Trixanity

We should totally get wafer-sized GPUs in desktops and we'll get AMD to pay for it. What could possibly go wrong?

We should totally get wafer-sized GPUs in desktops and we'll get AMD to pay for it. What could possibly go wrong?

How do you figure Google cuts off updates? Google posts security patches monthly and feature updates yearly with no exception. The problem lies with implementing them on devices. Likewise to even make the patches they also rely on hardware vendors patching vulnerabilities and compatibilities. If a security issue is found in Android, it's up to Google to solve. If it's found in a Snapdragon 855, it's Qualcomm's job to solve etc etc. In both cases, they need to be developed and later merged into a security update. Then it's on phone manufacturers to test and implement these fixes into their own proprietary hardware and software implementation.
 
Android updates are a bigger clusterfuck than you seem to be aware of. The only way to solve it is to strip away customization. By customization I mean non-Android One implementations. Even Android One probably isn't too easy to deal with but it's certainly much better.
I agree that Google should be more strict in the requirements for compliance and therefore access to the ecosystem but I'm sure Google is afraid of the pushback and threats of cutting ties if they try to take control back. You see the same shit in their dealings with carriers. 
 
The big problem is two-fold: your average consumer hates updates for whatever reason and there is no money to be made off of long term support. Fix those and you'll probably see all parties involved willing to play ball. Even the messy clusterfuck that is Android could be dealt with if it was worth it. Alas, it just isn't.

That's a poor take on his comment. He's not a stickler for monolithic designs. He's saying developers either need to get their shit together or AMD needs to obfuscate the shit out of the chip design. We've seen how an otherwise incredibly wide uarch like GCN is sitting idle half the time and we've seen how multiGPU scaling is awful half the time and the other half it's microstuttering all over the place. Yet you're acting like it's just a matter of the interconnect and then it'll just slot in like nothing. We've also seen what a mess TR (and Ryzen in general) was on Windows until recently. These things take time to perfect and AMD has gone on record to say it isn't ready yet. So he's not just a Debbie Downer. This is a real problem. Otherwise everyone would be doing it right now. It's the most ideal scenario yet we're still doing monolithic. Things are like they are for a reason (most of the time).

Certainly. A lot of the digital industry is overworked (software developers, video editors, digital art, animation, VFX etc) but the result is that there is a lack of attention to the technical implementations. It seems the MO is as long as it's good enough - anything more is fiddling around. That's not necessarily on the developers but on project managers and suits as you say.
 
MultiGPU could be good if implemented properly but no one seems willing to find a good way of doing it where you avoid the pitfalls we've seen to date. Many new GPUs don't support the implicit implementations (SLI and Crossfire) anymore. Many of Nvidia's cards don't and it looks like Navi cards don't either. Developers can do it themselves but not many will and again: the quality needs to hit a certain level or it'll just create more problems. The video games industry needs an overhaul but who would be willing to spend the money on extra development time and will we see studios (in response) do even more microtransactions and lootboxes? Will they have the balls to try to increase video game prices past $60? There is a cancer growing but like many other systemic problems all the solutions are made in the name of short term gain.

That's a poor take on his comment. He's not a stickler for monolithic designs. He's saying developers either need to get their shit together or AMD needs to obfuscate the shit out of the chip design. We've seen how an otherwise incredibly wide uarch like GCN is sitting idle half the time and we've seen how multiGPU scaling is awful half the time and the other half it's microstuttering all over the place. Yet you're acting like it's just a matter of the interconnect and then it'll just slot in like nothing. We've also seen what a mess TR (and Ryzen in general) was on Windows until recently. These things take time to perfect and AMD has gone on record to say it isn't ready yet. So he's not just a Debbie Downer. This is a real problem. Otherwise everyone would be doing it right now. It's the most ideal scenario yet we're still doing monolithic. Things are like they are for a reason (most of the time).

How do you figure Google cuts off updates? Google posts security patches monthly and feature updates yearly with no exception. The problem lies with implementing them on devices. Likewise to even make the patches they also rely on hardware vendors patching vulnerabilities and compatibilities. If a security issue is found in Android, it's up to Google to solve. If it's found in a Snapdragon 855, it's Qualcomm's job to solve etc etc. In both cases, they need to be developed and later merged into a security update. Then it's on phone manufacturers to test and implement these fixes into their own proprietary hardware and software implementation.
 
