Wednesday, May 2nd 2018
AMD to Begin Sampling 7nm "Zen 2" Processors Within 2018 for a 2019 Launch
It looks like AMD's processor product launch cycle is on steroids, and keeping up (or even ahead) of Intel. After launching the first 12 nm processor architecture with "Zen+," the company is giving final touches to what it hopes to be the world's first 7 nanometer processor architecture, with "Zen 2." The company will reportedly begin sampling the chip within 2018, to enable volume production and market launch in 2019. Speaking at an investors conference call following the company's Q1-2018 Results release, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su confirmed the 7 nm roll-out strategy of her company.
"We have a 7nm GPU based on Vega that we'll sample later this year. We have a 7nm server CPU that we'll sample later this year. And then, obviously, we have a number of products that are planned for 2019 as well. So it's a very, very busy product season for us. But we're pleased with the sort of the execution on the product roadmap," Dr. Su said. Unlike Zen+, Zen 2 is a major update to the company's processor micro-architecture, and presents the company with opportunities to improve several silicon-level specifications, such as the number of cores per CCX, the IPC of each core, the core-count of the die, the cache hierarchy, and the overall energy-efficiency.
Source:
Seeking Alpha
"We have a 7nm GPU based on Vega that we'll sample later this year. We have a 7nm server CPU that we'll sample later this year. And then, obviously, we have a number of products that are planned for 2019 as well. So it's a very, very busy product season for us. But we're pleased with the sort of the execution on the product roadmap," Dr. Su said. Unlike Zen+, Zen 2 is a major update to the company's processor micro-architecture, and presents the company with opportunities to improve several silicon-level specifications, such as the number of cores per CCX, the IPC of each core, the core-count of the die, the cache hierarchy, and the overall energy-efficiency.
101 Comments on AMD to Begin Sampling 7nm "Zen 2" Processors Within 2018 for a 2019 Launch
Intel's superiority, however, is stiill in better cache latency, which means better game performance.
No.
The upcoming 7LP 7nm FinFET process will, according to GloFo, provide the possibility to achieve around 30% performance improvement over 14nm, or 20-30% over the current 12nm process of the Ryzen 2 (which I believe was a quick and dirty transition from AMD, as they have the majority of their focus on Ryzen 3 / Zen 2). Traditionally, the actual clock speed improvements are half of those stated to be possible (because of various factors, like architecture limits), so my I guess is at least a 10% frequency improvement here -- around 4.8 GHz turbo on some cores, and all cores at somewhere around 4.3 GHz is very, very plausible. This is true, and AMD will already at least match Intel in IPC with Ryzen 3 next year; that fact is pretty sure. But it's certainly not the 15% IPC you claim....
How much more improvement they will do in IPC further down the road remains to be seen, although I doubt it'll be as good as Zen 2. There's supposedly going to be two major revisions to the architecture, with Zen 2 next year being the first one. The second one is Zen 5 (Zen 4 name is being skipped) in 2021. AMD are said to have a whole new architecture ready after that as well, from what I've heard.
In the question of clock speed, I think AMD have a greater base from which to start from than Intel. Frequency increases have their limits, and Intel can increase the frequency only so much, before they need to stop. AMD, on the other hand, still have pretty conservative clockspeeds in comparison, and have greater potential of performance increases as we move along. A potential AMD needs to take advantage of: single-digit IPC superiority is not enough to make up for their clock speed deficit, if they want to perform better than Intel Core.
I think the major point of comparison was SRAM cell area or smth like that.
But compared to 8700K - no way 5775c even matches it.
There's also still doubts about GloFo being able to provide 7nm early enough for AMD -- unless of course AMD are planning to release Zen 2 in the summer of 2019, or maybe even later.
Waiting for Zen2 is quite a ways out. If someone needs a new build now, they should just build now.
Fot me to know this chip hits 5.0 air tells me it has plenty of life left, it will be put back to 4.2GHz till 5.0 is truly needed lol
If 7nm Ryzen comes out before Intel gets (real) 10nm/8-core products out... They will curbstomp Intel harder than possibly even SandyBridge crushed AMD.
Anyway, unnecessary political comments aside, AMD is showing it to Intel in a big way. I'm really loving me some competition, finally.
Actually one of the latest rumors is that AMD will separate the controllers, I/O, and core's onto their own separate dies; and then they will also make 3 and 4 core CCX's. The idea is that they will then have a 12nm I/O in the center, and then add 7nm 3 or 4-core CCX's as they wish around the other parts of the CPU.
TLDR - AMD is likely to have more than 8 cores with Ryzen 3, and they will likely make it even cheaper to produce than before by splitting up the CPU's into smaller components.
The most prevalent rumor is that the top desktop Ryzen 3 will have 12-cores... and that would mean they did mostly focus on IPC. ;)
You claim that Ryzen will be "so far in front of any Intel offering it will be a painful mirroring of the xxxdozer vs Core days". Even very conservatively, we're talking about another 30%+ increase in IPC here, if it's gonna surpass Core in any way to actually make up your description. Meaning AMD will increase IPC by 30-40% and clock speed by 15% (again, both numbers are conservative).
So this slide by AMD
Is, clearly bollocks, huh? It's pretty evident that you, Captain_Tom, know better than AMD themselves, and AMD's graph showing around 15% overall performance uplift by Zen 2 is massive standing. Instead, the increase will be, as you said, like this:
Yeah...no.
It's people like you who are responsible for creating these exaggerated and stupendous hypes about AMD products, that always end up completely failing.
2) Is English your first language? You seem to not understand what the word "could" means. I said Ryzen 3 could be as big as an uplift as Ryzen 1 was vs Excavator (~50% boost). I am only basing this "could" on recent rumors AND GloFo's own performance estimates:
www.extremetech.com/computing/263286-sitting-globalfoundries-talk-7nm-euv
^^^ The current estimate is that 7nm products can use 60% less power than 14nm for the same performance, or it can also offer a 40% boost at the same power consumption. There is also up to a massive 45% reduction in die size (almost half the size!). So even if we were to be insanely conservative and assume the end result is half as good as expected, we would get enough room to add 2-6 more cores and increase single-threaded performance by 40%.
3) So then let's get this straight - you think adding 50% more cores, and a massive IPC boost will not equal a 40-55% overall performance uplift. Well then I guess we can agree to disagree!
TLDR: It is not insane to think the R7 3800X could be a 12-core with 20% higher IPC and 4.8GHz clocks. That would destroy Intel's current plan of just slapping 2 more cores on Skylake again.
Supposedly, the middle chip will be everything except the cores and the other 4 chips will be only the cores. Obviously, there should be infinity fabric in each chip to connect them.
Whether or not this is true or complete bollocks, i don't know ... but it is plausible. This should not increase core count, unless they also have CCXs in the corners, which isn't beyond the realm of possibilities: it could effectively double the core count.