the highest-performing Intel Xeon processors carry 18 “Haswell” cores, but in 2016 the company will be able to increase that amount significantly thanks to transition to 14nm process technology.

The post Next-gen AMD Opteron chips to feature up to 32 cores first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/next-gen-amd-opteron-chips-to-feature-up-to-32-cores/feed/ 4
Samsung rumoured to consider buying Advanced Micro Devices https://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/samsung-rumoured-to-consider-buying-advanced-micro-devices/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/samsung-rumoured-to-consider-buying-advanced-micro-devices/#comments Thu, 26 Mar 2015 12:44:25 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=242035 Advanced Micro Devices faces hard times these days as sales of its central processing units and graphics processing units have been hitting new lows for many quarters. As a result, rumours about possible acquisitions of AMD resurrect. Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest maker of semiconductors, is considering to acquire Advanced Micro Devices to better compete …

The post Samsung rumoured to consider buying Advanced Micro Devices first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Advanced Micro Devices faces hard times these days as sales of its central processing units and graphics processing units have been hitting new lows for many quarters. As a result, rumours about possible acquisitions of AMD resurrect.

Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest maker of semiconductors, is considering to acquire Advanced Micro Devices to better compete against Apple, Intel Corp., Nvidia Corp., Qualcomm and other rivals, reports Hankooki. The takeover could be beneficial for both AMD and Samsung, but there are many roadblocks for the merger.

amd_headquarters

Samsung Electronics is one of the largest companies in the world with interests in many industries. The company has installed semiconductor production capacity of around one million 300mm wafers per month, which is considerably more than Intel and TSMC combined. In a bid to differentiate on the market of smartphones, PCs, wearable electronics and various emerging devices like smartglasses or virtual reality headsets, Samsung needs its own intellectual property, such as microprocessors, graphics processing units and so on. The company has around $56 billion in its pockets just for acquisitions, it can afford almost any fabless developer of chips.

Advanced Micro Devices has been trying to reinvent itself for years, but so far without a lot of luck. The company’s revenues have been decreasing steadily for years, just like research and development budgets. As a consequence, it gets increasingly hard for AMD to compete against Intel and Nvidia Corp., two of its arch-rivals on the markets of CPUs and GPUs.

amd_lone_star_campus

AMD licenses the x86 instruction set as well as a number of other vital microprocessor technologies from Intel. Under the terms of the cross-licensing agreement between the two companies, control over either companies cannot be changed. Once AMD or Intel is acquired by a third party, the pact is automatically terminated and the new owner will have to renegotiate it, or stop to make x86 or x86-64 central processing units (depending on which of the two is acquired).

It is not the first time when rumours about AMD acquisition by Samsung, Oracle and other potential buyers emerge. Earlier this year it transpired that Advanced Micro Devices could be acquired by Chinese BLX IC Design Corp. Then, it was reported that China’s Loongson Technology, a microprocessor manufacturer controlled by BLX IC Design, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Computing Technology, was set to make strategic investments in AMD’s technologies and product lines.

AMD and Samsung did not comment on the news-story.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: AMD has a lot of intellectual property that would fit Samsung perfectly. Unfortunately for the latter, to build x86 microprocessors it needs a license from Intel, which is something the company of Samsung’s size will hardly get. On the other hand, does Samsung need x86 at all? Clearly yes, if it wants to compete against Intel on the market of microprocessors for PCs and servers. But what if Samsung simply needs an excellent CPU and GPU development teams along with IP to create chips for its smartphones, tablets, wearables and so on? If this is the case, an ARM license is more than enough…

The post Samsung rumoured to consider buying Advanced Micro Devices first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/samsung-rumoured-to-consider-buying-advanced-micro-devices/feed/ 9
AMD cuts ‘Bulldozer’ instructions from ‘Zen’ processors https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-cuts-bulldozer-instructions-from-zen-processors/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-cuts-bulldozer-instructions-from-zen-processors/#comments Thu, 19 Mar 2015 03:37:05 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=240848 Advanced Micro Devices has been talking about development of its next-generation high-performance “Zen” architecture for months now, but so far it has not revealed any details about the chips officially. Nonetheless, thanks to a recent patch for Linux we have learnt one significant detail about “Zen”: it will not support many instructions found in the current-generation …

The post AMD cuts ‘Bulldozer’ instructions from ‘Zen’ processors first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Advanced Micro Devices has been talking about development of its next-generation high-performance “Zen” architecture for months now, but so far it has not revealed any details about the chips officially. Nonetheless, thanks to a recent patch for Linux we have learnt one significant detail about “Zen”: it will not support many instructions found in the current-generation processors.

AMD recently started to enable support of its forthcoming “Zen” microprocessors in Linux operating systems. While typically patches to Linux distributives do not reveal a lot of micro-architectural peculiarities of various central processing units, this time is a clear exception. AMD explicitly revealed in the description of the patch to the GNU Binutils package that “Zen”, its third-generation x86-64 architecture in its first iteration (znver1 – Zen, version 1), will not support TBM, FMA4, XOP and LWP instructions developed specifically for the “Bulldozer” family of micro-architectures.

Elimination of such instructions clearly points to the fact that AMD’s new micro-architecture is a complete far cry from “Bulldozer”. The company even decided to remove support of the “Bulldozer”-specific instructions to save transistors and die space for something more useful. It seems that AMD now considers “Bulldozer” a dead-end and does not want to support even promising instructions introduced in the recent iterations of the company’s micro-architectures.

amd_apu_beema_mullins_puma_jaguar_x86_fusion

While FMA4 and XOP could boost performance in gaming, HPC and multimedia applications, a promising thing that will be missed by numerous programmers is LWP, or lightweight profiling.

The lightweight profiling was developed to enable code to make dynamic and real-time decisions about how best to improve the performance of simultaneously running tasks, using techniques such as memory organization and code layout, with very little overhead. The LWP is a set of hardware features in AMD “Bulldozer” processors, which should be considered when designing applications.

AMD did not comment on the new-story.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: While it is sad to see many things go, it looks like “Zen” is so different from “Bulldozer” that it simply did not make sense to keep those instructions in the new processors. AMD probably believes that even without those instructions the new chips will be able to deliver competitive performance.

The post AMD cuts ‘Bulldozer’ instructions from ‘Zen’ processors first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-cuts-bulldozer-instructions-from-zen-processors/feed/ 8
AMD begins to enable ‘Zen’ processors support in Linux https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-begins-to-enable-zen-processor-architecture-support-in-linux/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-begins-to-enable-zen-processor-architecture-support-in-linux/#comments Wed, 18 Mar 2015 16:46:19 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=240791 Advanced Micro Devices has begun to add support of its upcoming microprocessors powered by “Zen” micro-architecture to Linux operating systems. The enablement of future chips in Linux confirms AMD’s plans to release such central processing units and even reveals some facts about their functionality. Unfortunately, addition of support does not indicate launch schedules anyhow. One …

The post AMD begins to enable ‘Zen’ processors support in Linux first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Advanced Micro Devices has begun to add support of its upcoming microprocessors powered by “Zen” micro-architecture to Linux operating systems. The enablement of future chips in Linux confirms AMD’s plans to release such central processing units and even reveals some facts about their functionality. Unfortunately, addition of support does not indicate launch schedules anyhow.

One of the milestones every processor passes before launch is its enablement in Linux operating systems. Since it is impossible to add support to an open-source OS confidentially, CPU developers have to do it publically, thus revealing essential information about their chips, such as supported instruction set, internal names, identifiers, etc.

Last week AMD published an “add znver1 processor” patch to the GNU Binutils package, reports Phoronix. In the coming weeks and months AMD will also add support of its “Zen” micro-architecture to GCC and LLVM/Clang compilers, the Linux kernel and so on.