Android updates are a bigger clusterfuck than you seem to be aware of. The only way to solve it is to strip away customization. By customization I mean non-Android One implementations. Even Android One probably isn't too easy to deal with but it's certainly much better.
I agree that Google should be more strict in the requirements for compliance and therefore access to the ecosystem but I'm sure Google is afraid of the pushback and threats of cutting ties if they try to take control back. You see the same shit in their dealings with carriers. 
 
The big problem is two-fold: your average consumer hates updates for whatever reason and there is no money to be made off of long term support. Fix those and you'll probably see all parties involved willing to play ball. Even the messy clusterfuck that is Android could be dealt with if it was worth it. Alas, it just isn't.

I think it's less than a year ago that AMD said chiplet GPUs weren't ready for gaming. Of course it could all be misdirection but the problem is obfuscating the chiplets from software developers to avoid scaling nightmares as well hiding latencies and scheduling work properly. If these can be solved then it should be ready for primetime but it could take years. I think we'll see chiplets in enterprise/HPC first before anything else. It should be much easier to implement assuming the workloads are insensitive to latency.
 
AMD won't be selling at a loss if they can deliver on performance and efficiency. They could just up the price to offset higher unit costs. The reason AMD's HBM offerings have been selling without profits is because they were expensive products to make but the performance wasn't there so they couldn't sell them for the price necessary to make a decent profit.

I think it's less than a year ago that AMD said chiplet GPUs weren't ready for gaming. Of course it could all be misdirection but the problem is obfuscating the chiplets from software developers to avoid scaling nightmares as well hiding latencies and scheduling work properly. If these can be solved then it should be ready for primetime but it could take years. I think we'll see chiplets in enterprise/HPC first before anything else. It should be much easier to implement assuming the workloads are insensitive to latency.
 
AMD won't be selling at a loss if they can deliver on performance and efficiency. They could just up the price to offset higher unit costs. The reason AMD's HBM offerings have been selling without profits is because they were expensive products to make but the performance wasn't there so they couldn't sell them for the price necessary to make a decent profit.

That's not how it works. You add more compute units and clock them lower. It's certainly doable in the 250-275W TDP range. Likewise AMD needs to abandon their yield strategy of prioritizing yields over anything else meaning up the price and tighten up the voltage: you've got the recipe for a power efficient behemoth of a chip that's faster than a 2080 ti.
 
Not to mention AMD pulling out more tricks to increase efficiency. There's plenty opportunity if AMD gets their act together.

My understanding is that this initiative has nothing to do with rule of law or any sense of right or wrong. Rather it's a show of defiance against the EU for meddling in Polish affairs that serves as a dual purpose: throw it in the face of EU on a contentious subject they could possibly win and at the same time gain favor with their base.

Well, it's 15W at 1.1 GHz. They're reducing base clock every year to keep the listed TDP accurate. TDP is not a measurement of peak or average power consumption or heat output.
 
If Intel keeps this up they could theoretically launch a 14nm sub-GHz SKU next year. Then their TDP spec would have officially jumped the shark.
 
Edit: op missed that Intel backported the ICL memory controller so it supports LPDDR4X memory albeit they also gimped the speed so OEMs couldn't pull any shenanigans like just pairing Comet with fast memory instead of buying the more expensive ICL processors.

If there are any frequency gains to be had on 7nm+ it's probably no more than 100 MHz at the top end - more likely the improvements would be more consistent high clock speeds across the stack. The architectural improvement are probably limited as well.
What AMD really needs is a team dedicated entirely to DVFS for the entire product range. All material I can find highlights how poorly it's done on both CPUs and GPUs. A lot of efficiency has been thrown out the window by poor DVFS implementations. Get that out of the way once and for all and we might just see AMD reach complete parity with Nvidia and Intel in that metric.

ITT: people unfamiliar with sarcasm.
Also ITT: people not reading the actual article.

ITT: people unfamiliar with sarcasm.
Also ITT: people not reading the actual article.

Aren't we just moving into the same territory as the war on drugs? This is essentially "if we kill all bad sites, there will be no bad people" similar to "if we try to get rid of drugs, say how bad they are and punish any seller or buyer severely; then drugs will go away".
 
How did that one go again?

