AMD - Piledriver chitchat

[Noxvayl]

WTF:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AMD_Stock/c..._there_you_go/

Intel is going to integrate an AMD GPU with an Intel CPU??

Looking forward to it... be good for gamers everywhere.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Looks like the XBox Scorpio is going to use Ryzen:

http://i.imgur.com/EKQ9prI.png

[benboy1983]

i wonder how good will the new zen

[Terbinator]

Looks like the XBox Scorpio is going to use Ryzen:

http://i.imgur.com/EKQ9prI.png

Hm, are these reps just reps though or do they know what they're talking(or not talking) about?

Lisa has said in an investor call there will be no custom Zen offerings until 2018.

[watercooled]

It would be very interesting if it was true, preserving code compatibility while using a very different core, not to mention the difficulty with having to ensure good performance on both cores assuming Scorpio uses a similar model to the PS4 Pro where every game must work well on both systems.

[DanceswithUnix]

It would be very interesting if it was true, preserving code compatibility while using a very different core, not to mention the difficulty with having to ensure good performance on both cores assuming Scorpio uses a similar model to the PS4 Pro where every game must work well on both systems.

If 8 of the old cat cores doesn't use significant space on a 14nm die then they could do a big/little style thing and include Zen and cat cores. Does seem unlikely though.

[Uriel]

The existing Xbox One CPU is just a couple of Jaguar modules bunched together. They're practically a standard PC part, as Ryzen will be. Xbox one practically runs on Win10 anyway. All the groundwork for compatibility has been done.

In terms of IPC, Ryzen will absolutely smash Jaguar. 4 core zen with HT will utterly destroy the current console CPUs.

Anyway - who says it's custom? Raven Ridge is coming and PS4 grade graphics were already rumoured. PS4 Pro grade+ with Ryzen cores doesn't seem far fetched at all. Just it would be nice to see such a part available for PCs. Would make a very nice addition to a laptop or SFF PC (considering that 3-4 years down the line there could be an even more capable APU to drop into an AM4 socket).

[watercooled]

If 8 of the old cat cores doesn't use significant space on a 14nm die then they could do a big/little style thing and include Zen and cat cores. Does seem unlikely though.

To be honest I was thinking something similar but I'm not sure how much space they'd need on 16nm for the 8 cores, it's probably not negligible. I'd ballpark something close to 50mm2 on 28nm for the modules including caches, so say 20-something mm2 on TSMC's 16nm? I guess it's possible...

The existing Xbox One CPU is just a couple of Jaguar modules bunched together. They're practically a standard PC part, as Ryzen will be. Xbox one practically runs on Win10 anyway. All the groundwork for compatibility has been done.

In terms of IPC, Ryzen will absolutely smash Jaguar. 4 core zen with HT will utterly destroy the current console CPUs.

Anyway - who says it's custom? Raven Ridge is coming and PS4 grade graphics were already rumoured. PS4 Pro grade+ with Ryzen cores doesn't seem far fetched at all. Just it would be nice to see such a part available for PCs. Would make a very nice addition to a laptop or SFF PC (considering that 3-4 years down the line there could be an even more capable APU to drop into an AM4 socket).

The console processors are not simply IP blocks glued together. At a very high level they do use many of the same building blocks as PC components but that's only half the story at best; both of the consoles use plenty of custom fabric and IP blocks on-die to provide capabilities outside of what the sum of high level parts would provide.

Typically with consoles (current ones being no exception), it's not a case of just gluing on some more cores and expecting everything to work; games often rely on consoles' very predictable performance and timing, and changing these can break some games. The PS4 Pro is architecturally similar to the PS4 and as I understand it, without patches, the game will effectively think it's running on a PS4 so as to not break anything (note how many games without patches run identically on both consoles). If you just throw more performance at some games, you'll break the timing at a minimum and have the actual game simulation running faster than intended.

But for comparison, the PS4 Pro basically adds some GPU cores and ups clock speeds, both of which are trivially reversible on-the-fly to provide such a compatibility mode.

