Samsung Will Begin Manufacturing AMD's 14nm Zen Core By Year's End

[TechFan@ic]

It's no secret that AMD has been working on a brand new high-performance x86 CPU core to replace the aging Piledriver family of FX processors.
News of this new x86 core broke in May. AMD has also officially stated that the new core will go into new enthusiast FX parts.

 

With the legendary Jim Keller heading the project it's no doubt that we're possibly looking at a very interesting design. After all Jim was the man behind both the AthlonXP and Athlon64 processors. AMD's two best CPU microarchitectures in recent history.

It was revealed by the company's CEO Rory P Read during the Deutsche Bank Conference that the new core is code named "Zen".
It was widely speculated early on that AMD's next gen CPU core will be manufactured on the unified Globalfoundires/Samsung 14nm manufacturing process.

A report from ZDNet claims that among the many clients of Samsung including mobile giants Apple and Qualcomm, AMD would join the list.

The report claims that Samsung will begin volume production for AMD near the end of this year. This is exciting news because it means that for the first time in years AMD will compete against Intel on a comparable manufacturing process. This would almost certainly eliminate Intel's process advantage and means that Skylake will not go uncontested.

Stay tuned for more info.

[xox]

Hopefully something to compete with Intel.

 

However, knowing AMD; it probably won't.

[GzeroD]

Their are scarcely words to describe how much I want this too be true.

[MilkyWhite]

Hopefully something to compete with Intel.

 

However, knowing AMD; it probably won't.

I'm sorry but going by your comment you clearly don't "know" AMD. Because if you did you'd know that Intel's core series wouldn't have even existed if it weren't for AMD's K8 kicking Intel's butt in 2003. If it weren't for the Athlon64 Intel would still be on the ridiculous Pentium Netburst architecture it so loved and defended.

And guess what, the CPU architect that designed the only two architectures that beat out Intel on all fronts. Performance, efficiency and price is the same person working on Zen right now.

 

[Glenwing]

Hopefully something to compete with Intel.

 

However, knowing AMD; it probably won't.

 

You must be new here

[GzeroD]

I'm sorry but going by your comment you clearly don't "know" AMD. Because if you did you'd know that Intel's core series wouldn't have even existed if it weren't for AMD's K8 kicking Intel's butt in 2003.

I would assume he is talking about recent history. Where they have taken a step and a half back for every 2 forward.

[LukaP]

Hopefully something to compete with Intel.

 

However, knowing AMD; it probably won't.

"knowing AMD"... apart from 1 bad architecture, and not having the infinite sums of money intel has, AMD has always delivered. they just needed to milk their CMT flop as much as possible, to be able to get enough money to make a new core.

 

look not that far into the past, and AMD was always either on par or better than intel. its only the Piledriver and onwards that was crap

[Unhelpful]

Hopefully something to compete with Intel.

 

However, knowing AMD; it probably won't.

 

 

 

[TechFan@ic]

I'm sorry but going by your comment you clearly don't "know" AMD. Because if you did you'd know that Intel's core series wouldn't have even existed if it weren't for AMD's K8 kicking Intel's butt in 2003. If it weren't for the Athlon64 Intel would still be on the ridiculous Pentium Netburst architecture it so loved and defended.

And guess what, the CPU architect that designed the only two architectures that beat out Intel on all fronts. Performance, efficiency and price is the same person working on Zen right now.

 

Bam !

Jim Keller says hi

[Thorium19]

Here's to it being a good architecture, as intel really do need some competition at the moment.

[totjup5]

I really hope they do release something competative with Intel's high end chips, it's been a while and we really need the competition to force the companies to innovate.

[Trik'Stari]

Isn't intel doing 10nm now? why is AMD bothering with 14? why not try and leap frog intel and do like, 8nm or something?

[patrickjp93]

I'm sorry but going by your comment you clearly don't "know" AMD. Because if you did you'd know that Intel's core series wouldn't have even existed if it weren't for AMD's K8 kicking Intel's butt in 2003. If it weren't for the Athlon64 Intel would still be on the ridiculous Pentium Netburst architecture it so loved and defended.

And guess what, the CPU architect that designed the only two architectures that beat out Intel on all fronts. Performance, efficiency and price is the same person working on Zen right now.

Jim Keller is an embedded SOC designer. Don't get ahead of yourself. While this news means the processor wars will finally get interesting again, let's see what he can really do with macroscopic architecture before we get behind either company. Also, do you really think Intel doesn't have the features in its pipeline needed to keep AMD busy with catch-up for the next 8 years?

And AMD beat Intel to exactly 2 things: 64-bit and dual-core architecture. Ever since 06-07 AMD has been slaughtered. The wars will be interesting again, but AMD has a lot of ground to cover, and Jim Keller is only one man.

