Tuesday, December 3rd 2013
"Vishera" End Of The Line for AMD FX CPUs: Roadmap
We'd feared something like this would happen for some time now, but leaked AMD product roadmaps confirmed it that AMD FX "Vishera" is the last line of CPUs from AMD. The company will only focus on APUs from here onward, and at the very most, one could expect CPU core counts to go up from their current quad-core stale-meat since A-series "Llano," which will continue into the 2014 A-Series "Kaveri," too.
The alleged AMD roadmap slide leaked to the web by ProHardver.hu points out that socket AM3+ "Vishera" will exist on AMD's product stack for as far as AMD's eye can see - looking deep into even 2015. Unless AMD is planning on hanging its towel with AM3+, it wouldn't mark its roadmap slide out in this way. 2015 will see the introduction of "Carrizo," an APU that succeeds "Kaveri," which will be based on future-generation "Excavator" CPU micro-architecture, and a future-generation GPU architecture, along with full HSA programming model implementation. "Kabini" will have its spell running into mid-2014, at which point "Beema" will succeed it.
Unless AMD is planning on 6-core, and 8-core APUs with "Carrizo," (we know that "Kaveri" is neither,) the roadmap reveals that AMD has given up on making processors that are pricier than $150. The company could focus its client products division onto APUs and GPUs, while multi-core processors could be kept alive by the enterprise products division under the Opteron banner, although we've not seen roadmaps to back that theory.
Sources:
ProHardver.hu, SweClockers
The alleged AMD roadmap slide leaked to the web by ProHardver.hu points out that socket AM3+ "Vishera" will exist on AMD's product stack for as far as AMD's eye can see - looking deep into even 2015. Unless AMD is planning on hanging its towel with AM3+, it wouldn't mark its roadmap slide out in this way. 2015 will see the introduction of "Carrizo," an APU that succeeds "Kaveri," which will be based on future-generation "Excavator" CPU micro-architecture, and a future-generation GPU architecture, along with full HSA programming model implementation. "Kabini" will have its spell running into mid-2014, at which point "Beema" will succeed it.
133 Comments on "Vishera" End Of The Line for AMD FX CPUs: Roadmap
/Waits for WCCF to repackage this as front page article
Well understood years ago. But a trace operating at 70% of the speed of light.
209 854 721 m / s
At 5Ghz switching rate means it can only travel.
0.0419709442 m / s
and that is 1.6524 inch per second, so this is the longest any trace can be assuming everything works perfectly, and you have to be able to read and write data out of caches at this incredible rate too unless you want a significantly higher percentage of time in wait states.......that causes timing issues at speed too.
So we are getting close to how fast we can make processors switch unless they start learning about capacitive roll off for every switch and transistor, and the logic to do that is cost prohibitive. Intel was the first to find this theoretical limit when trying to reach the absurd speeds they thought the P4 possible, they then wrote papers on it and it as well as the poor performance and other issues were the reason they moved to a shorter pipeline and higher IPC instead of higher speed. A horse AMD now seems stuck beating aimlessly.
I see this newest is already a steamroller :D
it would only make sense if they lined them up according to the number- so A10 are ten core, etc etc
6M/12C Excavator w/ L3, triple/quad DDR4 IMC and 16 PI GCN compute units @ 20nm @ 125W TDP please? :D
In any case I don't think AMD will release a 6-core Kaveri anytime soon, unless they change up the roadmap (wouldn't make sense w/ 20nm 65W Carizzo replacing 28nm 95W Kaveri I guess). But I think we can expect a Kaveri clock refresh later next year tho.
AMD retorted to this tale of woe not long after it was released stating.
FX not dead and not being sidelined or forgotten and will progress into the future.
AM3+ wasnt mentioned positively or neg but likely wont get beyond 2014
and that the slide in question is Bs ,not Amd's
also its one year view doesnt state what comes after FX because they are not discussing that at this time, not that when the chart ends so does FX thats just not a fact.
8 core APU's or 6 even wont arrive until TSV 3d chips become easy(and cheap) to make(2015-16) and you can bank that opinion as fact. until then server scrap parts will make up future FX chips, also bankable and imho before 2015 am3+ WILL see steamroller cores(im banking this one though it is just my opinion based on future server upgrade options for the big data crew)
Now what Bt should do is change the title: didn't know this many people were dialexic, lots are reading "End of the Line" as "End of Life". :banghead:
"AMD will continue to supply AM3+ and AMD FX processors for the foreseeable future, as per AMD's official roadmap update at APU'13"
no end point or date was given for FX or AM3+
just because a chart ends does not mean anything the next chart will dictate whats next or how long am3+ is here........................
no metion of vischera's reign or any future plans at all were mentioned in fact the only vischera comment was that they had just brought out the fx9xxx's
how would it be wise to talk up what's next while you are still clearing stock of what's here??
It's also the best time when I think AMD should make a real succesor to 990FX and AM3+, since DDR4 will be there for awhile. Sure, once can speculate SATA-Express, PCI-Express 4.0, maybe support for more than 2 64bit buses and so on.
Edit: So they might as well merge the two.
and micropage etc Amd would wisely use that extra space for MOOOAR shaders not two more x86 cores;) maybe multi core will truley be multi (type) core in this future though too.
Intel is planning to build new PCI Express 4.0 compliant mainboards at the last quarter of 2015 this year.
If AMD do not wish/need to ready a PCI Express 3.0 mainboard for high segment, this means that, they will not ready any PCI Express 4.0 chipset nor mainboard. So this means, if AMD can not jump to a lower level branch, they can not possibly reach to a higher level.
AMD is dying. Again, if they can not reach enthusiasts, they can not earn much money. Low level APU's are not much profitable. This means, they are close to high profit marge.
Sooner or later, they will close the shop! Their graphics card serie is not so good. This 2014 summer and the earlier 2013 summer, AMD did not managed to release a new graphics driver for 3-4 months. nVidia released 2 or more at the summer period for gamers.
If you have lately bought an AMD graphics card, all summer long in 2 years, you couldn't manage to load a new driver for your graphics card, which is a bad thing!
AMD graphics cards are working louder, compared with same level nVidia counterpart.
Shortly, AMD is no longer a good choice at all....