AMD - Piledriver chitchat

[watercooled]

Got to love how people just conveniently ignore his posts though.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Got to love how people just conveniently ignore his posts though.

Many of the posters and the mods are in denial over there.

Anyway,just saw this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6uUtf-lMQQ

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

http://www.techradar.com/news/comput...ri-apu-1199636

[theanalyzer]

Many of the posters and the mods are in denial over there.

Anyway,just saw this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6uUtf-lMQQ

The guy mentions that its done through the genaudio plugin which requires no additional hardware. So whats TrueAudio then? Isnt it a sound processor on the R-series cards?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

More details about the Kaveri A8 series:

http://translate.google.it/translate...tore-sbloccato

[DanceswithUnix]

AMD need to buy $150M worth of silicon from GloFo or pay the money anyway.

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/33...ventory-issues

[watercooled]

Any idea how that WSA continues?

I can't imagine AMD completely ditching GloFo while still having to pay for the non-existent wafers. Interesting they mention Kaveri on TSMC; I thought it was all but confirmed (if not confirmed?) that it was GloFo?

[HalloweenJack]

aye I think it is - just about everywhere says GloFo for Kaveri - its only the reliable (sic) Fudzilla saying TSMC.

[cheesyboy]

On the subject of GloFo/AMD, a great post from Drunkenmaster on OCUK forum;
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...2&postcount=35

[watercooled]

Interesting post.

Also just spotted this article on the PS4 SoC over at Chipworks: http://www.chipworks.com/en/technica...ore-processor/

That's one huge die for a mass volume part! I would totally make sense if, as they suggested, a few of the CUs are there as spares to improve yield.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Interesting post.

Also just spotted this article on the PS4 SoC over at Chipworks: http://www.chipworks.com/en/technica...ore-processor/

That's one huge die for a mass volume part! I would totally make sense if, as they suggested, a few of the CUs are there as spares to improve yield.

It seems the GPU is pretty much based on Pitcairn XT which is around 212MM2 in area including the GDDR5 memory controller. That leaves around 136MM2 for the rest of the chip.

[scaryjim]

348sq.mm is almost exactly the same size as the 7970. So not actually that massive by AMDs recent standards. R9 290X is around 25% bigger, but yields seem to be pretty good based on launch price and availability. I'd guess yield isn't too much of a concern on that size of chip at 28nm - after all, the process is tried and trusted and AMD have plenty of experience optimising layout on it.

[watercooled]

I mean huge for something which will sell in volumes as high as the PS4, but yeah I suppose the mature process will help a lot with yield.

[watercooled]

Another article: http://allthingsd.com/20131112/dont-...-not-just-yet/

Shock news, Apple ditching Samsung news may not be as big a deal as it sounds. /sarc

Of course, if Apple were multi-sourcing, using TSMC as well as Samsung for the same parts could introduce a fair amount of overhead as it would need to be essentially redesigned for each fab. Samsung and GloFo OTOH are part of CPA so the IP should be more portable across their fabs.

The reason I posted though, I wonder if this will have any impact on how many non-Korean model Samsung devices ship with Samsung's own silicon? I'm not sure how close to capacity their fabs are currently run, but I wonder if they'd rather give Apple preferential treatment for wafer capacity over their own device arm? Failing to meet demand for their own products means they'll have to outsource processors from a competing company, but it's not really likely to damage the relationship. Failing to meet demand for a customer like Apple however, could mean they go elsewhere for some amount of wafers. I wonder what the profit margins are like, from Samsung's perspective as a whole, for their own silicon vs Apple's?

Adding to that, I guess outsourcing some CPUs means they have some sort of buffer and don't need to build up too much capacity and risk having idle fab lines - they have the option to drop external orders to keep up capacity.

Again, I may be reading too much into this, but I wonder if this could link into their next A57 SoC and/or that custom core they've mentioned? If they're putting in the huge amount of effort necessary to design a custom core, surely they'd want to reach a wider audience with it?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The XBox One reviewed by Anandtech:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7528/t...are-analysis/2

The SOC is 363MM2.

Edit!!

The CPU in the XBox One runs at 1.75GHZ and the one in the PS4 at 1.6GHZ,with GPU in the former running at 853MHZ and the latter at 800MHZ.

Second Edit!!

That would make the XBox One GPU close to an HD7770 in raw performance and the PS4 close to an HD7850 in raw performance. OTH,with the lower overheads on consoles,they probably would be above that in reality I suspect.

[DanceswithUnix]

Again, I may be reading too much into this, but I wonder if this could link into their next A57 SoC and/or that custom core they've mentioned? If they're putting in the huge amount of effort necessary to design a custom core, surely they'd want to reach a wider audience with it?

They seem to have a well designed custom core, and according to SemiAccurate are buying into a fab. If they had the capacity and could do a new part with an upped core count and clock, do you think ditching Intel and putting ARM cores into their laptops would be wide enough audience? Apple in the past have gone 68000 to PowerPC to AMD64, so they are quite used to changes in instruction set.