[LukaP]

Isn't intel doing 10nm now? why is AMD bothering with 14? why not try and leap frog intel and do like, 8nm or something?

because samsung already has 14nm fabs standing. as does intel. intel are making a new 10nm fab now. not close to operational

 

And AMD beat Intel to exactly 2 things: 64-bit and dual-core architecture. Ever since 06-07 AMD has been slaughtered. The wars will be interesting again, but AMD has a lot of ground to cover, and Jim Keller is only one man.

lol what are you talking about. AMD was as good and better until sandy bridge... their PhenomII x6 were beasts for the time

[Fetzie]

Isn't intel doing 10nm now? why is AMD bothering with 14? why not try and leap frog intel and do like, 8nm or something?

Intel is planning to build a factory to develop a manufacturing process for 10nm.

[patrickjp93]

Isn't intel doing 10nm now? why is AMD bothering with 14? why not try and leap frog intel and do like, 8nm or something?

Intel is building the last of its 10nm fabs. Tape out isn't until March. Also, no CMOS tech in the world is more advanced than that in Intel's and IBM's fabs. AMD leap-frogging Intel is about as likely as all the gas in a room moving to exactly 1 half of the room of its own accord. Samsung bought the same tech Intel did from the only leading-edge CMOS tech manufacturers (it's pretty much a monopoly). Now it comes down to arch. Vs. arch.

[patrickjp93]

Intel is planning to build a factory to develop a manufacturing process for 10nm.

It already has 2 built in Asia. The one for Israel introduces EUV CMOS for the Cannonlake successor.

[Trik'Stari]

because samsung already has 14nm fabs standing. as does intel. intel are making a new 10nm fab now. not close to operational

 

lol what are you talking about. AMD was as good and better until sandy bridge... their PhenomII x6 were beasts for the time

Ooooooh now it makes sense. Sadly I couldn't find a clip of Dr Evil going "oooooooh"

[patrickjp93]

because samsung already has 14nm fabs standing. as does intel. intel are making a new 10nm fab now. not close to operational

lol what are you talking about. AMD was as good and better until sandy bridge... their PhenomII x6 were beasts for the time

Nah, I'll put my dad's Q6600 up against any of AMD's chips at the time.

[LukaP]

Nah, I'll put my dad's Q6600 up against any of AMD's chips at the time.

dude, phenom2s were going effortlessly against Nahalems and Westmeres... they were even slightly better all in all

[Faa]

Hopefully something to compete with Intel.

 

However, knowing AMD; it probably won't.

It's obvious already that CPU monopoly is all about IPC and AMD cpu's we've seen last 10 years don't even have more IPC than Core 2. http://i.imgur.com/TDLx2vT.png

If they come up with a silly 10% IPC improvement, they'd end up to be the same garbage they are right now.

[dalekphalm]

Very exciting! Samsung has some pretty damn advanced Fab facilities. Though ARM chips are quite a bit smaller then a full-blown high-end x86 chip. Does anyone know if Samsung has experience with larger chip designs aside from the upcoming AMD chips?

[patrickjp93]

dude, phenom2s were going effortlessly against Nahalems and Westmeres... they were even slightly better all in all

Yeah no. Not only were AMD's boards notoriously more failure prone than Intel's (back in the days everything was based off a reference board), but AMD's northbridge was well known to melt over time even with great airflow, whereas we could push my Dad's Q6600 to 3.1GHz on water and keep everything easily cooled. Like I said, AMD has been getting it's butt kicked since 2006-7.

[patrickjp93]

Very exciting! Samsung has some pretty damn advanced Fab facilities. Though ARM chips are quite a bit smaller then a full-blown high-end x86 chip. Does anyone know if Samsung has experience with larger chip designs aside from the upcoming AMD chips?

They don't. The only other company which builds large chips is IBM. Keller is a bit of a wild card, but he's in the same boat having only ever designed embedded SOCs.

[LukaP]

Yeah no. Not only were AMD's boards notoriously more failure prone than Intel's (back in the days everything was based off a reference board), but AMD's northbridge was well known to melt over time even with great airflow, whereas we could push my Dad's Q6600 to 3.1GHz on water and keep everything easily cooled. Like I said, AMD has been getting it's butt kicked since 2006-7.

im talking CPU performance. if the boards were shit, thats a different question... i still know a ton of people running phenom2s OCd no problem. youre just picking on the bad things of AMDs and not looking at what intel did crappy then (granted i cant remember atm, since its too late, but i know they had their fair share of problems). when threads like these arise, you are such an intel fanboy...