AMD’s third-generation x86-64 architecture in its first iteration marked as “znver1” (Zen, version 1)* supports SMAP, RDSEED, SHA, XSAVEC, XSAVES, CLFLUSHOPT, ADCX as well as CLZERO instructions. At the same time, Zen no longer supports TBM, FMA4, XOP, LWP instructions.

amd_fusion_apu_chip_1

The instruction set architecture (ISA) extensions which support is added to the patch mainly concern various security features of modern x86 microprocessors as well as improve performance in cryptography and high-performance computing tasks:

  • SMAP – Supervisor Mode Access Prevention, a security feature first debuted in “Ivy Bridge” processors;
  • RDSEED – An addition to the AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) instructions known as Secure Key Instructions. First debuted in “Broadwell” microprocessors;
  • SHA – The family of seven new SSE based instructions that support performance acceleration of the Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) on x86 processors. Intel started to implement SHA instructions starting from its “Haswell” processors;
  • XSAVEC – Performs a full or partial save of processor state components to the XSAVE area located at the memory address specified by the destination operand. First debuted in “Broadwell” microprocessors;
  • ADCX – An instruction for improving performance of arbitrary-precision integer operations. Debuted in “Broadwell” processor along with ADOX instruction.

The list of new instructions supported by AMD’s “Zen” microprocessors is not full. Going forward the company will most likely release new patches for Linux with support for additional instructions. Furthermore, expect AMD to start releasing special whitepapers for software developers, explaining how to optimize their applications for the upcoming central processing units. Typically, such documents for programmers reveal possible configurations and micro-architecture peculiarities of unreleased chips. Actual target specifications are usually revealed in various documents for hardware and firmware developers.

The addition of “Zen” support to Linux operating systems means that the company is going to start distributing samples of its new processors to various software and hardware developers in the coming quarters.

AMD did not comment on the news-story.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: By adding support of “Zen to Linux AMD reveals the first official information about its upcoming family of microprocessors. We now know that the chips will support loads of features found in the “Haswell” and “Broadwell” processors from Intel, but will scrap some of AMD’s own ISA extensions.

*AMD calls “Bulldozer” micro-architecture its second-generation x86-64 architecture. The original “Bulldozer” is called “bdver1”, the “Piledriver” is “bdver2”, the “Steamroller” is “bdver3”, etc.

The post AMD begins to enable ‘Zen’ processors support in Linux first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-begins-to-enable-zen-processor-architecture-support-in-linux/feed/ 3
AMD: We will actively promote ‘Zen’ processors for server market https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-we-will-actively-promote-zen-processors-for-server-market/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-we-will-actively-promote-zen-processors-for-server-market/#comments Thu, 05 Mar 2015 03:24:44 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=238677 Advanced Micro Devices now commands only about 2 or 3 per cent of the server market because of various reasons and the company is not going to regain its positions with the current Opteron offerings. Nonetheless, the chip designer seems to pin a lot of hopes on its “Zen” micro-architecture and will actively try to …

The post AMD: We will actively promote ‘Zen’ processors for server market first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Advanced Micro Devices now commands only about 2 or 3 per cent of the server market because of various reasons and the company is not going to regain its positions with the current Opteron offerings. Nonetheless, the chip designer seems to pin a lot of hopes on its “Zen” micro-architecture and will actively try to re-enter the server market with its future chips.

“We are working very actively with our customers in the server business to introduce [Zen-based] part in the 2016 timeframe,” said Devinder Kumar at Morgan Stanley technology, media and telecom conference.

amd_opteron_chips

Back in February it was reported that AMD planned to release server microprocessors powered by the “Zen” micro-architecture first and only then unveil consumer versions of such chips. The company traditionally did so for many years, therefore, the approach is not exactly something new.

AMD understands server business pretty well since it was quite successful with its Opteron processors in mid-2000s. The company knows that it is impossible to gain share of server market by just dropping prices of central processing units, hence, AMD is working with industry partners in a bid to ensure that infrastructure for its chips is there when it is needed. Before launching new server CPUs, AMD and its allies need to design core-logic sets, mainboards, platforms, actual servers and many other things. The fact that AMD’s CFO mentions that means that the company is indeed preparing to release something which it expects to be competitive. Unfortunately, the CPU developer shares no exact plans or technical details about its upcoming projects.

“We know the server business earlier from our history, going back to the Opteron days; we know the x86, we know 64-bit and the [Zen] core will come in 2016, the new core for the traditional x86 server space and then revenue thereafter,” said Mr. Kumar. “But it is still a little while before we get there. But we will have a core then.”

amd_server-room_opteron

Earlier it was reported that the first CPU to use “Zen” for client PCs will be the code-named “Summit Ridge” chip. The processor is projected to integrate up to eight cores, a DDR4 memory controller, a PCI Express 3.0 controller and feature up to 95W thermal design power. It is likely that the central processing unit will be made using 14nm FinFET process technology by GlobalFoundries or Samsung Electronics. Based on unofficial information, AMD’s “Summit Ridge” processors will hit the market in the third quarter of 2016.

Although server chips powered by “Zen” micro-architecture are expected to hit the market earlier than desktop CPUs featuring the same technology, nothing is known about them. AMD could place two “Summit Ridge” dies one slice of substrate to get a 16-core microprocessor (like it does today with Opterons), or just create a monolithic 16-core die.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: When AMD was preparing to launch its Opteron processor in 2003, it released loads of details about the Opteron platforms as well as the HyperTransport technology in 2002. This time AMD does not reveal anything and generally remains mum, which is a bit alarming.

The post AMD: We will actively promote ‘Zen’ processors for server market first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-we-will-actively-promote-zen-processors-for-server-market/feed/ 6
AMD’s ‘Zen’ could sport Intel’s ‘Skylake’ features, new 512-bit FPU – rumours https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amds-zen-could-sport-intels-skylake-technologies-new-512-bit-fpu-rumours/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amds-zen-could-sport-intels-skylake-technologies-new-512-bit-fpu-rumours/#comments Sat, 21 Feb 2015 15:53:46 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=236912 Although microprocessors based on AMD’s next-generation high-performance micro-architecture code-named “Zen” are more than a year away, some details regarding the forthcoming chips and “Zen” in general are beginning to surface. The most recent rumours about the new architecture add some technical details and point to release schedule of the new chips. As reported, the first …

The post AMD’s ‘Zen’ could sport Intel’s ‘Skylake’ features, new 512-bit FPU – rumours first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Although microprocessors based on AMD’s next-generation high-performance micro-architecture code-named “Zen” are more than a year away, some details regarding the forthcoming chips and “Zen” in general are beginning to surface. The most recent rumours about the new architecture add some technical details and point to release schedule of the new chips.

As reported, the first central processing units to use “Zen” for client PCs will be the code-named “Summit Ridge” chip that is expected to feature up to eight cores, a DDR4 memory controller, a PCI Express 3.0 controller and up to 95W thermal design power. It is projected that the chip will be made using 14nm FinFET process technology by GlobalFoundries or Samsung Electronics. Based on unofficial information, AMD’s “Summit Ridge” processors will hit the market in the third quarter of 2016.

amd_fusion_apu_chip_1

Servers first

WccfTech reports citing its own sources that with “Zen” AMD will return to its traditional practice of introducing server processors powered by the latest micro-architectures first and then follow with chips for client PCs. There are no exact schedules given, but taking into account relatively slow ramp up of server processors and platforms by server makers, if AMD wants to find its new Opteron chips in 2016 servers in more or less significant quantities, it will have to introduce its new CPUs in the first half of the year.

amd_server-room

Since eight cores inside the “Summit Ridge” are not enough for modern servers, AMD will either continue to use multi-chip-module design for Opteron processors based on “Zen” architecture next year and onwards (to get a many-core CPU out of two multi-core dies), or will make a separate multi-core design specifically for servers. In fact, AMD has had a technology to build “native” 16-core Opteron processors featuring “Bulldozer”-class dual-core modules for quite a while, but it is unknown whether it will use it even for its forthcoming chips featuring the new micro-architecture.

amd_opteron_chips

Keeping in mind that actual x86 cores are not large and the fact that AMD will utilize 14nm FinFET process tech (albeit with 20nm BEOL interconnect flow and hence appropriate geometries) to make “Zen”-based products, it is possible that AMD will go for native many-core design for server processors if the cores are compact enough and the company finds this a viable and cost-effective solution.

“Skylake” instructions inside “Zen” point to a new FPU

The new micro-architecture from AMD promises to be very different from the company’s current-generation “Bulldozer”-class designs, but almost nothing is known about “Zen” outside of Advanced Micro Devices at present. Without providing any details, the aforementioned media report claims that the new architecture features certain technologies found in the upcoming Intel “Skylake” processors.

