AMD - Piledriver chitchat

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

AMD to announce ARM based server products:

http://semiaccurate.com/2014/01/28/a...ttle-sampling/

Edit!!

Here are they:

http://techreport.com/news/25977/amd...n-a1100-series
http://ir.amd.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=74...373&highlight=
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7724/i...-opteron-a1100

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Socketed Kabini is arriving in March:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7725/s...ored-for-march

[cheesyboy]

Socketed Kabini is arriving in March:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7725/s...ored-for-march

Amazing how much space you get on an ITX board when you don't need a northbridge, southbridge, or power regulation

[watercooled]

Yeah it's essentially a socketed SoC.

Although there's still a VRM on the board (top left in those pictures); even Haswell with its 'built-in regulation' still needs an external VRM to drop 12V to an intermediate voltage.

[CountBartok]

AMD to announce ARM based server products:

http://semiaccurate.com/2014/01/28/a...ttle-sampling/

Edit!!

Here are they:

http://techreport.com/news/25977/amd...n-a1100-series
http://ir.amd.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=74...373&highlight=
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7724/i...-opteron-a1100

I know HP plans to use these for moonshot server cartridges.
With Calxeda no longer around it puts AMD in a good market space I hope.
Dell are using AppliedMicro although I am not sure if there 64 bit arm chip is available yet?
Any one know (guess) how they may compare to other ARM server chips?

[DanceswithUnix]

Any one know (guess) how they may compare to other ARM server chips?

I would imagine a there is a large element of "will the vendor be around in 5 years time". Thanks to the PS4 and XB1 deals I expect people will have some confidence in AMD now, and that probably means more than any benchmark.

[CountBartok]

Very True and think getting early will be beneficial.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It seems the Open Source Linux driver for Kaveri has had a massive performance boost:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...ovements&num=1

Also,MS is behind the ARM server platform too.

[Bagnaj97]

It seems the Open Source Linux driver for Kaveri has had a massive performance boost:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...ovements&num=1

Also,MS is behind the ARM server platform too.

Not just kaveri, GCN as a whole The Catalyst driver is still faster (when it works *mumbles something about x.org 1.15*) but the gap is closing.

[DanceswithUnix]

Not just kaveri, GCN as a whole The Catalyst driver is still faster (when it works *mumbles something about x.org 1.15*) but the gap is closing.

Yeah but Kaveri was stuck at 200MHz, so not so much a boost as a "no longer shooting self in foot". Given the driver team probably didn't get early access to hardware that isn't surprising.

On a more positive note: problem found, problem fixed in timely manner. Nice work the OSS driver team.

I looked earlier at what it would cost to buy a really cheap GCN based AMD card just so I could play with the closed source driver properly. There aren't any though. The cheap cards are all VLIW5, which makes the problems I had with my HD4670 even more jarring when an architecturally similar 5450 would be supported (for now).

So our AMD hopes seem to be pinned on the open source driver. They have a mountain of work to do just on graphics, stuff like OpenCL is hardly started.

[scaryjim]

I looked earlier at what it would cost to buy a really cheap GCN based AMD card just so I could play with the closed source driver properly. There aren't any though. ...

Define "cheap" I think the problem for AMD is that any cards below the R7 240 would now be slower than top end APUs and not much better than Intel's HD graphics, and AMD would rather you bought a £40 APU than a £20 graphics card. It's hard to see many justifications for a £20 graphics card nowadays, when the CPU you're going to couple it with has probably got equivalent or better graphics onboard. So they start modern discrete graphics at £50, and around the same performance as a top-end APU (although Kaveri has a lot more oomph beneath the hood, of course).

[DanceswithUnix]

Define "cheap" I think the problem for AMD is that any cards below the R7 240 would now be slower than top end APUs and not much better than Intel's HD graphics, and AMD would rather you bought a £40 APU than a £20 graphics card. It's hard to see many justifications for a £20 graphics card nowadays, when the CPU you're going to couple it with has probably got equivalent or better graphics onboard. So they start modern discrete graphics at £50, and around the same performance as a top-end APU (although Kaveri has a lot more oomph beneath the hood, of course).

The justification is: If they sold a £20 GCN graphics card, I would have bought one. Their apparent Linux support policy stops me buying a 5450 as it probably won't be supported next year.

Performance of Intel graphics? Meh, I have spent personal money on company computers in the past by buying cheap (£20 Nvidia) video cards just to get away from Intel drivers and/or drive multiple monitors.

So I guess cheap is £20, maybe £25. I can walk away from that as an education expense. Spent £17 on a wine box last week and there isn't a lot of that left, so if I cut back on the wine for a few weeks I have saved enough for the purchase. £50 is getting a bit real though, pretty much a month's worth of diesel in the car.

Wonder how many of the FM2 Athlon X4 chips AMD sell.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You can get a GCN based card for between £20 to £30 - you need to know where to look!

[DanceswithUnix]

You can get a GCN based card for between £20 to £30 - you need to know where to look!

Ooh you tease Cat

Edit to add: I don't do Ebay.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Ooh you tease Cat

Edit to add: I don't do Ebay.

It is Ebay and they are new cards,but they are not the typical GCN based cards people might think about.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Hardware.fr does some power consumption tests with Kaveri:

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/915-3/consommation.html

It seems power consumption has dropped a decent amount especially when the IGP is used.