Tuesday, April 28th 2015
AMD "Zen" CPU Core Block Diagram Surfaces
As a quick follow up to our older report on AMD's upcoming "Zen" CPU core micro-architecture being a reversion to the monolithic core design, and a departure from its "Bulldozer" multicore module design which isn't exactly flying off the shelves, a leaked company slide provides us the first glimpse into the core design. Zen looks a lot like "Stars," the core design AMD launched with its Phenom series, except it has a lot more muscle, and one could see significant IPC improvements over the current architecture.
To begin with, Zen features monolithic fetch and decode units. On Bulldozer, two cores inside a module featured dedicated decode and integer units with shared floating-point units. On Zen, there's a monolithic decode unit, and single integer and floating points. The integer unit has 6 pipelines, compared to 4 per core on Bulldozer. The floating point unit has two large 256-bit FMAC (fused-multiply accumulate) units, compared to two 128-bit ones on Bulldozer. The core has a dedicated 512 KB L2 cache. This may be much smaller than the 2 MB per module on Bulldozer, but also indicate that the core is able to push through things fast enough to not need cushioning by a cache (much like Intel's Haswell architecture featuring just 256 KB per core). In a typical multi-core Zen chip, the cores will converge at a large last-level cache, which routes data between them to the processor's uncore, which will feature a DDR4 IMC and a PCI-Express 3.0 root complex.
Sources:
Planet3DNow, Many Thanks to qubit for the tip.
To begin with, Zen features monolithic fetch and decode units. On Bulldozer, two cores inside a module featured dedicated decode and integer units with shared floating-point units. On Zen, there's a monolithic decode unit, and single integer and floating points. The integer unit has 6 pipelines, compared to 4 per core on Bulldozer. The floating point unit has two large 256-bit FMAC (fused-multiply accumulate) units, compared to two 128-bit ones on Bulldozer. The core has a dedicated 512 KB L2 cache. This may be much smaller than the 2 MB per module on Bulldozer, but also indicate that the core is able to push through things fast enough to not need cushioning by a cache (much like Intel's Haswell architecture featuring just 256 KB per core). In a typical multi-core Zen chip, the cores will converge at a large last-level cache, which routes data between them to the processor's uncore, which will feature a DDR4 IMC and a PCI-Express 3.0 root complex.
43 Comments on AMD "Zen" CPU Core Block Diagram Surfaces
I don't expect this new architecture to actually beat Intel, but I'm hoping it will bring them back to the point where they can at least compete up into the $300 price range. It would be nice to have an AMD CPU that can compete with the 4790K(or 5770K when it comes out).
AMD, on the other hand, had their phenom 1 CPUs delayed due to fabrication issues and then the TLB bug ruined that release completely. Their phenom 2 CPUs though were quite close to Intel's Cored 2 quads despite having less integers pipes per core (3 vs 4). Bulldozer didn't make it the way it designed to be. It's a complicated design and it led to big underperforming small cores and slow caches.
If Intel were so magical they would have had IGPs by now that beat what AMD has has now...
Be realistic about mate!
Although I don't follow much about computer tech anymore or games I should have known this...
Anyhow your post make me search about Jim Keller & found a great video interview (May 2014) with him and AMD team
I didn't give much hope for AMD but now after seeing this video maybe AMD still got a fighting chance for late 2015 to early 2016?
Mikey
What I care about at this point is Greenland: What is it (spec-wise)? How does it fit in? Is it one of many such chips (for multiple designs)? Will AMD MCM one with a low core-count cpu and many into a discrete product? Is it Fiji 14nm? Is it a derivative/divisible of Fiji (1024/2048)? How much power will that chip draw?
Could someone go ahead and leak that slide, please? :slap:Word. The thing is, he's not completely wrong imo, as there's a really difficult convictional/practical split there. It's hard to love, or even openly support companies like nvidia, even if they often have their ship a little bit more together. They're not unlike Apple (and arguably worse in some regards). In the case of Intel, I think it's part of the human condition to feel connected to the underdog. It's more-so exacerbated by how consumer-friendly AMD is in their public face versus the other companies whom seem simply driven completely by the almighty dollar (which granted arguably makes them more successful). I think the unspoken understanding among many (and I could be off-base) is AMD is allowed some performance/efficiency wiggle-room as their actions, some of which hold them back from financial success, give them 'political capital', as we want companies like that to succeed.
