AMD - Piledriver chitchat

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

NH pretty much confirmed they heard the same about the 1080MHZ base and 1266MHZ boost clocks for the RX480:

http://www.nordichardware.se/nyheter...t-gtx-980.html

According to the data shall Radeon RX 480 operate at a base frequency of 1080 megahertz, while boosting the frequency goes up til 1266 megahertz, numbers we could even confirm themselves at Computex in Taipei last week.

Edit!!

The video of Zen running Doom:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IyrR8KsSfQ

You can see some unstamped Zen chips in the lab.

[MrNeil]

Coor !

[flearider]

tissue plz ..

[scaryjim]

... You can see some unstamped Zen chips in the lab.

That's a decent set of packaged CPUs they've got there - clearly well into sampling and testing. Interesting to see just how similar to AM2/3 CPUs they look - I thought they might consider changing the packaging given they're doing an entire new platform...

[DanceswithUnix]

Fudzilla says AMD will be skipping 10nm for CPUs and going straight to 7nm:

http://www.fudzilla.com/news/process...core-processor

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Its a bit worrying that the RX480 has relatively "high" power consumption. It makes it worrying since it looks like GF 14NM Finfet is having issues.

[watercooled]

We don't know how much is uArch and how much is process though as we don't have an apples-to-apples comparison like we're used to.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Bristol Ridge based A10 9600P is tested:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Bristol....168477.0.html

Not bad at all IMHO OFC!!

[watercooled]

Yeah Bristol Ridge, like a lot of AMD's APUs over the past couple of years, looks pretty decent but as usual it will probably be hard to find a decent laptop using it.

I wondered what would be the best thread to post this in, and it's probably an obvious thought, but I wonder if Zen comes quite a bit later than Polaris on 14nm for a reason other than just its own timeline? E.g. allowing the GPUs to go through as sorta-pipecleaners for the node giving them a bit more time to adjust for a very high clocking CPU? After all this is the first time we've seen a discrete GPU made at GloFo/Samsung, so that does lend itself to the situation.

But on the other hand they're porting the big GPUs across foundries and on to a brand new process with which they have no former experience. They've produced integrated GPUs at GloFo before but I wonder how much of that process carries over?

I imagine they also have access to huge volumes from GloFo/Samsung without having to compete with Apple, Nvidia, etc for capacity, while keeping a foot in the door with the console APUs at TSMC (I do wonder if the future ones will remain TSMC?) I didn't imaging AMD pulling completely away from TSMC if I'm honest - maybe they're just capacity limited at 16nm at the moment?

[watercooled]

If anyone's interested I've just guestimated (by pixel counting the die shot) Skylake's core size based on the GT2 4C die being 122.4mm2. Without the last level cache, I got the core size to be 8mm2.

That puts it a bit larger than Broadwell's ~7mm2, but not by much!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

They tested an HP laptop!!

This one:

http://www8.hp.com/de/de/products/la...459#!tab=specs

[watercooled]

Apollo Lake spotted by Anandtech: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10490/...ake-on-display

Something has occurred to me though - they're reporting the die size as 159.7 mm2, bigger than even quad core Skylake!! I wonder what's going on there?

[Xlucine]

11 * 10 =/ 160

[Xlucine]

Also, check out the bodge wire/0 ohm resistor to the right of the CPU in the first pic

[watercooled]

I hadn't even noticed that! Even so it still works out to above 100mm2 which still puts it around Skylake die size. But then again the PCH is included in that I guess.

Bodge wires aren't all that uncommon on prototype boards.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Looks like Samsung is now the third source for AMD chips:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickm...o#126c346650fb

GF also has won a contract from the Department of Defence in the US to make chips for them:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/pentagon...ner-1465159332

It will be interesting to see if IBM selling its fabs to GF had a role in this.