Keeping in mind that AMD cannot copy Intel’s designs or even parts of it (in accordance with its x86 cross-license agreement with Intel), do not expect AMD to incorporate any of Intel’s micro-architectural know-hows into its chips. However, what AMD can do is to implement any x86/x87 extensions, enhancements as well as various new instructions introduced by Intel in its central processing units. Intel can do the same too, just like it did with x86-64 more than a decade ago. While we do not know all peculiarities of “Skylake”, many official and semi-official revelations indicate that the new micro-architecture from Intel will bring support of such technologies as AVX 3.2 (512-bit instructions), SHA extensions (SHA-1 and SHA-256, secure hash algorithms), MPX (memory protection extensions), ADX (multi-precision add-carry instruction extensions) and other innovations. AMD has rights to incorporate all of them into its micro-architectures, which it will likely do eventually.

intel_cpu_mic_roadmap

If AMD proceeds with implementation of AVX 3.2 technology, it will have to develop a brand-new floating-point unit (FPU) to execute 512-bit instructions. At present AMD’s FPU features two 128-bit FMAC (fused multiply–add capability) pipelines that can be unified into one large 256-bit-wide unit if one of the integer cores dispatches an AVX instruction. While this approach technically works for AVX and floating-point operations (but AVX execution is dramatically slower on AMD's chips compared to Intel's chips), the AVX 2 further expands usage of most vector integer SSE and AVX instructions to 256 bits, which normally requires a new FPU. 512-bit AVX 3.2 instructions will entail further refinements of hardware, therefore, AMD’s “Zen”, if it supports AVX 3.2, will need an all-new FPU that will hardly resemble that of the “Bulldozer”. Basically, if AMD does not want to repeat the same mistakes it has done with “Bulldozer”, it will need a fully-fledged 512-bit FPU in “Zen” microprocessors. Otherwise, execution of 512-bit AVX 3.2 instructions will be awfully slow.

Summing up

The fact that AMD plans to first release Opteron chips featuring “Zen” cores and only then integrate its new cores into consumer products indicates that the company expects a lot from the micro-architecture which development is currently led by Jim Keller, a legendary CPU architect.

If AMD’s forthcoming “Zen” technology supports everything (or even the majority of) instructions introduced by Intel’s “Skylake” processors in the second half of next year, this will be a significant leap for AMD.

amd_apu_beema_mullins_puma_jaguar_x86_fusion

When it comes to performance, it is logical to expect a substantial increase of performance from AMD’s forthcoming microprocessors. At present we have no idea from where performance improvements will come from exactly. However, a new “fat” FPU in 2016 is not only a logical thing to expect, but rather a must have feature.

AMD did not comment on the news-story.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: Keep in mind that many of the things discussed here are speculations based on reports from unofficial sources. We do not know for sure that AMD plans to support AVX-512 in any form next year, we also have no idea which segments of the server market the company would like to address with its Opteron “Zen” processors first in 2016. All-in-all, take everything with a grain of salt.

The post AMD’s ‘Zen’ could sport Intel’s ‘Skylake’ features, new 512-bit FPU – rumours first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amds-zen-could-sport-intels-skylake-technologies-new-512-bit-fpu-rumours/feed/ 26
Analysts: It makes no sense to buy AMD, it seems right to invest in it https://www.kitguru.net/components/anton-shilov/analyst-it-makes-no-sense-to-buy-amd-but-it-seems-right-to-invest-in-it/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/anton-shilov/analyst-it-makes-no-sense-to-buy-amd-but-it-seems-right-to-invest-in-it/#comments Thu, 12 Feb 2015 01:14:44 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=235270 Rumours about takeover of Advanced Micro Devices surface pretty frequently and given the current financial woes of the company, it was only a matter of time before they emerge once again. But while it is unlikely that AMD will be purchased by any other company, it is possible that the company will get an investment …

The post Analysts: It makes no sense to buy AMD, it seems right to invest in it first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Rumours about takeover of Advanced Micro Devices surface pretty frequently and given the current financial woes of the company, it was only a matter of time before they emerge once again. But while it is unlikely that AMD will be purchased by any other company, it is possible that the company will get an investment from a third-party.

In the recent weeks a number of reports emerged claiming once again that Advanced Micro Devices could be acquired by Chinese BLX IC Design Corp. Various rumours about possible acquisition of AMD emerge rather regularly, but in most cases they are completely baseless since it is impossible to take over AMD and its key technologies. However, it looks like the new management of the company has found a way to get money from an external source without taking a loan or selling the company off.

amd_lone_star_campus

Since AMD licenses the x86 instruction set as well as a number of other crucially important technologies from Intel Corp., the control of AMD cannot be changed. Once it is, the cross-license agreement between AMD and Intel is automatically terminated and the new owner will have to renegotiate it, or lose the ability to make x86 chips. Therefore, it is almost impossible that AMD will be purchased by any company, including Chinese-government controlled BLX.

“Although BLX has partnered with AMD in the past, we believe such a takeover is highly unlikely,” wrote Christopher Danely, an analyst with Citigroup, in a note to clients, reports Tech Trader Daily. “Any company that acquires AMD would have to renegotiate the x86 cross-licensing agreement with Intel – a dealbreaker given Intel’s concerns over protecting its IP, in our view. In addition, trade restrictions from the U.S. government would likely prevent an outright takeover by a Chinese government-run entity, in our opinion.”

Without the x86 license and with a risk to run into roadblocks set up by the U.S. government, it simply makes no sense for anyone to acquire AMD.

amd_headquarters

But while it makes no sense to gain control of AMD, it is possible to buy a stake in the company. According to VRWorld, China’s Loongson Technology, a microprocessor manufacturer controlled by BLX IC Design, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Computing Technology, is set to make strategic investments in AMD’s technologies and product lines. Loongson is known for its Godson family of processors that use the MIPS architecture. Loongson has worked with AMD in the past and even incorporated some of AMD’s logic into its processors. Besides, the company has plenty of money, some say as much as $19 billion.

The Chinese chip designer could certainly provide AMD enough money to boost its research and development (R&D) capabilities. AMD’s R&D budget for this quarter will be around $200 million, which is a lot less than AMD has spent historically. Since the company’s sales are dropping, it will not be able to quickly boost R&D spending, which means a threat for its future and long-term survival.

What is completely unclear is why Loongson needs to invest in AMD. Perhaps, the Chinese chip company believes that AMD has potential to recapture a significant chunk of the PC processor market from Intel and/or design competitive application processors for mobile devices or Internet-of-Things applications. If AMD can create products and make money, its shareholders will benefit from it. However, knowing business approaches of Chinese companies, they are hardly interested in earning dividends or even sharing profits. What they want are technologies. Perhaps, AMD could license them graphics processing technologies, CPU building blocks like high-speed interconnections or certain proprietary instructions.

AMD and Loongson did not comment on the news-story.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: While it is possible that Loongson only wants to license certain intellectual property from AMD in exchange for investments, it is also possible that we are talking about a strategic collaboration. We are not sure how it could work out, but if a deal between AMD and Loongson is signed, it will likely be a game changer in many ways.

The post Analysts: It makes no sense to buy AMD, it seems right to invest in it first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/anton-shilov/analyst-it-makes-no-sense-to-buy-amd-but-it-seems-right-to-invest-in-it/feed/ 5
AMD readies Zen-based ‘Summit Ridge’ microprocessors https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-readies-zen-based-summit-ridge-microprocessors/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-readies-zen-based-summit-ridge-microprocessors/#comments Tue, 27 Jan 2015 04:56:46 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=232565 Advanced Micro Devices is working on a new family of microprocessors code-named “Summit Ridge”. The new chips will be based on the new high-performance micro-architecture known as “Zen” and will be made using 14nm fabrication process. At present not a lot of information is known about the new family of central processing units (CPU). Sweclockers …

The post AMD readies Zen-based ‘Summit Ridge’ microprocessors first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Advanced Micro Devices is working on a new family of microprocessors code-named “Summit Ridge”. The new chips will be based on the new high-performance micro-architecture known as “Zen” and will be made using 14nm fabrication process.

At present not a lot of information is known about the new family of central processing units (CPU). Sweclockers reports that the new “Summit Ridge” chips will feature up to eight cores, a DDR4 memory controller, a PCI Express 3.0 controller and up to 95W thermal design power. The new microprocessors will use FM3 form-factor and will naturally require new mainboards.

