AMD Zen available for high-end gaming PCs before end of 2016

[HEXUS]

Reveals CEO Dr Lisa Su in conference call following yesterdays financial statements.

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[malarkey95]

At least its confirmed now.

[The Hand]

A Q3 launch would have been nice. This probably means Zen APUs will be out Q1 or Q2 next year.

[LSG501]

It best be one hell of a chip or cheaper then.... they'll pretty much be up against the next refresh of skylake etc. From everything I've seen so far it's only just about on par with the current haswell chips...

[lumireleon]

If AMD wants more money then APPLE and HP should come in and make more Laptops/Tablets with ZEN inside this means AMD must be way cheaper than intel and market like crazy.

[jimbouk]

If AMD wants more money then APPLE and HP should come in and make more Laptops/Tablets with ZEN inside this means AMD must be way cheaper than intel and market like crazy.

Except when threatened in a market Intel can just give away chips to keep partners onboard.

[Syphadeus]

If AMD wants more money then APPLE and HP should come in and make more Laptops/Tablets with ZEN inside this means AMD must be way cheaper than intel and market like crazy.

I'm assuming business isn't your thing then? So what you're saying is that in order to make more money the company needs to attract technology parters (which they can only do with money or technological incentives), undercut the competition by a significant margin AND market like crazy which also costs a tonne of money.

All of those things are "smack you in the face" style obvious. The question is - how do you expect AMD to do all that? They are in the red big style with money, they'll have pumped a tonne of financial investment into R&D of Zen, they've sold off all of their fabrication plants and they currently have no presence in the performance CPU segment. The question isn't what they need to do - it's how the hell are they going to do it?

[rpsgc]

Except when threatened in a market Intel can just give away chips to keep partners onboard.

Silly jimbouk! Why give away something for free when you can just bully/blackmail them?

[shaithis]

"before the year is out".....

Eh? I thought we were expecting an early '16 release? These chips had better be spectacular.....every month is another slew of people buying new intel chips because they can't wait any longer. How many months ago did the guy leave the team and we were being told he had done all he could? Yet the chips still won't be out a year after he left? Did he really finish that project?

[kalniel]

They'll miss the free windows 10 upgrade period, and thus anyone thinking of upgrading their system just before. If they can't push earlier, they could do with getting on the phone to MS and asking them to extend the offer.

[kingpotnoodle]

At least its confirmed now.

Yeah, that definitely, 100%, no doubt means it *will* happen...

If AMD wants more money then APPLE and HP should come in and make more Laptops/Tablets with ZEN inside this means AMD must be way cheaper than intel and market like crazy.

HP won't use AMD in more than low-end machines and Apple won't in anything unless the AMD brand image changes drastically. AMD has a brand image as being the "budget OK performer" and they have even cultivated that to some extent, high-end machines won't use AMD chips while they have the this brand image. Simply releasing an amazing CPU wouldn't instantly fix that, it'll take a while to trickle through.

AMD has for several years now only really offered an Intel alternative in the low end desktop and they cannot compete at the high end or mobile and I don't believe they ever will, they'd need to make a HUGE leap in performance and power efficiency to even match Intel's current high end chips, nevermind the next-gen - if Zen is competitive with Skylake i7 I will be utterly astounded. However if they can make Zen competitive in most areas with Skylake i3 and i5s then they have a product that could sell volume, if the margins are also good then AMD have a winner but I am very sceptical they can manage it - I'll believe it when I see it.

[scaryjim]

Y... if Zen is competitive with Skylake i7 I will be utterly astounded. However if they can make Zen competitive in most areas with Skylake i3 and i5s then they have a product that could sell volume, ...

You realise that for some heavily threaded tasks FX CPUs are already competitive with the i7s, and it's the single threaded performance that lets them down, right? And that that stretches all the way down the product stack?

For Zen CPUs to be genuinely competitive they'll need single threaded performance approaching Intel's, and if they get that then they'll absolutely be competitive with the i7s as well. The question remains whether they can get enough design wins on the back of the predicted performance increases to show a significant presence at retail. It'll take a major OEM or two to stick their necks out a little, and probably mean looking at professional/HPC desktops before consumer products, but they do at least have good relations with HP in terms of business products so it's not unthinkable that we'll see AMD Zen powered HP workstations by year end...

[Corky34]

Yeah, that definitely, 100%, no doubt means it *will* happen...

Don't tempt fate, i remember how 3dfx shut up shop halfway through the Voodoo 5 release, sad days.

[jigger]

Don't tempt fate, i remember how 3dfx shut up shop halfway through the Voodoo 5 release, sad days.

Nvidia sued 3dfx into oblivion. I don't think thats going to happen with AMD. Nvidia need AMD CPU's or the firms life will be cut short.

[Percy1983]

I am sure my 3570k can last until then, I will hopefully go zen but if not, intel it will be.

I will say it doesn't need to be the absolute top end (hence my current i5) but they need to have something to at least take the second spot at a good price.

[Xlucine]

It best be one hell of a chip or cheaper then.... they'll pretty much be up against the next refresh of skylake etc. From everything I've seen so far it's only just about on par with the current haswell chips...

On par with haswell would be a success for AMD. With their history of higher core counts for less money, zen could turn out to give practically identical performance as intel's latest and greatest but for much less money. Each generation of intel chips are pretty much the same - there's nothing wrong with the performance of a 2500K these days - so matching the single thread performance of haswell will put them within a gnats whisker of skylake, and if they can shrink their die size (trimming the GPU part is a prime candidate for the enthusiast end, it's more than half the silicon of a modern intel chip) then they'll enjoy much lower production costs than intel, which can translate into more tempting prices.

I know that intel might be pad limited, but given the exponential nature of yield with die area there must be something AMD could do. I have a hunch that an interposer could help - since you've matched the thermal expansion coefficients you can make the pads smaller, and a dumb interposer on an ancient process that's twice the size of the die ought to be cheaper than the GPU bit of the die on a cutting edge node. It'd probably take a company with experience bringing a interposer based chip to market to pull it off though

"before the year is out".....

Eh? I thought we were expecting an early '16 release? These chips had better be spectacular.....every month is another slew of people buying new intel chips because they can't wait any longer. How many months ago did the guy leave the team and we were being told he had done all he could? Yet the chips still won't be out a year after he left? Did he really finish that project?

The rumours have pointed to AM4 in early 2016, with DDR4 versions of AMD's current lineup, for some time now - zen will come later

Nvidia sued 3dfx into oblivion. I don't think thats going to happen with AMD. Nvidia need AMD CPU's or the firms life will be cut short.

You don't need a legal battle for a silicon design company to run out of money - fr'instance, pixel fusion's collapse 16 years ago was entirely unforced
http://www.graphicshardware.org/prev...ons/fuzion.pdf
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1134485
They got as far as first mask, which didn't work (as first mask never does), and couldn't get a driver to work around the hardware bugs to show off to the investors before their accounts ran dry.