AMD - Piledriver chitchat

[watercooled]

I'll try to find the link, but AFAICT these rumours lead back to a very questionable source who claims to have classified AMD documents or something.

Remember, even if true, it could be a badly flawed interpretation of AMD's intentions - eventually (considering they are planning to better unify CPU/GPU) they may be planning to do away with a desktop CPU-only platform, much like Intel are doing now - the fixed function hardware/shaders are still useful even with a discrete GPU.

Edit: Found it: http://www.obr-hardware.com/2012/08/...-last-amd.html

Could very well be a canary trap of sorts; basically, I'd pay very little attention to what you read, most (possibly all) of it will be complete nonsense, just wait and see what happens. Also, don't forget Piledriver is referred to as 'Improved Bulldozer', that may be cause of some misunderstandings.

Edit2: Also an Anand forum thread on the subject, which covers basically what I thought of the source: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2265657

Sorry for constant edits
AMD roadmap suggests the mainstream platform will refresh before FX (also, much like Intel are doing), it should help to iron out architectural/fab problems on a smaller die before scaling up to the full 4 module+L3 cache chip.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It seems Vishera will be released in October:

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/28...s-eol-in-q4-12

Edit!!

Trinity 13" ultrathin unveiled by Samsung:

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/28...nity-ultrathin

[scaryjim]

You don't need a secret AMD document to infer that non-APU processors are dead in the water at AMD - the publically released roadmap shows Vishera as the only enthusiast CPU throughout 2013 with no planned replacement. Future improvements will be bundled into 28nm APUs with the aim of dethroning i5/i7 parts. Whether we'll ever get an 8-core APU with GCN graphics I don't know, but I'd probably buy one

Perhaps we'll see the 6 and 8 core APUs have lower end (< 200 shader) graphics parts to target the workstation and enthusiast markets - after all, the whole point of bulldozer was to be sufficiently modular that you could just drop in and remove blocks of functionality - mid range APUs with less cores and lots of graphics oomph for consumer desktop and laptop, high end APUs with more cores and less graphics oomph for the gaming/enthusiast market where a dGPU is likely to be used - because even a heavily cut back GCN graphics part will still be sufficient for most workstation tasks And the OpenCL performance ... oh the OpenCL performance ...

Let's face it, "discrete" CPUs were never going to feature on the AMD roadmap once they'd started pushing down the HSA path - the whole point is to have a GPU somewhere and to offload appropriate tasks onto it. Imagine a gaming system where your 8 core CPU can push OpenCL physics calculations onto a 128-core GCN iGPU instead of either thrashing the x86 cores or hammering the dGPU and busses with all of that information. Ask most enthusiasts if they'd like a CPU and highly parallel maths co-processor, or just a CPU, and I think I know which they'd take

[watercooled]

Having highly integrated GPU cores opens up other possibilities for compute; for some tasks, the PCIe bus is still too much of a bottleneck.

Even from public documents it looks like the APUs will be getting refreshed first for the foreseeable future, but I'm not convinced they'll be scrapping CPU-only for a while at least, having an on-die GPU for the tons of server CPUs they make seems a bit wasteful, I'd think it would still be more cost effective to produce a separate die for such uses. If you look at the likes of Opencompute, they've designed platforms without any unnecessary hardware (display outputs for example) to improve cost+efficiency among other things, and I can see far more server hardware going that way.

On the other hand, AMD still hanging on to the AM3+ socket could be telling - did they think it would be a waste of resources to design a completely new platform only to have to scrap it soon after? The APU compute bit could also play a part - AMD may be planning to include GPU cores on the server platform so they can be used for their compute capabilities. This could also lead back to my previous point, a new socket would probably be needed for this.

I'm also thinking about L3 cache - BD seems to benefit from lots of fast L3, so it would be strange if they didn't keep a high-end desktop FX platform. The above could explain it, but 4 modules+L3+big IGP could mean ~2-3 billion transistors, which would be a huge die. But as scaryjim said, maybe they plan to use fewer GPU cores on FX?

[scaryjim]

... AMD still hanging on to the AM3+ socket could be telling ...

I've seen at least one roadmap with AM3+ as the entry-level server platform into the foreseeable future, so it's possible they'll keep it for that and enthusiasts who want AMD can always go down the server-hardware line (as some already do). Don't forget that AMD already have 2 server-only sockets that they will almost certainly keep producing conventional CPUs for - the only question is whether the high-end consumer market will see any of that love...

EDIT: official roadmaps here, from Feb 2012. Clearly show Vishera as piledriver cores, and being the only performance CPU available through 2013. AM3+ as entry level server gets a piledriver-based Opteron (codenamed Delhi) for 2012-13. C32 and G34 platforms get Piledriver update too. Only product in the roadmap listed as definitely getting Steamroller is the Kaveri APU ...

[watercooled]

C32 and G34 are still fairly similar to AM3+ electrically.

Yeah like I said it looks like they might be rolling out upgrades to the smaller CPU of the APU first, before scaling it up to 4+ module and L3 cache, sort of like Intel do - it's possible we'll see Haswell before IVB-E arrives.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Here is a picture of the Samsung ultrathin laptop:

http://news.idealo.fr/news/184144/if...ables-amd.html

[DanceswithUnix]

Here is a picture of the Samsung ultrathin laptop:

http://news.idealo.fr/news/184144/if...ables-amd.html

Same one we saw already for sale at John Lewis a few pages ago...

http://www.johnlewis.com/231650215/P...x?source=46387

[DanceswithUnix]

Steamroller chitchat from Charlie:

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/09/06/a...amroller-core/

[Terbinator]

I wish them the best, but you can't help but expect them to still be behind come the tail end of next year.

He does raise an important point though - why didn't they do this sooner?

Edit: I do look forward to a proper price/performance battle though, even if they can't go toe-to-toe.

[scaryjim]

R&D resources. AMD can't just throw money at R&D 'cause they don't have much. Presumably they thought the decode would be up to it; when they found out it wasn't they had to work out how to balance fixing that with all the other core improvements they'd already have planned. Same with HDL - presumably they decided they needed to focus on core speed with Bulldozer; now they know they can hit the clocks they can start thinking about die area and power usage instead.

Let's not forget that Bulldozer was very late and went through several redesigns - I guess there simply wasn't time to consider any non-crucial tweaks like running the design through HDL. It was far more important to make sure it worked and they could release a product.

[Reyey]

Can't wait to see AMD swing back in to action in the high-end

[LeviathanPT]

Oh yeah bring it back AMD !

[JimmyBoy]

I have a high end socket am3+ board and was hoping for a new CPU to replace my phenom II, with bulldozer being a bit of a flop a few people said a decent CPU was on the way is that seemingly not going to be the case now?

[scaryjim]

There will be Vishera, which is meant to use the Piledriver core (a heavily tweaked and improved version of bulldzoer) and they should be pretty good, although they're unlikely to catch up with Intel on the current generation. Then things go a bit quiet from AMD - the last official roadmap didn't have any new AM3+ desktop or server processors after Vishera/Delhi (which are both piledriver-based). Whether that means they won't be producing desktop CPUs based on Steamroller, or just that they haven't decided on a form-factor yet, I don't know.

[watercooled]

They will be producing desktop Steamroller CPUs, but possibly only APUs.