Friday, May 31st 2024
AMD Zen 5 Chiplet Built on 4 nm, "Granite Ridge" First Model Numbers Leaked
An alleged company slide by motherboard maker GIGABYTE leaked a few interesting tidbits about the upcoming AMD Ryzen 9000 "Granite Ridge" Socket AM5 desktop processor powered by the "Zen 5" microarchitecture. To begin with, we're getting our first confirmation that the "Zen 5" common CCD used on "Granite Ridge" desktop processors and future EPYC "Turin" server processors, is built on the 4 nm EUV foundry node by TSMC, an upgrade from the 5 nm EUV node that the "Zen 4" CCD is built on. This could be the same version of the TSMC N4 node that AMD had been using for its "Phoenix" and "Hawk Point" mobile processors.
AMD is likely carrying over the client I/O die (cIOD) from the "Raphael" processor. This is built on the TSMC 6 nm DUV node. It packs a basic iGPU based on RDNA 2 with 2 compute units; a dual-channel DDR5 memory controller, and a 28-lane PCIe Gen 5 root complex, besides some SoC connectivity. AMD is rumored to be increasing the native DDR5 speeds for "Granite Ridge," up from the DDR5-5200 JEDEC-standard native speed, and DDR5-6000 "sweetspot" speed of "Raphael," so the cIOD isn't entirely the same.
Each "Zen 5" CCD is confirmed to contain no more than 8 CPU cores, and the "Granite Ridge" processor has a maximum of 2 CCDs, which means the CPU core counts is unchanged generationally—you have 16-core, 12-core, 8-core, and 6-core SKUs, spanning the Ryzen 9, Ryzen 7, and Ryzen 5 brand extensions. The slide also confirms the first four SKUs AMD is planning to launch—the Ryzen 9 9950X is on the top, likely a 16-core/32-thread chip. This is followed by the Ryzen 9 9900X, a 12-core/24-thread chip. After this, is the Ryzen 7 9700X, an 8-core/16-thread chip, and lastly, there's the Ryzen 5 9600 (non-X), a 6-core/12-thread chip. TDP ranges between 65 W for the 9600, to 170 W for the top Ryzen 9 chips, just like on the Ryzen 7000 series.
Source:
HXL
AMD is likely carrying over the client I/O die (cIOD) from the "Raphael" processor. This is built on the TSMC 6 nm DUV node. It packs a basic iGPU based on RDNA 2 with 2 compute units; a dual-channel DDR5 memory controller, and a 28-lane PCIe Gen 5 root complex, besides some SoC connectivity. AMD is rumored to be increasing the native DDR5 speeds for "Granite Ridge," up from the DDR5-5200 JEDEC-standard native speed, and DDR5-6000 "sweetspot" speed of "Raphael," so the cIOD isn't entirely the same.
81 Comments on AMD Zen 5 Chiplet Built on 4 nm, "Granite Ridge" First Model Numbers Leaked
A few decades back companies where trying to build the best products, to create a customer base that will prefer those products knowing that they are of good quality. Today it's about having profits in every quarter of every year, meaning inventing not new products, but new reasons for consumers to spend money. And yeah the products shouldn't be good for a long period, just the warranty period, so people need to buy again. Things have changed and companies that can get fast on the current hype train make the most money. The herd needs to pay money to have at least the illusion they are improving their lives through those products.
PS If AMD dies.... all hopes to Mediatek!!!!!
It's done a tone of great job for me.They actually gained market share in DIY gaming after release of RX 7000 series, but recent drop in sales is largely contributed to weak console market which is saturated now, four years old and without new devices, so less money from APUs. Basically, for every 5 cards Nvidia sells, AMD sells one.
Discrete GPU market is slowly, but consistently getting smaller though. Let's take top-down approach. Discrete GPU sales hit a historical global low in 2023, both from AMD and Nvidia. That's the first thing we need to know. It's slowly recovering, but it's nowhere near best years for either of the companies. There's an inevitable downward trend since 2005 and reasons for this are numerous: better APUs, better mobility iGPUs, higher prices of discrete GPUs, etc. Desktop GPUs are becoming relatively smaller market despite keeping similar revenue share.
Majority of discrete graphics cards are sold in laptop market, where Nvidia dominates more than in DIY dekstop. As the article below shows, 73% of global PC systems are laptops. So, most of what Nvidia sells is actually in laptops and not in desktop GPUs.
www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/sales-of-desktop-graphics-cards-increase-28-year-on-year-as-quarterly-gpu-shipments-drop-10-in-q1-report
Gaming market has also been changing and the most dominant gaming segment in the world are actually mobile phones, believe it or not. PC and console gaming have roughly enough revenue share and handhelds are somewhat picking up pace, but it's a snail pace in comparison to explosion in mobile phone gaming. This makes sense, as majority of people on this planet do not live in the West and cannot often afford seperate systems, but do everything on phones, including gaming. This market is bound to be twice as large as PC+consoles combined. So, paradoxically, it is ARM iGPUs from Qualcomm, MediaTek, Huawei and others that dominate in world gaming market, and Nvidia and AMD are only secondary players in much bigger game.
We should be mindful that laptop power requirements are shifting beneath our feet to become more stringent, climate change friendly, more sustainable and less wasteful, for example EU legislation mandating USB-C charging up to maximum 240W (PD 3.1 spec), to ever more efficient and performant CPUs and APUs. Any top gaming laptop entering EU in 2026 onwards will have to meet the standard. So, the whole industry got the message from legislators and are working towards this goal.
Both Nvidia and AMD have noticed those global trends and they are preparing adjustments and new approaches:
- AMD has withdrawn from laptop discrete GPUs and are designing Strix Point and Strix Halo offer with up to 40 CUs that would attempt to push Nvidia's class 50 and class 60 laptop cards out of more laptops in next couple of years, while using less power and space in entire laptop package.
- Nvidia will move to design ARM iGPU, possibly with MediaTek, as they are threatened to be pushed out of more laptops by multiple players: Qualcomm's Adreno iGPU, AMD's Strix Halo and its offspring, and Intel's iGPU based on Xe2 and future iterations (if Intel manages to scale up those iGPUs...).
- AMD seems to be putting all cards in development of powerful laptop and console APUs for gaming, which makes sense for this segment. Vast majority of global laptops do not have a discrete GPU, so companies will mostly compete on the quality of CPU and its integrated graphics, as this single chip gets the biggest sales numbers in most laptop designs. This strategy seems to be bringing fruit already, as Lisa Su declared that at least 150 designs with Strix have been commissioned. Today, we can see that majority of laptops that Asus announced for Computex are Strix Point laptops, some of which still have Nvidia discrete GPU, but this can easily shift in 2-3 years.This is not ready and cannot look in this way, as 16 big core CCX/CCD does not exist.
Zen6 will have three different chiplets: 8C, 16c and 32c, so more combinations will be possible.
Also, current packaging does not allow for big and small core chiplets to be mixed on one die. They need to design a new package, as those two types of chiplets have different topology of GMI interconnects.
PS: A question isn't a statement.
My biggest concern with these new ones is the boost clocks. I really wish they would allow some of the lower end ones to boost up to the same levels as the high end. Overclocking these has always been a little interesting and I am concerned with the Ryzen 7 line.