AMD - Zen chitchat

[watercooled]

The AVX bit does make me wonder though - is this something Intel could 'fix' with an update? http://www.bit-tech.net/news/tech/cp...cking-block/1/

https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/20...rocode-update/

I wouldn't put it past them - "it's not in the specs so you're not entitled to keep it". But maybe current competitive pressure will help prevent anti-consumer nonsense like this?

[kompukare]

Fairly sure the AVX512 'multiplier' is something they blow a fuse for although if enabled I guess it's possible some microcode could disable it.

AVX adoption has been really slow and limited as so many Intel SKUs had it disabled. Re-designing those AVX units to have a multiplier is something they should have done ages ago. Think that's that a given that for AVX2 all Intel 'core' dies support it, but of course Celeron and Pentium have it fused off. If Intel had though it properly through they would have allowed half (or less) speed for AVX2 on all their Core CPUs and now the adoption rate would be far higher.

This sort of assume that half-speed AVX2 is still quicker or at least the same speed as normal code. To encourage adoption, even the crippled parts should run AVX2 code a bit quicker than normal. The Intel product segmentation managers would probably love more granularity than full or half speed though.

[watercooled]

AVX adoption has been really slow and limited as so many Intel SKUs had it disabled. Re-designing those AVX units to have a multiplier is something they should have done ages ago. Think that's that a given that for AVX2 all Intel 'core' dies support it, but of course Celeron and Pentium have it fused off. If Intel had though it properly through they would have allowed half (or less) speed for AVX2 on all their Core CPUs and now the adoption rate would be far higher.

I was just about to reply to this part but you beat me to it:

This sort of assume that half-speed AVX2 is still quicker or at least the same speed as normal code. To encourage adoption, even the crippled parts should run AVX2 code a bit quicker than normal. The Intel product segmentation managers would probably love more granularity than full or half speed though.

It would rather depend on that part, and I bet it's something they've thought of! Whilst Bulldozer supported AVX, it was sometimes slower than other codepaths due to its implementation - something the y-cruncher dev also talked about back then.

It's happened time and time again with Intel CPUs - developers shy away from relying on new instructions whilst they're only available to a minority of the market. And combined with that, it makes the decision pretty stupid IMNSHO - assuming they're not yield-disabled, segmenting Celeron and Pentium CPUs like that doesn't even matter as far as performance goes - there's no code out there using the instructions for it to make a difference in performance!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Looks like Raven Ridge might be out soon for mobile:

https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/ry...u-spotted.html

[watercooled]

Funny that Intel have just announced quad core 'U' Kaby Lake processors (which, confusingly, they're calling 8th gen along with CFL and CNL). I'm very interested to see how those perform with 15W worth of cooling - base clocks do reflect the restrictive thermal headroom, but that's really not much to play with for all 4 cores running!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

AMD seems to have gotten more customers for Eypc:

https://www.smarteranalyst.com/2017/...m-epyc-family/

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) announced the expansion of its global ecosystem of partners for its EPYC datacenter processors today at the China EPYC Technology Summit. New datacenter customers – Tencent and JD.com – along with OEM partners Lenovo and Sugon, joined AMD on-stage with new product announcements and to showcase a wide range of systems and performance demonstrations.

“Today we celebrate the AMD EPYC family of CPUs for the datacenter market in China and are excited to announce support from the leading cloud service providers, Tencent and JD.com, while continuing momentum from Baidu, Lenovo and Sugon,” said Forrest Norrod, senior vice president and general manager, Enterprise, Embedded and Semi-Custom products, AMD. “The AMD EPYC family of processors provides incredible performance and scalability for the workloads that matter today and in the future. By partnering with these market leaders, AMD is bringing choice and competition to one of the fastest growing technology markets in the world.”

Additional ecosystem participation at the Summit came from Acer, Asus, Dell, Fiberhome, Gigabyte, HPE, H3C, INVENTEC, Lenovo, Sugon, SuperCloud, SuperMicro, TYAN, and Wistron. Key server hardware and software ecosystem support was provided by partners including Mellanox, Redhat, Samsung and VMware.

Cloud Datacenters Choose EPYC

“Tencent Cloud provides public services to benefit everyone. With our commitment to offer users with more choice and a more convenient user experience, Tencent Cloud is continuously seeking more cores, more I/O interfaces, more secure hardware features and improved total cost of ownership for server hardware products,” said Sage Zou, senior director of Tencent Cloud. “To continue as a leading provider of high-performance and high-value cloud services, Tencent needs to adopt the most advanced infrastructure and the chip industry’s latest achievements. By the end of this year, Tencent Cloud will launch AMD EPYC-based 2P cloud servers, with up to 64 processor cores and superior single system computing capability, to provide the industry with a more diverse portfolio of cloud products and services.”

“China Internet and e-commerce companies need more compute cores and higher memory bandwidth. We saw AMD EPYC processors have up to 32 cores, providing competitive advantage over current 2P server systems, and the eight memory channels enable greater memory bandwidth, which are believed to better match domestic customers’ requirements,” said Andrew Wang, technology leader of hardware system department at JD.com. “AMD EPYC will help JD.com improve the total cost of ownership (TCO) of our server systems. JD.com will collaborate with AMD on Big Data, AI and Cloud Services based on AMD EPYC in the future.”