That only extends so far though, which I think is his point. I'm a huge AMD fan. A massive supporter; over the years I've used their options more often than not while closely following and admiring their technological developments. I think their methodologies (open-standards), pricing/market targets, and certain engineering breakthroughs are all uniquely great things, and deserve support. If they had something that fit my requirements, I would likely choose them without a second thought. The fact of the the matter is though...
...I write this from my Intel/nvidia-powered machine.
First, it's unconfirmed. As others stated, getting hyped over a slide without any basis in reality is just a waste of energy.
Second, why is any of this unreasonable? What is being announced is functionally a Phenom III. People said this when Bulldozer came out. I remember asking why AMD didn't immediately jump ship, die shrink the Phenom II, and consider Bulldozer as the equivalent of Pentium 4 (great on paper, poo in reality, gotta spread that Netburst hate). The better part of a decade later, and they announce exactly that. I'm not seeing why any of this is ground breaking.
Next, AMD and Nvidea share ownership of the patents that make most GPUs possible. They exist as such because video cards wars are stupid. Think back to the 90's, where each GPU would perform differently in games because they were few standards. AMD and Nvidea got together, and agreed to licensing of patents so their products had a market, rather than trying to split the existing market based upon hardware. It makes sense, if you release the next hot piece of hardware, and want everyone to be able to buy it and upgrade. This is why the Intel GPU generally blows. It isn't bad, but they have to find ways around existing patents. Sometime a simple job can become impossible, when the proper tools are denied to you.
The consumer market sucks. CPU manufacturers don't bend to it, because selling a tray of CPUs earns more money than selling a dozen individual ones. AMD, in the business setting, is a joke. They are more problematic in data centers, because of heat and a need for raw performance. Even if AMD released an excellent CPU that undercut Intel on the consumer side, their adoption into servers wouldn't happen for years. They cut their nose of with Opteron running like bulldozer, and coming back from that will take much more than one decent CPU release.
Why does AMD even care about the CPU side? They no longer have their own foundries. This puts them at a disadvantage when compared to Intel. Competing against Intel has also yielded poor results, because AMD doesn't have the budget to compete with Intel, Nvidea, and ARM all at once. The APU is decent, but ARM is a strong bit of competition. Nvidea provides more than enough competition in the GPU market. How can AMD do anything but compete against Intel with value? Right now Piledriver may be cheaper than Haswell, but it's performance isn't up to the standards consumers expect. 70% of the performance, for 80% of the price isn't a deal, and that's what AMD has got. Even if tomorrow they released a chip with 80% of the performance at 80% of the cost people wouldn't adopt it in the business world.
I'm hoping that Zen puts AMD into competition with Intel in the consumer market. I'm also hoping that the server implementation is good enough to draw business partners back to AMD. Despite these hopes, I think AMD should be focusing efforts on the APU and GPU. Those battles can be won, and the Zen architecture may well make a very mean little APU. Dividing their resources up for three battles just isn't a solid strategy.
As for the rest of you, no this probably won't bring AMD "back into the game." But if it's good it might bring them back into the ballpark. It certainly won't hurt them to have a moderately competitive CPU product for once.
I would love to see AMD competing with Intel on their i5 and i7 CPUs so that Intel would have some incentive to give us more than a small increase in performance with each new generation but the reality is that AMD simply cannot compete with Intel. Intel has a market cap that is 87 times larger than AMD. Intel outspends AMD 10 to 1 in R&D. AMD is crippled by debt. They are almost nonexistent in the server market and,
"During the second quarter of 2014, Intel generated nearly 95% of PC processor revenue, shipping 84% of all desktop processors and 88% of all laptop processors."
www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/032515/3-major-problems-facing-advanced-micro-devices-amd.aspx
Last year AMD lost 100s of millions of dollars and this year looks worse so far. In the last 2 weeks their stock has fallen 20%. Investors are getting nervous because if AMD does wind up in bankruptcy they will be the real losers. Creditors will come first. Investors will probably lose everything.
Net Profit Margins Q1 2015
Intel 15.59%
Nvidia 15.44%
AMD -17.48%
I think AMD should just stick with their GPU and APU and forget the rest.
Sorry but, the only good upgrade for me in the Intel area is a 5820K. The only way to double my performance would be with a 5960x and even then, I would mostly only see it in benchmarks. (I do not render video or do 4k gaming which is the only good reasons to move from what I already have.)