AMD - Zen chitchat

[peterb]

Are there any phones powered by AMD CPUs? (the original topic )

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yeah I was aware of the Motorola ones when I was looking but I can't remember what it was that put me off. TBH it was around the time of the Snapdragon 810 so that might have had something to do with it. I dodged that by choosing a Huawei phone which used their HiSilicon 955 chip which fitted with my requirements quite well - decent power management, a focus on useful CPU performance rather than chasing benchmarks with a huge GPU, etc. That, and I had to return two Moto X (2014 IIRC) because of a fairly severe screen issue they both had (dimmer and distorted colours towards one end of the OLED panel and evident screen burn out of the box!) At that point I assumed it was a bad batch rather than a one-off so gave up on it.

Something I've picked up on is that at least some phones do seem to change specs somewhat after the initial batches. A friend had a Galaxy S5 which had considerably faster storage than the original review models!

Mate has a Moto X Force and that is one tough phone,but Lenovo software support is meh,and they lied about updates too. Regarding the HiSilicon SOC - mine has the 650 and a mate has one with the 655 and I can confirm both phones have excellent battery life and general performance,and that includes stuff which tends to use GPS a lot.

[watercooled]

Are there any phones powered by AMD CPUs? (the original topic )

When have 'AMD - architecture chitchat' threads ever been entirely on-topic? Ever since the Bulldozer one they seem to have become a de-facto 'microprocessor chitchat that doesn't necessitate its own thread' thread! It's nice to discuss stuff which is a bit off-topic without starting a hundred new threads which would likely get no or few replies.

[DanceswithUnix]

I think having AMD in the title just keeps the riff-raff out

[watercooled]

Point taken though! I was wandering a bit far, just thought the Exynos uArch bit might have been of interest, and semi-relevant.

Back on topic - if anyone hasn't seen it yet, Anandtech have a decent GloFo interview up: https://www.anandtech.com/show/12438...lobalfoundries

It includes things like the motivation behind skipping the 10nm node, where FD-SOI nodes are going, details on 12nm and also some more about EUV plans.

[scaryjim]

... if anyone hasn't seen it yet, Anandtech have a decent GloFo interview up: https://www.anandtech.com/show/12438...lobalfoundries ...

Definitely interesting. Some pulls from my PoV:

Customers want performance kickers as well as some density improvements like in 12LP, which offers about a 10% performance improvement and a 15% circuit density improvement.

So 12nm Ryzen should clock to around 4.4GHz. If they get much in the way of IPC improvements too they'll be knocking on Intel's stock-clocked door for ST workloads...

... For example, we have a shrink on our 7nm from 14nm that is 0.37x scale. So it's more than 50% scale at a logic library level. ...

Am I reading that right? Moving from 14nm to 7nm the same logic will be almost 1/3 of the size?!

At least one of our competitors spends a lot of time talking about the pitches and the things like that ...

*snerk*

The FD-SOI bit was interesting - diverging their performance and low-power lines to give customers more options. I wonder if we'll see AMD looking at the FDX processes for any of their embedded IP, or if their plans are all too performance-oriented for that to be worthwhile...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

So 12nm Ryzen should clock to around 4.4GHz. If they get much in the way of IPC improvements too they'll be knocking on Intel's stock-clocked door for ST workloads...

I think the memory latency issue is probably something I hope that can get improved with Ryzen+ as a Core i5 8400 shouldn't nearly be as far ahead in gaming,than it should be! Look at say a Ryzen 5 1600X against a Broadwell Core i7 6800K. In non-gaming stuff its very close clock to clock,but in gaming it does seem significantly behind Broadwell overall.

[Corky34]

Back on topic - if anyone hasn't seen it yet, Anandtech have a decent GloFo interview up: https://www.anandtech.com/show/12438...lobalfoundries

It includes things like the motivation behind skipping the 10nm node, where FD-SOI nodes are going, details on 12nm and also some more about EUV plans.

At last i have a better understanding of the differences between LP and LPP, at least i think i do as i suspect the FinFET with 2 fins are the low power ones and the 4 fin is the performance plus.

one that is a 2 fin library, so it is ultra-dense, and another that is a 4 fin library for maximum performance.

[Ozaron]

Hey all, recieved and used my boot kit for the 2400g. Updated my ASrock A320m Pro4 up to version 4.50, removed the toy APU and put my 2400 back, built it *just so* and now find I still can't boot. Any suggestions? And yes, I know this could easily go in tech issues thread.. but it's Ryzen.. in Ryzen thread.. and you love going off topic... and I get an audience..

Specs:
ASRock A320M Pro4
Ryzen 2400G
2x 4GB Team Group Vulcan 3200MHz CL16, slots A2 B2
Crucial MX300 525GB M.2 SSD
Superflower Platinum 450w PSU
rando ASUS optical drive.

Currently, on power on the system will sit and think for what seems to be forever. If I power it off, then on again, it will begin looping an on/off cycle. Never displays anything. Of note, it worked just fine with boot kit APU, and I have it connected to a VGA only display (which was fine for that earlier).

