AMD Confirms Key "Summit Ridge" Specs

[btarunr]

AMD CEO Lisa Su, speaking at the company's Computex reveal held up the most important CPU product for the company, the new eight-core "Summit Ridge" processor. A posterboy of the company's new "Zen" micro-architecture, "Summit Ridge" is an eight-core processor with SMT enabling 16 threads for the OS to deal with, a massive 40% IPC increase over the current "Excavator" architecture, and a new platform based around the AM4 socket.

The AM4 socket sees AMD completely relocate the core-logic (chipset) to the processor's die. Socket AM4 motherboards won't have any chipset on them. This also means that the processor has an integrated PCI-Express gen 3.0 root complex, besides the DDR4 integrated memory controller. With the chipset being completely integrated, connectivity such as USB and SATA will be routed out of the processor. The AM4 socket is shared with another kind of products, the "Bristol Ridge" APU, which features "Excavator" CPU cores and a 512-SP GCN 1.2 iGPU.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[hojnikb]

Now the big question is, when they gonna roll out AM4 boards and bristol ridge apus...

 

[RejZoR]

When CPU's are ready.

 

[Naito]

When CPU's are ready.

In due season.

 

[TheGuruStud]

Intel sure is gonna be pissy about trying to keep up on integrated graphics LOL

I haven't seen any mention of quad channel memory for the 8 core+ flavor...I would HOPE that this is the case. I don't find it entirely useful, but would be nice to know it's there.

 

[bug]

The question is: is 40% enough to overtake intel?

 

[TheGuruStud]

The question is: is 40% enough to overtake intel?

If 40% is accurate and you assume that excavator is up to 30% faster (hopefully a full 30) than bulldozer (we'll never have one with full L3, so there's no way to know for sure), then it has 60-70% higher IPC than bulldozer. Do the math, I'm lazy.

I think clocking/OCing ability will be their make or break. We all know intel is tapped out, hopefully Samsung has a trick or two to make 5ghz an easy reality. If they're aren't clocked high...then the IPC increase doesn't matter.

 

[Naito]

The question is: is 40% enough to overtake intel?

I don't think it's going to faze them that much. Intel seems to have been really conservative with the consumer range. I'd expect decent price drops and/or core increases throughout, if competition is to be had again.

 

[qubit]

If I remember correctly, these will be 8 fully discreet cores as opposed to those siamesed modules in the previous generation?

I'd love to see Zen finally giving Intel some real competition, especially with 8 true cores, but I remain sceptical until I see a full review from a respectable tech website like TPU.

 

[G33k2Fr34k]

The question is: is 40% enough to overtake intel?

IPC is just a PR number, like Flops. It doesn't really mean much performance wise. I'd say that Zen should at least double the performance of Vishera CPUs, given that core to core Zen has double the integer resources and quadruple the FP resources. The new Carrizo+ based chips are advertised as being 50% faster than Vishera (or was it kaveri? ), so I'd expect Zen based FX CPUs to more than double the performance of current FX CPUs with the same number of cores.

 

[Chaitanya]

Intel sure is gonna be pissy about trying to keep up on integrated graphics LOL

I haven't seen any mention of quad channel memory for the 8 core+ flavor...I would HOPE that this is the case. I don't find it entirely useful, but would be nice to know it's there.

If Amd decides to go back to workstation market then I certainly hope atleast those cpus should have quad channel memory controller. For desktop market its nearly useless.

 

[bug]

IPC is just a PR number, like Flops.

Best laugh of the day, tyvm.

 

[medi01]

"Socket AM4 motherboards won't have any chipset on them. "

Woah? Seriously? And how much would chipsetless boards cost?

...like Flops. It doesn't really mean much performance wise

Ignoring what IPC is (you are wrong about that too), flops is VERY precise measure of what how many floating point operations a chip can do.
It alone is indeed not enough to predict performance, but when comparing 2 chips on the same architecture, it's pretty good.
Also, when having big differences such as 2 vs 8, you can be sure the former is much slower than the latter, no matter which vendor/architecture.

The question is: is 40% enough to overtake intel?

AMD's Jim Taylor said "we are as close to Intel as we've never been", so nope, definitely not in high end.
I couldn't care less about high end though.

 

[Ubersonic]

If 40% is accurate and you assume that excavator is up to 30% faster (hopefully a full 30) than bulldozer (we'll never have one with full L3, so there's no way to know for sure), then it has 60-70% higher IPC than bulldozer. Do the math, I'm lazy.