Aren't we just moving into the same territory as the war on drugs? This is essentially "if we kill all bad sites, there will be no bad people" similar to "if we try to get rid of drugs, say how bad they are and punish any seller or buyer severely; then drugs will go away".
 
How did that one go again?

Aren't we just moving into the same territory as the war on drugs? This is essentially "if we kill all bad sites, there will be no bad people" similar to "if we try to get rid of drugs, say how bad they are and punish any seller or buyer severely; then drugs will go away".
 
How did that one go again?

I fully expect it to be a red herring.
However we do know high end Navi is coming in one form or another. Keep in mind that, like all AMD cards, the 5700 series was clocked beyond the efficiency range of the silicon. So doubling the chip size does not necessarily result in double the power consumption because you'll just clock it lower to keep the power down. 5700 XT at stock (running at 1900~ MHz) runs at 185W but can drop to 110W by running it at 1700 MHz and lowering the voltage.
While I wouldn't claim to know how the GPU scales with CUs but let's just for the sake of argument say that 80 CU at 1900 MHz would be 370W but lowering it to 1700 MHz would then make it a mere 220W (assuming perfect scaling). That's of course GPU power only. Still need memory power consumption and it's likely a high end card would roll with HBM again. So let's say 250-260W for a massive 80 CU card. That's not all that bad.
 
However realistically speaking: AMD would probably up the voltage a bit for the sake of yields and the scaling is probably not 1:1 but it's very realistic to get a 200-300W behemoth with a decent clock speed. It's a matter of binning and a matter of tuning. It's not impossible.
Although I have heard some claims that there's still some bottlenecking in the current RDNA uarch that prevents scaling up the chips but a Reddit comment isn't exactly admissible in court.

If it's stupid but it works then it's not stupid.

Well, they are different. If the price was fake that would imply that AMD, no matter what, would have lowered the price on launch by $50 (which would make no sense). Them saying they put out a higher price initially to see Nvidia's response and then reply to that with some pre-planned scenarios is different. If Nvidia launched The 2070 Super at $600 (or $550 even) instead, then the price would have remained in place because the perf/$ would firmly have been in AMD's favor. So would the price still be fake if that was the case and if so, how?
 
It's basic business when you know your only competitor is about to bring to market a refreshed stack at roughly the same time. I think the only thing that's disputable is whether or not it was as premeditated as they (AMD) claim. They claim they put out a price hoping Nvidia would respond like they usually do and it seems they did. It would have been surprising if they lowered prices (eg. $450 or even $400 2070 Super) and it seems AMD was afraid that if they launched aggressively with $400 or lower, Nvidia might just have to also aggressively match resulting in AMD having to lower the price even further. They all care about margins so the question is: why start an unnecessary price war if you can get both the margins you'd like and put your product in the position of being the better deal? Nvidia doesn't have to respond to the $400 price tag on the 5700 XT; the price is at a point where Nvidia will still sell cards so they don't need to lower it and they're also in a tight spot due to the die size so I think Nvidia, while not happy, is content with how things turned out.
 
However, to reiterate: it's in no way fake pricing. The odd thing is them taking their strategy public but I'm guessing it's to control the narrative so it does not look like AMD is the one taking it on the chin in this bout.

He calls it jebaited. As in Nvidia responded as expected to the initial pricing meaning they could act accordingly. I specifically said they wanted to keep the margins high and in that sense mission accomplished. 
 
The pricing would be fake if they never intended to sell it at the initial price. You could argue the likelihood of that is low considering Nvidia would have been pushing it if they tried to increase the price for a product refresh based on minor improvements but again: the goal was to avoid price wars and that much worked out; Nvidia did not attempt to lower the price either. 
 
However I also think AMD lowered the price because of consumer backlash. People weren't happy about AMD following Nvidia with the pricing so I think it also gave them a reality check. However companies never admit fault so it's easier to say that it was part of a marketing strategy to fool Nvidia and their pricing strategy. Whether or not that strategy was as fleshed out they claim.
 
The performance of the product is pretty good all things considered (just about double of Polaris 10) and hits where it should so I don't think it's a case of product performance. In addition, AMD would have known where the performance was months in advance so it seems unlikely that they would go on stage, look at the charts and say "wait a minute, the pricing is wrong".
 