It is expected that AMD will launch its new chips in the third quarter of 2016. They will be made using 14nm FinFET process technology, which means that they will be manufactured by GlobalFoundries or Samsung Electronics.

amd_fusion_apu_chip_1

The “Summit Ridge” processors will probably be sold under the FX brand. In addition, AMD will likely offer Opteron chips with the new Zen micro-architecture. It is unclear when AMD intends to introduce accelerated processing units featuring Zen cores.

Thanks to the new micro-architecture and thin process technology, the new “Summit Ridge” microprocessors will offer significant performance improvement compared to existing FX and Opteron chips.

AMD did not comment on the news-story.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: Keeping in mind that AMD’s “Summit Ridge” processors are more than a year away, it is highly likely that there are tough times ahead of the company. 

The post AMD readies Zen-based ‘Summit Ridge’ microprocessors first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-readies-zen-based-summit-ridge-microprocessors/feed/ 2
AMD: x86 will remain the central server micro-architecture https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-x86-will-remain-the-main-server-micro-architecture-going-forward/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-x86-will-remain-the-main-server-micro-architecture-going-forward/#comments Wed, 21 Jan 2015 22:02:15 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=231882 Even though Advanced Micro Devices and a number of other chip designers expect ARM architecture to gain a significant part of the server market in the coming years, even AMD itself admits that the good-old x86 will remain the architecture of choice for the vast majority of servers in the future. This is exactly why …

The post AMD: x86 will remain the central server micro-architecture first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Even though Advanced Micro Devices and a number of other chip designers expect ARM architecture to gain a significant part of the server market in the coming years, even AMD itself admits that the good-old x86 will remain the architecture of choice for the vast majority of servers in the future. This is exactly why AMD is developing its all-new high-performance x86 architecture known as “Zen”.

“The majority of the [server] market will still be x86 for quite some time because of all of the legacy applications that exist,” said Lisa Su, chief executive officer of AMD, during a conference call with investors and financial analysts. “ARM offers a new opportunity in the dense server markets, and so we continue to look at that as a growth opportunity where new business will grow.”

amd_opteron_6300_hand

Not only all server applications are designed for x86 microprocessors, but also server chips need to offer performance, appropriate feature-set as well as input/output capabilities, the thing that many ARM-based chips just do not offer or support. AMD will integrate server-class capabilities into its code-named “K12” ARMv8-compatible cores that are in development now.

“If you look at fundamentally what is important to those server customers, it is about knowledge of the enterprise, it is about high performance compute capability, reliability,” said the head of AMD. “Those are things that AMD is uniquely capable of.”

amd_hp_servers

At present AMD’s engineers develop code-named “Zen” high-performance x86 micro-architecture that will power the company’s upcoming Opteron and FX central processing units as well as future accelerated processing units. AMD has already said that its partners are tremendously interested in competitive x86 server chips from the company. Nowadays Intel Corp. commands 98 per cent of the server chips market and therefore can dictate prices of CPUs to server makers. Given that x86 servers are not going anywhere any time soon and manufacturers of servers need processors, they need competitive offerings from AMD in order not to depend on Intel.

“Our server partners have increasingly told us they want to see AMD playing a much larger role in this business,” explained Ms. Su. “Although the design cycle is longer, this is an important vector for long-term revenue and margin expansion, and we are designing new x86 and ARM-based leadership products for this space, powered by our next-generation ARM and x86 cores.”

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: Development of competitive micro-architectures for servers is an important thing for success. However, what is even more important is consistent introduction of new offerings. Intel unveils new Xeon central processing units every year. By contrast, AMD has not introduced any new Opteron CPUs for high-performance servers since 2012. The company’s current-gen Opteron chips still feature Piledriver micro-architecture that is over two years old.

The post AMD: x86 will remain the central server micro-architecture first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-x86-will-remain-the-main-server-micro-architecture-going-forward/feed/ 3
AMD could power yet another gaming device – chief financial officer https://www.kitguru.net/desktop-pc/anton-shilov/amd-could-power-yet-another-gaming-device-chief-financial-officer/ https://www.kitguru.net/desktop-pc/anton-shilov/amd-could-power-yet-another-gaming-device-chief-financial-officer/#comments Wed, 10 Dec 2014 20:32:12 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=225764 An accelerated processing unit from Advanced Micro Devices could power yet another gaming device, chief financial officer of the company implied this week. The high-ranking executive did not provide any details, but given the revenue opportunities the company outlined with the deal several weeks ago, we are talking about a high-volume device. AMD announced two …

The post AMD could power yet another gaming device – chief financial officer first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
An accelerated processing unit from Advanced Micro Devices could power yet another gaming device, chief financial officer of the company implied this week. The high-ranking executive did not provide any details, but given the revenue opportunities the company outlined with the deal several weeks ago, we are talking about a high-volume device.

AMD announced two new semi-custom design wins back in October. The design wins are expected to bring the company combined total lifetime revenue of approximately $1 billion over approximately three years starting 2016. Previously the company revealed that both semi-custom chips would integrate Radeon graphics, one would be based on ARM architecture, whereas another one would feature x86 general-purpose cores. Apparently, one of the semi-custom APUs is projected to power a “beyond gaming device”, which means that another will power a device that could fit into the “gaming” category, something AMD denied previously.

“I will say that one [design win] is x86 and [another] is ARM, and at least one will [be] beyond gaming, right,” said Devinder Kumar, chief financial officer of AMD, at the Raymond James Financial technology conference. “But that is about as much as you going to get out me today. From the standpoint [of being] fair to [customers], it is their product, and they launch it. They are going to announce it and then […] you will find out that it is AMD’s APU that is being used in those products.”

amd-embedded-processors-chip-artwork amd_research_radeon_pc_fusion

AMD sold its semi-custom APUs for Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4 for around $100 per chip early in the lifecycle, according to IHS iSuppli. Eventually the price of the system-on-chips should drop, so the average selling price of the SoCs throughout their lifetime will be considerably lower than the initial price.

Given that the company expects to earn a billion of dollars over three years by selling the chips announced in October, it projects to sell around 14 – 15 million of SoCs over three years, assuming that the average price of the chips will be around $70. Given that only one device will power a device that could fit into gaming category, it is unlikely that AMD is talking about a new game console since they are sold in larger quantities and over longer periods of time.

It remains to be seen what exactly AMD will power with its forthcoming semi-custom APUs, but given three years active product lifecycle, the company could be talking about some kind of a media centre with gaming capabilities.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: While we cannot guess what kind of products AMD plans to roll-out out in the coming years, it is very surprising how much AMD is talking about its 2016 product lineup, not its plans for next year. It is tremendously interesting to know what are the reasons for that…

The post AMD could power yet another gaming device – chief financial officer first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/desktop-pc/anton-shilov/amd-could-power-yet-another-gaming-device-chief-financial-officer/feed/ 4
AMD: We have bright future in 2016 and ahead https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-we-have-bright-future-in-2016-and-ahead/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-we-have-bright-future-in-2016-and-ahead/#comments Wed, 10 Dec 2014 02:07:17 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=225566 Advanced Micro Devices may not have a clear product roadmap for 2015, when it essentially will continue selling current-generation products and will not increase performance of its chips significantly. Nonetheless, the company pins many hopes on its 2016 lineup when it will have a number of new products that are expected to be considerably more …

The post AMD: We have bright future in 2016 and ahead first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Advanced Micro Devices may not have a clear product roadmap for 2015, when it essentially will continue selling current-generation products and will not increase performance of its chips significantly. Nonetheless, the company pins many hopes on its 2016 lineup when it will have a number of new products that are expected to be considerably more competitive compared to those available today or in 2015.

In 2016 AMD plans to introduce two new general-purpose microprocessor architectures: K12 high-performance ARMv8-A compatible architecture that is expected to significantly strengthen AMD’s positions on the market of ARM servers; as well as Zen high-performance x86 micro-architecture that is projected to return AMD to high-performance desktops and servers. Both micro-architectures are expected to play a tremendously important role in AMD’s future. The company seems to be optimistic about its competitive positions in 2016 and onwards.