Completely changing out the CPU cores is another story. As you'll be aware, CPU core performance isn't just a single value like clock speed you can dial up and down linearly - Zen is a massively different core and the performance delta will vary hugely for various tasks. This would make it infinitely harder to provide a psuedo-Xbone for legacy games without demanding every developer recompile their game, then go through all the play testing again, and provide patches.

It's possible Microsoft have come up with a way around this, but just because Zen cores are available, don't assume it's an easy decision to switch out the Jaguar cores.

It will still be a custom processor for, amongst others, the reasons detailed above. A desktop processor might offer 'PS4 grade graphics' in that the CPU and GPU blocks are of a similar size, but that's where the similarity ends - you will not be getting a PS4 processor to plug into a desktop motherboard.

[me-yeah]

It would be very interesting if it was true, preserving code compatibility while using a very different core, not to mention the difficulty with having to ensure good performance on both cores assuming Scorpio uses a similar model to the PS4 Pro where every game must work well on both systems.

if there is a fresh xbox in the making, then it will be aimed at directx 12, to be able to push along 4k, which is a low level API to your GFX card and able to use as many CPU cores as you like, which is the same with vulkan, while direct x 11 and openGL can only use 2 CPU cores and arn't low level API's

[watercooled]

if there is a fresh xbox in the making, then it will be aimed at directx 12, to be able to push along 4k, which is a low level API to your GFX card and able to use as many CPU cores as you like, which is the same with vulkan, while direct x 11 and openGL can only use 2 CPU cores and arn't low level API's

I'm not sure what you mean - is that a response to the post your quoted or just a general comment?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/31551...our-years.html

With everything riding on Ryzen’s launch, AMD isn’t taking chances. Jim Anderson, senior vice president and general manager of AMD’s Computing and Graphics business, told PCWorld that Ryzen chips will be available from day one. “We’re not going to do a paper launch,” he said, referring to a “launch” where customers have to wait weeks or months for the products to actually arrive. “We’ve done that before. We’re not going to mess with it.”

While Anderson’s responsible for bringing Ryzen to market—“you don’t have any idea how many hours I and my team have spent on this,” Anderson said—it’s Papermaster who has to think of the future. When asked how long Zen would last, compared to Intel’s two-year tick-tock cadence, Papermaster confirmed the four-year lifespan and tapped the table in front of him: “We’re not going tick-tock,” he said. “Zen is going to be tock, tock, tock.”

[neonplanet40]

So when do we get actual real reviews?

[DanceswithUnix]

So AM4 was released for OEM use a while back, but the only info I found is the HP motherboard which they say is 65W TDP max so can't be upgraded to high end Ryzen. Wonder if that really is the case, it looks to have a 4+2 VRM so you would think 95W would be possible.

http://support.hp.com/gb-en/document/c05254568

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

AMD sampling 4C/4T Ryzen:

https://translate.google.co.uk/trans...537&edit-text=

6C/12T Ryzen on latest stepping is only 65W TDP:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comment...mple_over_95w/

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It appears Ryzen has a 55% IPC increase over Excavator instead of the touted 40% according to AMD:

http://www.sweclockers.com/forum/post/16600771

Also,some AMD slides about Ryzen:

https://imgur.com/a/X4r4Y

[scaryjim]

... Also,some AMD slides about Ryzen:

https://imgur.com/a/X4r4Y

They're less about Ryzen and more about infinity fabric, which looks very interesting indeed. A coherent data and control fabric that sits in their entire product range and handles all the connectivity between segments of chips looks great, and the data fabric is clearly what Vega is building on with its HBM2 "high bandwidth cache" with coherent access to system RAM and non-volatile storage too. And I note that raven ridge is getting the fabric ("high performance scalable bus") - wonder what that'll mean for APUs? Possible on-package HBM cache might not be a pipe dream after all Even a single stack of HBM1 would be an amazing last-level cache...