AMD "Zen" APU features

[Guest]

With news leaking about AMD's "Zen" APU, I would like to know what everyone thinks this new APU should have, should not have, and what it already has. See you in the comments

[Unlikelyjoker]

I hope it has stronger cores.

Maybe 6 + 6 core design (6 cores for CPU, 6 cores for iGPU)

Hell even an 8 + 8 would blow my mind.

[Opcode]

4 Cores 8 Threads

640+ GCN 1.3/2.0 SPU's

14nm FinFET

1GB HBM/4GB HBM2

PCIe 4.0

[Hieb]

Well I'm a bit worried by AMD planning to cram 16 cores onto the die, although supposedly that's a dual-die design (standard die should be eight cores)... so perhaps they plan to have quad and eight-core configurations for mainstream desktops, then perhaps 12 and 16 chips for workstation and up to 32 core for servers.

 

The speculation and data we have at this point is a bit fickle.

 

But I'm really hoping AMD focuses on improving IPC and cache efficiency. I doubt they will match or surpass Intel, but if they can come within ~20% per-core performance of Intel while offering quad- and eight-core hyper-threaded chips at a more competitive price than Intel (quads for ~$150-200, eights for ~$400), I think they'll be in a good place. At that point the single-threaded performance gap would be small enough that it's worth the extra multi-threaded performance.

 

But if AMD once again goes for the route of simply cramming as many cores as possible on the die without caring about efficiency, and they have weak cores rather than good cores, thennnn I'm not looking forward to it at all.

 

Guessing AMD learned their lesson from the Bulldozer family, though. Zen doesn't need to be revolutionary, just needs to be decent. With 4-8 hyper-threaded cores, their cores only really need to be as good as Sandy Bridge and they'll have a pretty successful lifespan.

I think logical SKU arrangement could be:

 

4C/4T no IGP - $120

4C/4T + IGP - $150

4C/8T + IGP - $200

4C/8T + very beefy IGP w/ ~2GB HBM - $300

8C/8T + IGP - $350

8C/16T + IGP - $425

12C/24T + IGP - $550

16C/32T + IGP - $650

 

This is of course assuming the information floating around thus far is accurate (quad-core modules, max mainstream config of 16 cores + IGPU) and that the CPU performs substantially better than their current offerings.

[Guest]

I hope it has stronger cores.

Maybe 6 + 6 core design (6 cores for CPU, 6 cores for iGPU)

Hell even an 8 + 8 would blow my mind.

they did say there's 16 cores in all