“What I am excited about going forward is that you go into 2016 and beyond,” said Mark Papermaster, chief technology officer of AMD, at Barclays Global Technology Conference. “You will start to see the benefit of those new IPs, which have a long lead-time development. So new CPU cores, new graphics solutions with yet again much higher performance per watt, we will continue our pace going forward and again it is going to be an AMD about getting great products, with a very, very deep partnership with our customers.”

amd_fusion_apu_chip_1

Unfortunately, it is completely unknown when exactly AMD introduces its new products based on Zen and K12 architectures. Traditionally the company unveils new accelerated processing units early in the year, but the situation may be different with new-generation products.

AMD’s products based on K12 and Zen micro-architectures are expected to be made using 14nm FinFET fabrication process at GlobalFoundries and 16nm FinFET manufacturing technology at TSMC. One of the things to keep in mind about AMD’s manufacturing from 2015 and later is that it will mostly use general-purpose process technologies. At present AMD’s A-series “Kaveri” chips are made using 28SHP (28nm super high-performance) fabrication technology that was specifically developed for AMD. Going forward AMD plans to use only default versions of manufacturing processes in order to unify its IP building blocks. While this will lower AMD’s expenses, clock-rate potential of its chips will be lower.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: What is completely unknown is what kind of new products AMD plans to offer. While we can be sure about hybrid accelerated processing units with general purpose ARM or x86 cores as well as graphics processing hardware, it is unknown whether AMD will return to the market of “classic” desktop microprocessors without integrated graphics.

The post AMD: We have bright future in 2016 and ahead first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-we-have-bright-future-in-2016-and-ahead/feed/ 6
AMD: 50% of revenue will come from non-PC sector by late 2015 https://www.kitguru.net/components/anton-shilov/amd-50-of-revenue-will-come-from-non-pc-sector-by-late-2015/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/anton-shilov/amd-50-of-revenue-will-come-from-non-pc-sector-by-late-2015/#comments Thu, 04 Dec 2014 22:15:12 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=224926 In the coming quarters Advanced Micro Devices will continue to shift its focus from personal computers to other devices. By the end of 2015 about half of the company’s revenue will come from products that are not related to personal computers, in line with the company’s plans. For many years Advanced Micro Devices earned its …

The post AMD: 50% of revenue will come from non-PC sector by late 2015 first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
In the coming quarters Advanced Micro Devices will continue to shift its focus from personal computers to other devices. By the end of 2015 about half of the company’s revenue will come from products that are not related to personal computers, in line with the company’s plans.

For many years Advanced Micro Devices earned its revenue by selling microprocessors and, more recently, graphics processing units and core-logic sets for personal computers. However, it became increasingly hard for AMD to maintain its revenue in the recent years due to tougher competition, shrinking PC market and inability to address high-end of the desktop and server markets with its central processing units. As a result, the company decided to change its strategy and shift its focus to different markets where competition is not that strong, but which present opportunities for AMD.

At some point AMD proclaimed a goal to increase the share of its non-PC business to around 50 percent of the corporate revenue. Apparently, the company is on-track to derive half of its sales from high-growth businesses by the end of 2015.

“Our next target point is by the time we get to the end of 2015 to have at least 50 per cent of our business coming from the non-PC, non-traditional, sector, and then we will see what happens after that,” said Devinder Kumar, chief financial officer of Advanced Micro Devices, during his presentation at the Credit Suisse 18th Annual Technology Conference.

amd_revenue_projection

In the third quarter of fiscal 2014 the company earned $1.43 billion, of which $781 million (54.6 per cent) came from its computing and graphics (CG) segment business, whereas $648 million (45.4 per cent) came from its enterprise, embedded and semi-custom (EESC) system-on-chip business unit. Given that the EESC includes sales of Opteron processors for servers and the fact that Microsoft Corp. and Sony Corp. increase purchases of console chips in the Q3, it is likely that the share of non-PC products in AMD’s revenue should approach 40 per cent this year.

At present, semi-custom system-on-chips for Microsoft Xbox One as well as Sony PlayStation 4 game consoles account for a significant chunk of AMD’s EESC business. Back in October AMD announced two more semi-custom design wins, which will bring the company combined total lifetime revenue of approximately $1 billion over approximately three years starting 2016. According to AMD, these new semi-custom SoCs are not for game consoles or similar devices.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: The main problem for AMD is not that it is increasing the share of the EESC business in its revenue, but the fact that sales of its microprocessors and graphics processors are dropping very fast (which is a reason why the share of EESC is growing). The company is on-track to report its third consecutive year-over-year revenue decline for FY2014 in early 2015.

The post AMD: 50% of revenue will come from non-PC sector by late 2015 first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/anton-shilov/amd-50-of-revenue-will-come-from-non-pc-sector-by-late-2015/feed/ 5
AMD to boost energy efficiency of APUs by 25 times by 2020 https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-boost-energy-efficiency-of-apus-by-25-times-by-2020/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-boost-energy-efficiency-of-apus-by-25-times-by-2020/#comments Sat, 29 Nov 2014 15:35:28 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=224135 Advanced Micro Devices recently set a goal to improve energy efficiency of its accelerated processing units by 25 times by 2020. To achieve this goal, AMD will have to outpace historical energy efficiency trend by over 70 per cent, but the company claims it knows what to do and even outlined a roadmap about features …

The post AMD to boost energy efficiency of APUs by 25 times by 2020 first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Advanced Micro Devices recently set a goal to improve energy efficiency of its accelerated processing units by 25 times by 2020. To achieve this goal, AMD will have to outpace historical energy efficiency trend by over 70 per cent, but the company claims it knows what to do and even outlined a roadmap about features it needs to implement.

There are several trends in the personal computing industry (note that PCs today are largely mobile PCs in different form-factors). First, devices need to get thinner, slimmer and lighter. Second, devices need to gain battery life. Third, user interfaces need to get more intuitive and user friendly. Fourth, overall performance and feature-set of devices need to improve. While the first two trends require consistent decrease of power consumption by PC components, another two require increase of compute performance. Unfortunately, it is impossible to improve processing speed at a rapid pace and lower power consumption significantly at the same time, which is why developers of devices and their components have to balance between the two.

amd_energy_efficiency

When it comes to compute units, the balance between the amount of processing work they can do and their power consumption is called energy efficiency. The general term itself is very broad, abstract and does not exactly consider use cases. For example, if a 35W notebook processor offers two times higher performance than a 35W processor released a year ago, one could say that its energy efficiency improved by two times, but the problem is that 35W processors no longer fit into modern notebooks. As a result, in the real world one has to find ways to reduce power consumption slowly while gradually improving compute performance. In many cases, chip designers take step-by-step approach and focus on either performance or power consumption.

amd_energy_efficiency_1

Historically power consumption and performance (and the balance between the two, energy efficiency) were determined by manufacturing technologies, micro architectural peculiarities as well as various hardware tweaks. For a number of years now AMD has been saying that in order to improve energy efficiency going forward, software needs to use the right hardware for particular tasks. Paralleled tasks need to be computed on highly parallel GPU cores (since it takes them less time to get the work done, they also consume lower amount of energy than genera-purpose cores), whereas serial tasks have to be performed on general-purpose CPU cores. AMD believes that as software starts to use heterogeneous processing capabilities of modern processing units through OpenCL application programming interface, energy efficiency of PCs will improve over time.

amd_energy_efficiency_6

But while AMD pins a lot of hopes on its accelerated processing units and future software, it does not plan to give up improvements on the hardware level. Among the things AMD intends to implement in its next-generation APUs and CPUs are integrated voltage regulation, ability to scale voltage per every part of a chip, inter-frame power gating, voltage adaptive operation and so on, according to a presentation by the company. Among other things, AMD proposes to dynamically boost performance in certain applications to get the job done quicker and save power on the system level. At the same time, AMD plans to implement an intelligent technology that does prevents dynamic increase of clock-rates for apps that do not benefit significantly from higher frequencies. In general, AMD intends to enable its chips to fine-tune their performance based on workload and environment contexts.

amd_energy_efficiency_5

It should be noted that reduced power consumption is only a part of the equation in the energy efficiency metrics. Performance is an important thing since low-performance chips will not able to compute next-generation workloads. Therefore, it is tremendously important that AMD's microprocessors based on the code-named “Xen” (x86) and “K12” (ARMv8) micro-architectures deliver higher performance compared to today's general-purpose cores; it is equally important that AMD's future graphics processing units also deliver significantly better performance than today's GPUs. Regrettably, AMD said no word about how it plans to increase performance of its central processing and graphics processing units or, at least, what kind of increases should we expect.