Featured OEM Platforms

“As a strategic partner, Sugon and AMD have been working together for more than 15 years, AMD’s new EPYC data center processors will bring a new value experience in the datacenter,” said Cao Zhennan, vice president of Sugon. “Sugon will introduce full AMD EPYC processor based product line with nine new products across workstation, rack, blade and super rack systems for high-performance computing, cloud computing, large data analysis and deep learning applications today.”

“AMD EPYC processors present unique opportunities for our customers to lower total cost of ownership via an unprecedented balance of cores, memory bandwidth, and I/O. We are excited to collaborate with AMD and several global Hyperscale customers to develop and deploy single socket and dual socket EPYC-based servers,” said Paul Ju, vice president and general manager, Lenovo Global Hyperscale Business.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

WTH,is happening at Intel:

http://www.barrons.com/articles/inte...hoo&yptr=yahoo

First their key architect Francois Piednoel left suddenly and now Stacey Smith,head of manufacturing also is retiring under a cloud with no named replacement.

Edit!!

It seems AMD has said the reason why they have gone MCM for Epyc since it actually has saved them 41% in costs over using a larger chip:

https://www.techpowerup.com/236430/a...-savings-of-41

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It looks like BR is finally available:

https://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer...apu-processors

Prices seem lower than I expected,as the A8 9600 is only £57.

This YT channel has tested it:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV_...z4KHNzMlmYO04A



It can even be overclocked by 1GHZ on the stock cooler too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD3imB5ewz0

[scaryjim]

... Prices seem lower than I expected,as the A8 9600 is only £57. ...

Kind of inevitable given the CPU performance compared to Ryzen R3 though - the top end chip was always going to be ~ £100 with prices dropping off from there. Sad not to see an A8 9600e though. Guess they must be using lower bin silicon that can't handle the lower voltages to get down to 35W TDP....

Very tempted by a 9700e for my HTPC though....

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Kind of inevitable given the CPU performance compared to Ryzen R3 though - the top end chip was always going to be ~ £100 with prices dropping off from there. Sad not to see an A8 9600e though. Guess they must be using lower bin silicon that can't handle the lower voltages to get down to 35W TDP....

Very tempted by a 9700e for my HTPC though....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8XEfohhsLg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu_5kmiUQCo

Not much difference in gaming performance between the A12 9800 and A8 9600 either.

[Millennium]

Look what just turned up





I guess I need to read the thread now. Eek.

[Biscuit]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8XEfohhsLg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu_5kmiUQCo

Not much difference in gaming performance between the A12 9800 and A8 9600 either.

Considering it uses a CPU platform that is AMD has essentially given up on, those are really great numbers. Bodes very well for the Ryzen based APU's.

I suppose price-wise, its main competitors from Intel are low end i3, all Pentiums and for the 9500, even Celerons are just about in the firing line.

Gaming wise, there is really no competition there.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Look what just turned up





I guess I need to read the thread now. Eek.

Nice!

Considering it uses a CPU platform that is AMD has essentially given up on, those are really great numbers. Bodes very well for the Ryzen based APU's.

I suppose price-wise, its main competitors from Intel are low end i3, all Pentiums and for the 9500, even Celerons are just about in the firing line.

Gaming wise, there is really no competition there.

Yeah,I am surprised it can even run those games. It just shows you how cheap the entry level for PC gaming has become.

That channel is great though. I wish more of the mainstream media tested budget CPUs.

BR also supports HVEC decoding IIRC,so should also do OK as a media chip too.

[MrJim]

Look what just turned up

I guess I need to read the thread now. Eek.

It's amazing to think that that CPU has the same size cache as my first PC had hard-disk space!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It's amazing to think that that CPU has the same size cache as my first PC had hard-disk space!

Its even more amazing that if you went back to January this year a new 8C/16T CPU with decent speed cores was around £1000!!

[Millennium]

Well I am a happy bunny today. I have had a Ryzen 1700 with MSI B350 Gaming motherboard for almost a week now but have only been playing with the overclocking (at least the CPU) for the last 2 days.

There is currently a BIOS limitation it seems whereby in the BIOS I can't overclock the CPU past 3.2GHz (even when I set it higher). This is annoying but will hopefully be sorted out with a future BIOS update. In BIOS, my (old, Intel optimised) 3000 DDR4 15-17-17-17-35 memory will post at 2800 16-18-18-18-?? but I can't use this option since I am forced to use Ryzen Master to do all my overclocking.

I have been playing initially with Ryzen Master and have got the following settings dialed in for at least 1/2 hour now, all seems stable:

4.0ghz CPU with 1.325v vcore (!)
VDDCR SOC 1.1v
Memory 2666mhz 15-15-15-15-36 timings.

Now I've been reading a little, and it seems it's a good result if you can do 4ghz at under 1.4v. I'm well under, so I'm chuffed.
My plan is to keep these settings for today to ensure stability, then shoot for 4.1 or lower the vcore. I'm not sure which - it's just for kicks that I would run anything above 4 ghz really.

VERY happy with my Ryzen. I wish you all similar success. Now for MSI and AMD to get the BIOS right with mem etc.