Planning things doesn't make them artificial. You could say prices are artificially high right now but that's a market trend. AMD would, however, be grossly incompetent if they had nothing planned for Nvidia's launch.

Well, they are different. If the price was fake that would imply that AMD, no matter what, would have lowered the price on launch by $50 (which would make no sense). Them saying they put out a higher price initially to see Nvidia's response and then reply to that with some pre-planned scenarios is different. If Nvidia launched The 2070 Super at $600 (or $550 even) instead, then the price would have remained in place because the perf/$ would firmly have been in AMD's favor. So would the price still be fake if that was the case and if so, how?
 
It's basic business when you know your only competitor is about to bring to market a refreshed stack at roughly the same time. I think the only thing that's disputable is whether or not it was as premeditated as they (AMD) claim. They claim they put out a price hoping Nvidia would respond like they usually do and it seems they did. It would have been surprising if they lowered prices (eg. $450 or even $400 2070 Super) and it seems AMD was afraid that if they launched aggressively with $400 or lower, Nvidia might just have to also aggressively match resulting in AMD having to lower the price even further. They all care about margins so the question is: why start an unnecessary price war if you can get both the margins you'd like and put your product in the position of being the better deal? Nvidia doesn't have to respond to the $400 price tag on the 5700 XT; the price is at a point where Nvidia will still sell cards so they don't need to lower it and they're also in a tight spot due to the die size so I think Nvidia, while not happy, is content with how things turned out.
 
However, to reiterate: it's in no way fake pricing. The odd thing is them taking their strategy public but I'm guessing it's to control the narrative so it does not look like AMD is the one taking it on the chin in this bout.

He calls it jebaited. As in Nvidia responded as expected to the initial pricing meaning they could act accordingly. I specifically said they wanted to keep the margins high and in that sense mission accomplished. 
 
The pricing would be fake if they never intended to sell it at the initial price. You could argue the likelihood of that is low considering Nvidia would have been pushing it if they tried to increase the price for a product refresh based on minor improvements but again: the goal was to avoid price wars and that much worked out; Nvidia did not attempt to lower the price either. 
 
However I also think AMD lowered the price because of consumer backlash. People weren't happy about AMD following Nvidia with the pricing so I think it also gave them a reality check. However companies never admit fault so it's easier to say that it was part of a marketing strategy to fool Nvidia and their pricing strategy. Whether or not that strategy was as fleshed out they claim.
 
The performance of the product is pretty good all things considered (just about double of Polaris 10) and hits where it should so I don't think it's a case of product performance. In addition, AMD would have known where the performance was months in advance so it seems unlikely that they would go on stage, look at the charts and say "wait a minute, the pricing is wrong".
 
Planning things doesn't make them artificial. You could say prices are artificially high right now but that's a market trend. AMD would, however, be grossly incompetent if they had nothing planned for Nvidia's launch.

Well, they are different. If the price was fake that would imply that AMD, no matter what, would have lowered the price on launch by $50 (which would make no sense). Them saying they put out a higher price initially to see Nvidia's response and then reply to that with some pre-planned scenarios is different. If Nvidia launched The 2070 Super at $600 (or $550 even) instead, then the price would have remained in place because the perf/$ would firmly have been in AMD's favor. So would the price still be fake if that was the case and if so, how?
 
It's basic business when you know your only competitor is about to bring to market a refreshed stack at roughly the same time. I think the only thing that's disputable is whether or not it was as premeditated as they (AMD) claim. They claim they put out a price hoping Nvidia would respond like they usually do and it seems they did. It would have been surprising if they lowered prices (eg. $450 or even $400 2070 Super) and it seems AMD was afraid that if they launched aggressively with $400 or lower, Nvidia might just have to also aggressively match resulting in AMD having to lower the price even further. They all care about margins so the question is: why start an unnecessary price war if you can get both the margins you'd like and put your product in the position of being the better deal? Nvidia doesn't have to respond to the $400 price tag on the 5700 XT; the price is at a point where Nvidia will still sell cards so they don't need to lower it and they're also in a tight spot due to the die size so I think Nvidia, while not happy, is content with how things turned out.
 
However, to reiterate: it's in no way fake pricing. The odd thing is them taking their strategy public but I'm guessing it's to control the narrative so it does not look like AMD is the one taking it on the chin in this bout.