Traditionally, AMD sets goals, but does not reveal exact plans. It is unknown which technologies will be incorporated into next-generation Carrizo processor and which will be integrated into its successors. The only thing we do know is that AMD has a technology roadmap for many years to come and that plan will be gradually executed.

amd_energy_efficiency_4 amd_energy_efficiency_3 amd_energy_efficiency_2

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: While AMD sets pretty ambitious goals in terms of improving energy efficiency of its platforms, one should keep in mind that a lot of things depend on third-party PC components, software, workloads and use scenarios. As a result, expect AMD (and others’) compute platforms to gain energy efficiency going forward, it is just a natural process. Still, when it comes to commercial products, they need to hit actual performance and power consumption targets to be successful, not just feature abstract energy efficiency.

The post AMD to boost energy efficiency of APUs by 25 times by 2020 first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-boost-energy-efficiency-of-apus-by-25-times-by-2020/feed/ 22
AMD delays financial day event as it rethinks its roadmap https://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/amd-delays-financial-day-event-as-it-rethinks-its-roadmap/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/amd-delays-financial-day-event-as-it-rethinks-its-roadmap/#comments Wed, 26 Nov 2014 02:56:18 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=223526 Advanced Micro Devices traditionally holds its Financial Day for investors and financial analysts in November, just like Intel Corp. However, it will not host the event this year as it is reshaping its roadmap and reconsiders its goals going forward. A spokesperson for AMD has confirmed KitGuru that the company will not host its Financial …

The post AMD delays financial day event as it rethinks its roadmap first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Advanced Micro Devices traditionally holds its Financial Day for investors and financial analysts in November, just like Intel Corp. However, it will not host the event this year as it is reshaping its roadmap and reconsiders its goals going forward.

A spokesperson for AMD has confirmed KitGuru that the company will not host its Financial Day this year. Traditionally the chipmaker reveals its roadmap and future plans at the event, but as a result of the fact that it will delay the Financial Day to next year it will not unveil any details concerning its future products other than those it revealed last week.

AMD already delayed its Financial Day event in 2011, when Rory Read became chief executive officer in August and began to reconsider the company’s plans and strategy. As a result the company simply had nothing to present in November.

Given that AMD recently appointed Lisa Su on the position of chief executive officer, it is obvious that the company is again reconsidering its roadmap, strategies and product plans. At present, Ms. Su and her new team are shaping AMD’s short-term and long-term roadmaps as well as rethinking the future of the company in general.

amd_headquarters

For example, earlier this week it transpired that AMD decided not to introduce any new system-on-chips for tablets next year, but will continue to rely on the code-named Mullins accelerated processing unit for Microsoft Windows-powered slates. Since the company’s tablet chips have never been popular, it makes no sense to invest in the segment.

In addition, AMD signed a chipset development agreement with Asmedia Technology this week. While core-logic sets no longer play a key role in PC performance and functionality, they remain a vital piece of PC platform. As a result, the agreement clearly affects the future of AMD and its products.

One of the key things that Dr. Su will have to do is to make AMD profitable again, something that her predecessor Rory Read has not managed to do. Given technical background of Lisa Su, expect her to cease or investments in non-growing low-margin product areas while increasing spending on products that either provide good margins (e.g., high-end graphics processors) or promise to enable stable revenue streams (e.g. SoCs for game consoles).

While the whole picture of the future AMD will be revealed only in the coming months, it is pretty obvious that the company will continue to invest in development of fundamental technologies, including high-performance x86 and ARM cores as well as Radeon graphics processing units. The question is whether AMD will have enough money to design competitive products.

AMD did not reveal when does it plan to hold its Financial Day next year, but it is likely that the company will host an event for financial community in January or February.

AMD did not formally confirm any changes in its 2015 roadmap (which remains confidential).

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: In general, Lisa Su will unlikely make radical changes at AMD. The new CEO will not cease development of desktop microprocessors, but will rather try to optimize the company’s product line further even despite possible market share losses. In general, the details about the plans are very important, but precise plans is something that AMD simply does not have at the moment.

The post AMD delays financial day event as it rethinks its roadmap first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/amd-delays-financial-day-event-as-it-rethinks-its-roadmap/feed/ 3
New chief exec of AMD to visit China, Taiwan to discuss future plans https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/new-chief-exec-of-amd-to-visit-china-taiwan-to-discuss-future-plans/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/new-chief-exec-of-amd-to-visit-china-taiwan-to-discuss-future-plans/#comments Wed, 29 Oct 2014 04:29:50 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=219076 Lisa Su, the recently appointed chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices, plans to visit China and Taiwan to discuss future plans with the company’s partners. It is highly likely that Ms. Su will update the company’s allies in the southeast Asia regarding her vision of the company’s future and possible changes in the roadmap. Among …

The post New chief exec of AMD to visit China, Taiwan to discuss future plans first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Lisa Su, the recently appointed chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices, plans to visit China and Taiwan to discuss future plans with the company’s partners. It is highly likely that Ms. Su will update the company’s allies in the southeast Asia regarding her vision of the company’s future and possible changes in the roadmap.

Among the companies that the new CEO of AMD plans to visit DigiTimes mentions Acer Group, Asustek Computer, Lenovo Group and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., though, the list is probably a lot longer and includes other partners of AMD as well. During the meetings Dr. Su is expected to reveal her vision regarding AMD’s future products as well as the latest revision of the company’s roadmap.

Southeast Asia and Japan and key markets for AMD. Last year AMD earned 75 per cent of its revenue in countries like China, Singapore, Japan and other. Only about 25 per cent of AMD’s revenue of $5.299 billion was earned in Europe and the U.S.

amd_lisa_su_

It is rumoured that in a bid to improve its relationships with Asustek Computer AMD outsourced development of its core-logic sets to Asmedia, a subsidiary of Asus. Therefore, AMD should now share all aspects of its future plans with the world’s largest maker of mainboards.

Among other things, the chief executive of AMD could discuss future products based on the high-performance “Excavator” and “Zen” x86 micro-architectures due in 2015 and 2016, respectively; next-generation Radeon graphics adapters powered by the GCN 1.2 architecture; forthcoming Skybridge processors featuring ARM or x86 cores as well as the company's first own implementation of the ARMv8-A architecture code-named “K12”

AMD did not comment on the news-story.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: While it is natural for the new CEO of AMD to visit close partners of the company, it would be really interesting to see how significantly did AMD’s roadmap change after Ms. Su took the reins this month.

The post New chief exec of AMD to visit China, Taiwan to discuss future plans first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/new-chief-exec-of-amd-to-visit-china-taiwan-to-discuss-future-plans/feed/ 1
AMD hires former exec from Dell to head enterprise, embedded, semi-custom businesses https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/dell-hires-former-exec-from-dell-to-head-enterprise-embedded-semi-custom-businesses/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/dell-hires-former-exec-from-dell-to-head-enterprise-embedded-semi-custom-businesses/#comments Tue, 28 Oct 2014 02:23:49 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=218777 Advanced Micro Devices on Monday announced that Forrest Norrod, a former vice president and general manager of Dell’s server business, has joined the company as senior vice president and general manager of AMD’s enterprise, embedded and semi-custom (EESC) business group. “Forrest is an industry veteran whose strong track record of establishing and growing businesses strengthens …

The post AMD hires former exec from Dell to head enterprise, embedded, semi-custom businesses first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Advanced Micro Devices on Monday announced that Forrest Norrod, a former vice president and general manager of Dell’s server business, has joined the company as senior vice president and general manager of AMD’s enterprise, embedded and semi-custom (EESC) business group.

“Forrest is an industry veteran whose strong track record of establishing and growing businesses strengthens our leadership team,” said Lisa Su, chief executive officer of AMD. “Forrest’s unique combination of engineering, business management and technical expertise at both the chip and system level make him ideally suited to lead AMD into an expanded set of markets where our differentiated technology assets provide a competitive advantage.”