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Point taken though! I was wandering a bit far, just thought the Exynos uArch bit might have been of interest, and semi-relevant.

Back on topic - if anyone hasn't seen it yet, Anandtech have a decent GloFo interview up: https://www.anandtech.com/show/12438...lobalfoundries

It includes things like the motivation behind skipping the 10nm node, where FD-SOI nodes are going, details on 12nm and also some more about EUV plans.

On a side note regarding the phones,I was kind of surprised by the quality of the audio output from the Huawei phone I had(it sounded good even though really high end headphones costing like £2000 to £3000),and it appears they integrated a proper DSP:
http://askmeblogs.com/huawei-p9-lite-review-on-a-diet/
https://www.gsmarena.com/hauwei_p9_l...iew-1461p7.php

It makes me wonder whether a cheapo phone actually has better sound quality than most of these high end motherboards with all their "special audio sections". I do miss Nvidia SoundStorm TBH!!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Hey all, recieved and used my boot kit for the 2400g. Updated my ASrock A320m Pro4 up to version 4.50, removed the toy APU and put my 2400 back, built it *just so* and now find I still can't boot. Any suggestions? And yes, I know this could easily go in tech issues thread.. but it's Ryzen.. in Ryzen thread.. and you love going off topic... and I get an audience..

Specs:
ASRock A320M Pro4
Ryzen 2400G
2x 4GB Team Group Vulcan 3200MHz CL16, slots A2 B2
Crucial MX300 525GB M.2 SSD
Superflower Platinum 450w PSU
rando ASUS optical drive.

Currently, on power on the system will sit and think for what seems to be forever. If I power it off, then on again, it will begin looping an on/off cycle. Never displays anything. Of note, it worked just fine with boot kit APU, and I have it connected to a VGA only display (which was fine for that earlier).

Try booting with no drives connected,and one stick of RAM. Have you got any other DDR4 you could try??

Edit!!

https://www.techspot.com/article/158...-motherboards/

What's interesting is that while the Asrock A320M lists up to DDR4-3200 memory support via overclocking, I wasn't able to get either Raven Ridge APU working at this speed. In fact, 3066 failed and I even ran into a few stability issues at 2933, forcing me down to 2666 and thankfully the system was completely stable here.

In fairness to A320 boards, I got my hands on the most expensive Asrock A320 model, the A320M Pro4, which makes little sense at $65 but I wanted to see if memory support was any better. Here I was unable to post with the 3200 XMP profile enabled and was forced to run at 2933, which did appear to be stable. I should note that increasing the DRAM voltage didn't help on either board.

Now I'm not saying all A320 motherboards won't work above spec for the memory but I tried two different models and neither worked. I suspect the same might be true for the ultra cheap $60 B350 boards that share the same physical design as the budget A320 models.

[Ozaron]

Eh, while I don't like the concept of stealing RAM from my primary to get it booting, will happily do that if ASRock release a BIOS revision for RR which actually works! Suppose it could be tested fairly quickly now and prove / disprove the issue.
Can easily remove the M.2 but I can't see a blank M.2 doing the system much harm, especially since it was fine with boot kit. Just searching for reasons that it might refuse to boot for now.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Eh, while I don't like the concept of stealing RAM from my primary to get it booting, will happily do that if ASRock release a BIOS revision for RR which actually works! Suppose it could be tested fairly quickly now and prove / disprove the issue.
Can easily remove the M.2 but I can't see a blank M.2 doing the system much harm, especially since it was fine with boot kit. Just searching for reasons that it might refuse to boot for now.

Look at the article I linked to,the motherboard had issues even using the RAM at 2933MHZ which is what RR is rated for!! So maybe try to boot first with slower RAM and then manually set the RAM at 2666MHZ and see if the 3200MHZ stuff boots at 2666MHZ.

[Ozaron]

Look at the article I linked to,the motherboard had issues even using the RAM at 2933MHZ which is what RR is rated for!! So maybe try to boot first with slower RAM and then manually set the RAM at 2666MHZ and see if the 3200MHZ stuff boots at 2666MHZ.

Yep, I'd seen it, and I have to assume that ASrock has a BIOS patch on the way to get the board at least to its proper 2933MHz rating, which is what I meant. There's 2666MHz rated DDR4 in my primary PC but obviously I'd have to gut it to check if RAM speed is the problem (and not know how long for either). Swapping kits would put me at half memory capacity for now, might not be worth it until there's a new BIOS version for the A320M.

[Ozaron]

Tried it out with 2666MHz CL15 single 8GB stick. Removed the M.2 and disconnected the CD drive (heh) but to no avail. It's like I never flashed it to 4.50, though I can guarantee that it is version 4.50. Still power cycles before loading BIOS.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Tried it out with 2666MHz CL15 single 8GB stick. Removed the M.2 and disconnected the CD drive (heh) but to no avail. It's like I never flashed it to 4.50, though I can guarantee that it is version 4.50. Still power cycles before loading BIOS.

Perhaps you need to ask ASRock what is happening?? Or the board is faulty.