Wednesday, May 6th 2015
AMD "Zen" Offers a 40% IPC Increase Over "Excavator"
In its Investor Day presentation, led by CEO Lisa Su, and CTO Mark Papermaster, AMD made a slew of careful, near-term product announcements, and market strategies. One of its announcements that strike us, is the company's emphasis on getting the CPU core design right. The company talked about its "Zen" CPU core architecture, not from a technical standpoint, on how it fits into the company's near-term. It turns out that the company is betting on a massive performance increase.
AMD announced that its "Zen" CPU core, will offer a massive 40 percent increase in IPC (instructions per clock) or in other words, performance/clock, over the existing "Excavator" CPU core architecture. Zen will introduce features such as SMT (simultaneous multi-threading), a brand new low-latency cache system, and will leverage the 14 nm FinFET process. The first products based on Zen will be desktop CPUs in the 6th generation FX processor family, which will be launched in 2016. AMD plans to unify the CPU and APU into one socket, which will be called AM4 (and not the previously thought of "FM3"). You'll be able to install both CPUs (which lack integrated graphics, but feature more CPU cores); and the company's 7th generation A-series APUs (which integrate both CPU and iGPUs), on the same kind of motherboards.
AMD announced that its "Zen" CPU core, will offer a massive 40 percent increase in IPC (instructions per clock) or in other words, performance/clock, over the existing "Excavator" CPU core architecture. Zen will introduce features such as SMT (simultaneous multi-threading), a brand new low-latency cache system, and will leverage the 14 nm FinFET process. The first products based on Zen will be desktop CPUs in the 6th generation FX processor family, which will be launched in 2016. AMD plans to unify the CPU and APU into one socket, which will be called AM4 (and not the previously thought of "FM3"). You'll be able to install both CPUs (which lack integrated graphics, but feature more CPU cores); and the company's 7th generation A-series APUs (which integrate both CPU and iGPUs), on the same kind of motherboards.
49 Comments on AMD "Zen" Offers a 40% IPC Increase Over "Excavator"
Perhaps they'll finally do better. Hopefully, it's not so late that they run out of money before they get there. They should have replaced the Bulldozer-derived chips a long, long time ago instead of iterating on them for a couple years and THEN hiring someone to make a new core.
IMO if they manage to get at least 20% better IPC, it would be fine (for gaming).
I would need to see proof of this 50% increase claim. However, that AMD is not the AMD of today, things have changed from the top down. Either way, it is clear that waiting for Zen is a good option since I already have a FX 8350 and 8320. No need to upgrade at this time.
Either way I am happy but curious beyond belief. I am just wondering how the motherboard market is going to be done in this series being the differences listed for these chips coming out. Mostly interested in the TDP and how the boards power delivery will be overall.
Also, with a headline like this, I can just see this thread getting that little hot flame icon next to it real soon. ;)
Also, intel isn't changing anything. You're going to keep getting shiny new sandy bridges LOL Except they won't overclock for shit.
I see this thread has got that little flame icon on the front page now. ;)