Mr. Norrod will be responsible for managing all aspects of strategy, business management, engineering, and sales for AMD’s EESC business. Keeping in mind that at present AMD does not have competitive solutions for high-performance enterprise servers, the new executive will have, among other things, promote solutions for low-power servers, including Opteron processors based on ARM architecture.

amd_opteron_6300_g34

It is interesting to note that earlier this year Forrest Norrod was not exactly a fan of micro-servers. In an interview he said that he was not sure about the future of ARM-based servers because software vendors and data-center owners had not made decisions to support and use low-power server chips. As it appears, among other things, Mr. Norrod will have to convince server software developers to support ARM.

“The book's not written yet,” said Mr. Norrod in an interview. “It is not clear. If end-user demand is there, we can certainly fill it. […] It's always going to come down to software. […] There is still a brutal, brutal competition among those guys for what will be a small market at the onset. The battle will be to demonstrate the value of ARM. Is it large enough against x86 [to convince organizations] to support that second instruction set in the data center? We'll have a pretty good idea how it settles out by the middle of 2016.”

It is noteworthy that Forrest Norrod is not the first server executive from Dell hired by AMD to oversee its servers business. Back in 2003 AMD hired Patrick Patla, a former server executive from Dell and DEC. Mr. Patla helped to make Opteron popular among server makers. He left AMD for Samsung in 2012.

Prior to Dell, Mr. Norrod ran the integrated x86 CPU business at Cyrix and National Semiconductor.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: While it is definitely nice to see a new leader at AMD, it should be kept in mind that he will have to sell hardware that is significantly behind competition or products that have not become popular on the market yet. As a result, do not expect AMD’s server business to thrive because of Mr. Norrod till 2016, when AMD is expected to roll-out all-new Opteron chips based on the new micro-architecture known as Zen (or Xen?) and ARM servers finally take off (or not).

The post AMD hires former exec from Dell to head enterprise, embedded, semi-custom businesses first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/dell-hires-former-exec-from-dell-to-head-enterprise-embedded-semi-custom-businesses/feed/ 2
AMD’s Lisa Su: high-end ‘Zen’ x86 cores set to be available in 2016 https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amds-lisa-su-expects-high-end-zen-x86-cores-set-to-be-available-in-2016/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amds-lisa-su-expects-high-end-zen-x86-cores-set-to-be-available-in-2016/#comments Fri, 17 Oct 2014 22:59:32 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=217345 Lisa Su, the new chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices, has reiterated plans to introduce all-new server class processors based on the new high-performance x86 micro-architecture within the “next couple of years”. “From where we are today, our [server] product portfolio in x86 is several years old, and we are certainly looking at updating …

The post AMD’s Lisa Su: high-end ‘Zen’ x86 cores set to be available in 2016 first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Lisa Su, the new chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices, has reiterated plans to introduce all-new server class processors based on the new high-performance x86 micro-architecture within the “next couple of years”.

“From where we are today, our [server] product portfolio in x86 is several years old, and we are certainly looking at updating that over the next couple of years,” said Lisa Su during a conference call with investors and financial analysts.

Dr. Su seems to fully admit that AMD’s current-generation Opteron microprocessors based on the Piledriver micro-architecture (first introduced in 2012) are completely outdated and cannot really compete against offerings from Intel Corp. Still, Lisa Su believes that even before 2016 AMD will be able to address dense-servers/micro-servers with its low-power x86/ARM-based offerings.

“As we look at the opportunity in server, particularly in dense server, there's an opportunity for both x86 and ARM, and so we are going after the newer markets in server versus some of the traditional enterprise,” said Dr. Su.

amd_kaveri_chip

It is not the first time when AMD implies that its next-generation high-performance x86 micro-architecture code-named Zen will materialize in 2016. However, the reiteration of the plan from the new CEO seems to be an important event since it means that, at least now, the new head of the company believes in AMD’s ability to create a competitive high-performance x86 micro-architecture.

The only thing currently known about AMD’s Zen is that it will drop clustered multi-thread (CMT) design in favour of more traditional simultaneous multi-threaded (SMT) design. This may result in decrease of the amount of cores inside AMD’s processors, but will increase their efficiency. Jim Keller, who led the development of AMD’s ultra-successful Athlon 64 and Opteron (K8) processors in the early 2000s, heads the team that designs AMD’s next-generation Zen micro-architecture.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: AMD (re)hired Jim Keller back in August, 2012. Assuming that the work on the new Zen micro-architecture started in late 2012 and the company is on-track to deliver actual products based on Zen in 2016, it is logical to expect mentions about the Zen micro-architecture in various materials for software designers in the coming months. Stay tuned!

The post AMD’s Lisa Su: high-end ‘Zen’ x86 cores set to be available in 2016 first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amds-lisa-su-expects-high-end-zen-x86-cores-set-to-be-available-in-2016/feed/ 7
AMD: ‘Bulldozer’ was not a game-changer, but next-gen ‘Zen’ will be https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-bulldozer-was-not-a-game-changer-but-next-gen-zen-x86-core-will-be/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-bulldozer-was-not-a-game-changer-but-next-gen-zen-x86-core-will-be/#comments Thu, 11 Sep 2014 04:46:42 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=211240 Advanced Micro Devices on Wednesday confirmed that it is developing an all-new high-performance x86 micro-architecture code-named “Zen”. Rory Read, chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices, admitted that the current-generation “Bulldozer” micro-architectures could not improve AMD’s positions on the market of central processing units, so, at present AMD pins hopes on the next-gen x86 micro-architecture. He …

The post AMD: ‘Bulldozer’ was not a game-changer, but next-gen ‘Zen’ will be first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Advanced Micro Devices on Wednesday confirmed that it is developing an all-new high-performance x86 micro-architecture code-named “Zen”. Rory Read, chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices, admitted that the current-generation “Bulldozer” micro-architectures could not improve AMD’s positions on the market of central processing units, so, at present AMD pins hopes on the next-gen x86 micro-architecture. He also said that the company will remain on the market of x86 server chips.

“Everyone knows that Bulldozer was not the game changing part when it was introduced three years ago,” said Rory Read at Deutsche Bank 2014 Technology Conference. “We have to live with that for four years. But [for] Zen, K12, we went out and got Jim Keller, we went out and got Raja Koduri from Apple, Mark Papermaster, Lisa Su. We have built and are building now next generation graphics and compute technology that customers are very interested in.”

Nothing particular is known about the “Zen” and the “K12” micro-architectures except the fact that both are developed by teams headed by Jim Keller, who led the development of AMD’s ultra-successful Athlon 64 and Opteron (K8) processors in the early 2000s. Both architectures are developed with high-performance applications and servers in mind.

“There are very few people who know how to create server chips,” said Mr. Read. “Jim Keller has a lot of experience in that space. You get Zen and K12. […] ARM architectural leadership, x86 architecture big leap forward…”

amd_opteron_6300_g34

The chief executive officer of AMD stated that before starting to develop the next-generation high-performance architectures, the company talked to its customers to find out whether they actually wanted new server chips from AMD. Apparently, all replied positively.

“We have had very good conversations with the OEMs in the server space and with the customers,” said Mr. Read. “We tested it because if we did not see that acceptance we would have ended the [server] business a year ago. But we saw that opportunity and we saw the opportunity to rebuild that and to do it in a more consistent way and I think the next generation technology will position us. Now we have to execute and deliver.”

The only thing currently known about AMD’s Zen is that it will drop clustered multi-thread (CMT) design in favour of more traditional simultaneous multi-threaded (SMT) design. This may result in decrease of the amount of cores inside AMD’s processors, but will increase their efficiency. Both Zen and K12 will likely be compatible on the platform level and both will use similar memory controllers and other common blocks.

Two the key reasons of relatively low performance of AMD’s current-generation microprocessors and accelerated processing units are believed to be their CMT design (which involves so-called “modules”) as well as relatively low performance in single-threaded operations. Each CMT module inside AMD APUs/CPUs is identical to a dual-core processor in its integer power, and to a single-core processor with SMT capability in its floating-point power; besides, each module shares certain resources between two “cores”. As a result, in many cases AMD’s eight-core microprocessors cannot outperform Intel’s quad-core chips that have the same number of floating point units (FPUs) which are more efficient compared to AMD’s FPUs.

As reported, both K12 and Zen are due in 2016.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: The word “Zen” can be approximately translated as “absorption” or “meditative state”, according to Wikipedia. Not a bad word to call a high-performance x86 micro-architecture… What is important, of course, is how well will it perform. Unfortunately, this will be evident only two years down the road.