Well, basic napkin math, Bulldozer has ~ the same IPC as Core2. So, Wolfdale +5% = Nehalem, Nehalem +19% = Sandy Bridge, SB +3% = Ivy Bridge, IB +11% = Haswell, HW + 3.3% = Broadwell.

So, 1.05*1.19*1.03*1.11*1.033 = 1.4756 => 47.56%, Skylake is not 20-30% faster than Broadwell, so if Zen is genuinely 60-70% higher IPC than Bulldozer then it's going to beat Skylake clock for clock (in Cinebench) all day long.

OFC this is all Napkin math using Cinebench IPC comparisons...

 

[vega22]

if these sell for the right money any performance gap to intel wont matter.

i mean 4 faster cores with 8 threads or 8 slower cores with 16 threads reminds me of a place we have been before xD

 

[Octopuss]

The question is: is 40% enough to overtake intel?

I read a post somewhere that made sense to me: they don't exactly have to beat Intel, they just have to be be good enough to offer a viable alternative.

 

[medi01]

So, 5+19+3+11+3.3= 41.3

Shouldn't you multiple instead?
1.05*1.19*1.03*1.11*1.033 = 1.4756 => 47.56%

 

[bug]

I read a post somewhere that made sense to me: they don't exactly have to beat Intel, they just have to be be good enough to offer a viable alternative.

And what alternative is that?
AMD can't just say, "well, we have slightly lower performance so we'll sell for less", because Intel has everything covered from ~$60 to the newly released, obscenely priced Broadwell-E. If they don't have better IPC, is AMD going to slap a beefier IGP and call it an alternative? Again?

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

if these sell for the right money any performance gap to intel wont matter.

i mean 4 faster cores with 8 threads or 8 slower cores with 16 threads reminds me of a place we have been before xD

The gap will certainly matter. Having more cores didnt exactly move bulldozer chips. AMD needs to be performance competitive if they ever want to break back into the server/workstation market, or ever have a competitive mobile chip.

 

[the54thvoid]

AMD's Jim Taylor said "we are as close to Intel as we've never been", so nope, definitely not in high end.
I couldn't care less about high end though.

It depends what we, the ordinary folk, call high end. I know Intel view high end as it's HEDT market but to me it's now more and more apparent, HEDT is a piece of crap for 90% of people. For gaming HEDT is a dead weight I've seen no good reason to support anything anymore from Intel that is more than 4 cores.

Sure for thread intensive work but that's a small minority of users. So, if Zen matches what the like of Skylake can do, that would be good. That being said, does Zen not come in a package that can be added upon to make multi threaded monsters (like uber skulltrail mobo's?).

I'm just pissed we wont see Zen till 2017 (probably, going on rumours so far). My patience will run out by November.

EDIT: I need to learn how to type - so many edits in this one bloody post.

 

[qubit]

IPC is just a PR number, like Flops. It doesn't really mean much performance wise.

More IPC is exactly why Intel is so much faster than AMD. It's certainly not a PR number.

 

[bug]

More IPC is exactly why Intel is so much faster than AMD. It's certainly not a PR number.

It's also why AthlonXP/64 whooped P4's ass

 

[qubit]

It's also why AthlonXP/64 whooped P4's ass

Oh yes, back in the day those Athlon 64s were fast with a capital F. The XP's were actually a bit slower overall unless heavily overclocked since the P4's clock speed advantage was a lot.

However, when I upgraded from a P4 Northwood 2.8GHz (3.5 o/c) to an A64 3800+ the gaming framerate shot up It was on an Abit AN8 Ultra mobo too.

 

[PP Mguire]

It depends what we, the ordinary folk, call high end. I know Intel view high end as it's HEDT market but to me it's now more and more apparent, HEDT is a piece of crap for 90% of people. For gaming HEDT is a dead weight I've seen no good reason to support anything anymore from Intel that is more than 4 cores.

Sure for thread intensive work but that's a small minority of users. So, if Zen matches what the like of Skylake can do, that would be good. That being said, does Zen not come in a package that can be added upon to make multi threaded monsters (like uber skulltrail mobo's?).

I'm just pissed we wont see Zen till 2017 (probably, going on rumours so far). My patience will run out by November.

EDIT: I need to learn how to type - so many edits in this one bloody post.

This. I'm not even interested in HEDT anymore and may hop to Kaby even after waiting this long for Skylake-E. If official support is dropped for 3/4 way and all I need is 2 cards then I don't need 40 lanes.

 

[The Quim Reaper]

The question is: is 40% enough to overtake intel?

They'll be hoping that double the cores of Skylake at 80%~ IPC of Skylake at a similar price will grab them a large share of the market.