The post AMD: ‘Bulldozer’ was not a game-changer, but next-gen ‘Zen’ will be first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-bulldozer-was-not-a-game-changer-but-next-gen-zen-x86-core-will-be/feed/ 12
AMD: New chip designs are more than 18 months away https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-new-chip-designs-are-more-than-18-months-away/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-new-chip-designs-are-more-than-18-months-away/#respond Mon, 08 Sep 2014 22:59:08 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=210794 Advanced Micro Devices has significantly reinvented itself in the recent years. The company changed its strategy and improved its execution. Still, in order to be successful and profitable the company needs new competitive products since currently AMD cannot compete against Intel on the market of high-performance microprocessors. Unfortunately, brand new CPU architectures are still more …

The post AMD: New chip designs are more than 18 months away first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Advanced Micro Devices has significantly reinvented itself in the recent years. The company changed its strategy and improved its execution. Still, in order to be successful and profitable the company needs new competitive products since currently AMD cannot compete against Intel on the market of high-performance microprocessors. Unfortunately, brand new CPU architectures are still more than a year away.

Rory Read, chief executive officer of AMD, said in an interview with Bloomberg news-agency that the company’s new microprocessors for personal computers and servers based on new micro-architectures are due in 2016. The executive did not reveal any additional details about the new architectures, but he made it clear that the company’s products for 2015 will be based on existing micro-architectures and will hardly make AMD much more competitive than it is today.

Previously AMD said that it would introduce processors based on its own ARMv8-compatible micro-architecture in 2016. AMD is also expected to unveil central processing units based on its new high-performance x86 micro-architecture in 2016. The company itself has not officially confirmed plans for a new high-performance x86 core.

amd_roadmap_2015_2016

“AMD engineers are now proving they can deliver new designs on time, something that didn’t happen in the past,” said Mr. Read.

Next year AMD plans to release accelerated processing units based on low-power Puma+ and high-performance Steamroller micro-architectures. Both architectures are not expected to significantly improve performance compared to existing chips. Thanks to the fact that some new APUs will be made using thinner 20nm process technology, their power consumption will get lower.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: A good thing is that AMD’s chief executive officer promises that the new chips and architectures will not be delayed. A bad thing is that AMD will be unable to compete against Intel really well for another year.

The post AMD: New chip designs are more than 18 months away first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-new-chip-designs-are-more-than-18-months-away/feed/ 0
AMD FX-8370 nearly breaks world’s clock-rate record at 8.7GHz https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/unannounced-amd-fx-8370-nearly-breaks-worlds-clock-rate-record-at-8-7ghz/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/unannounced-amd-fx-8370-nearly-breaks-worlds-clock-rate-record-at-8-7ghz/#comments Fri, 29 Aug 2014 22:53:54 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=209650 The Stilt, a famous Finnish overclocker, has managed to boost clock-rate of the yet-unreleased AMD FX-8370 microprocessor to whopping 8722MHz, which is just 72MHz lower than the world’s record CPU frequency. To overclock his eight-core FX-8370 chip to 8.72GHz, The Stilt had to increase the core voltage to 2.064V and used a system featuring Asus …

The post AMD FX-8370 nearly breaks world’s clock-rate record at 8.7GHz first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
The Stilt, a famous Finnish overclocker, has managed to boost clock-rate of the yet-unreleased AMD FX-8370 microprocessor to whopping 8722MHz, which is just 72MHz lower than the world’s record CPU frequency.

To overclock his eight-core FX-8370 chip to 8.72GHz, The Stilt had to increase the core voltage to 2.064V and used a system featuring Asus Crosshair V Formula-Z mainboard, 8GB of memory operating in dual-channel mode at 2218MHz, Asus Radeon R9 290X Direct CU II graphics card as well as liquid nitrogen cooling. The overclocker managed to boost default clock-rate of the FX-8370 processor (4.10GHz) by more than two times, an extraordinary result.

amd_fx_8370_overclock_1

What is especially important is that The Stilt managed to overclock his FX-8370 central processing unit with all eight cores (four dual-core Piledriver modules) active. By contrast, the record 8794.33MHz frequency was achieved by an FX-8350 chip with only two active cores (one dual-core Piledriver module).

amd_fx_8370_overclock

While AMD’s FX chips are based on the two years old code-named “Vishera” design, stepping 0, revision OR-C0, it should be noted that GlobalFoundries’ 32nm process technology might get a little bit better than it was in 2012. As a result, it is possible that over time chips like the FX-8370 will actually beat the world's record of 8794MHz.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: The overclocking potential of the new AMD FX processors may be an interesting thing to investigate. If newer chips can actually work at higher frequencies without any problems, it may mean that eventually AMD could offer faster FX products even based on the current architecture.

The post AMD FX-8370 nearly breaks world’s clock-rate record at 8.7GHz first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/unannounced-amd-fx-8370-nearly-breaks-worlds-clock-rate-record-at-8-7ghz/feed/ 25
AMD to please overclockers with new FX, Athlon X4 chips next month https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-to-please-overclockers-with-new-fx-athlon-x4-chips-next-month/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-to-please-overclockers-with-new-fx-athlon-x4-chips-next-month/#comments Thu, 21 Aug 2014 22:49:44 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=208356 Advanced Micro Devices plans to introduce four new microprocessors designed for enthusiasts and overclockers on the first of September. Three new AMD FX and one new Athlon X4 central processing units will address PC enthusiasts with different budgets, but will not necessarily offer unbeatable performance. Next month AMD plans to introduce two all-new AMD FX …

The post AMD to please overclockers with new FX, Athlon X4 chips next month first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
Advanced Micro Devices plans to introduce four new microprocessors designed for enthusiasts and overclockers on the first of September. Three new AMD FX and one new Athlon X4 central processing units will address PC enthusiasts with different budgets, but will not necessarily offer unbeatable performance.

Next month AMD plans to introduce two all-new AMD FX chips: the FX-8370 and the FX-8370E. The novelties sport four dual-core Piledriver modules (eight cores in total), 4.10GHz/4.30GHz frequencies, 8MB L2 cache, 8MB L3 cache as well as dual-channel DDR3 memory controllers. The FX-8370 features 125W thermal design power, while the FX-8370E’s TDP will be 95W. Additionally, AMD plans to introduce a more energy-efficient version of the FX-8320 (eight cores, 3.50GHz/4.0GHz), the FX-8320E, with TDP reduced to 95W. The new chips will cost from $140 to $190 in mass quantities.

amd_fx_chips_specs

The new FX products are aimed at “mainstream” AMD AM3+ platforms as well as new breed of energy-efficient performance systems that require microprocessors with lowered power consumption. The FX-8370 will not break performance records since there are code-named “Centurion” FX-9590 and FX-9370 chips with even higher clock-rates, but those products are not compatible with a lot of AM3+ mainboards.

In addition to the new FX models, AMD will also unveil its first Athlon X4 chip based on the code-named “Steamroller” micro-architecture (“Kaveri” design with disabled graphics core and some other capabilities) and compatible with the FM2+ platforms. The AMD Athlon X4 860K will feature two dual-core Steamroller modules (four x86 cores in total), 3.70GHz/4.0GHz frequencies with unlocked multiplier, 4MB L2 cache and 95W thermal design power. The new chip will cost around $80 in mass quantities.

The Athlon X4 860K is designed for enthusiasts in budget with FM2+ mainboards. AMD probably wants the chip to compete against Intel Corp.’s Pentium G3258 anniversary edition processor, but it remains to be seen how successful will the Athlon X4 860K be against its dual-core rival based on the Haswell micro-architecture.

The Athlon X4 860K is made using general-purpose 28nm process technology at GlobalFoundries. That technology was not designed to reach extreme clock-rates, but to provide maximum transistor density. Therefore, it will be interesting to see how good will the chip overclock even with its graphics core and some other blocks disabled.

Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.

KitGuru Says: Although microprocessors from Advanced Micro Devices are not exactly what mainstream performance enthusiasts choose these days, it is nice to see that AMD is not giving up.

The post AMD to please overclockers with new FX, Athlon X4 chips next month first appeared on KitGuru.]]>
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-to-please-overclockers-with-new-fx-athlon-x4-chips-next-month/feed/ 2