Can AM4 processor work without a chipset?

[Chiyawa]

Hi, This is something crazy I come out with.

 

You see, I've been studying AMD Processor using AM4 socket (technically, Matisse) and I've actually found out that the processor technically have everything built into it.

 

In Matisse processor, there's one PCIe x16 lanes for the graphic card, one PCIe x4 NVME port, which can be configured into PCIe NVMe x2 + 2 SATA port, and of course, 4 USB 3.2 Gen 2 port. There's audio controller port too integrated into the CPU Technically, I think it is pretty much everything we need to create a processor only system.

 

So we can configure that the PCIe lanes from NVMe into x2, and divert it to Gigabit Ethernet controller and WiFi. There are 2 SATA ports which we can plug in 2 SATA devices, and we can convert one USB 3.2 Gen 2 port into USB hub to include Bluetooth, USB 2.0 ports, and the rest of the system.

 

I wonder... can we build a processor only system without the need of chipset?

 

Regards,

Chiyawa

[Electronics Wizardy]

Thts basically what a300 systems were. And most laptops do.

 

Its just most desktop boards want the extra io it seems.

[Kisai]

41 minutes ago, Chiyawa said:

Hi, This is something crazy I come out with.

 

You see, I've been studying AMD Processor using AM4 socket (technically, Matisse) and I've actually found out that the processor technically have everything built into it.

 

In Matisse processor, there's one PCIe x16 lanes for the graphic card, one PCIe x4 NVME port, which can be configured into PCIe NVMe x2 + 2 SATA port, and of course, 4 USB 3.2 Gen 2 port. There's audio controller port too integrated into the CPU Technically, I think it is pretty much everything we need to create a processor only system.

 

So we can configure that the PCIe lanes from NVMe into x2, and divert it to Gigabit Ethernet controller and WiFi. There are 2 SATA ports which we can plug in 2 SATA devices, and we can convert one USB 3.2 Gen 2 port into USB hub to include Bluetooth, USB 2.0 ports, and the rest of the system.

 

I wonder... can we build a processor only system without the need of chipset?

 

Regards,

Chiyawa

That's what the A-series chips are. They're entire SoC's.

 

 

Like this chiplet design caters to that SoC design pretty well.  Like you have to think a little bigger here, the Chipset is a concentrator to put all the USB, SATA and parts that waste PCIe lanes when they're not necessary (eg onboard lan, wifi, sound) and the NVMe controller. A bunch of these are low-speed devices that can be crammed into the 4 lanes. Particularly if you don't put hard drives on the chipset lanes. If you put SATA SSD's on it, you might only be able to use 2 SATA ports per lane dedicated to it, since a SSD can pull 520MB/sec vs a mechanical HDD which might do 120MB/s buffer-to-bus. So if you have 4 mechanical SSD drives, yes 4 SATA ports is fine.

 

To put it in perspective, there's 12 lanes worth of resources being pushed through that chip, of which most of those (eg SATA and USB 2.0) will only use 1/4th of a PCIe 4.0 lane each, and GigE/WiFI are 1/2 a PCIe4.0 lane each.

 

If you put in your own PCIe card for the USB ports and SATA ports, and only took up 4 lanes, yes, you could in theory not have the chipset. You would need to provide your own network still, and still need a GPU (that will cover audio.) 

 

The Matisse parts do not have GPU parts, so there is no audio on them. The Renoir parts (the Ryzen 4xxx high performance mobile parts) do. These are the parts with integrated Radeon Vega parts.

 

I'll have to mention however that there's probably not much point in this exercise since the only reason to not have the chipset would be with a specialty motherboard where none of the chipset features are required (eg only a GPU (with it's own audio) and a NVMe drive, with the physical USB ports being provided by the GPU as USB-C ports.) So in theory this is doable, but it's impractical except in server environments.

 

[roxwrld]

3 hours ago, Chiyawa said:

Hi, This is something crazy I come out with.

 

You see, I've been studying AMD Processor using AM4 socket (technically, Matisse) and I've actually found out that the processor technically have everything built into it.

 

In Matisse processor, there's one PCIe x16 lanes for the graphic card, one PCIe x4 NVME port, which can be configured into PCIe NVMe x2 + 2 SATA port, and of course, 4 USB 3.2 Gen 2 port. There's audio controller port too integrated into the CPU Technically, I think it is pretty much everything we need to create a processor only system.

 

So we can configure that the PCIe lanes from NVMe into x2, and divert it to Gigabit Ethernet controller and WiFi. There are 2 SATA ports which we can plug in 2 SATA devices, and we can convert one USB 3.2 Gen 2 port into USB hub to include Bluetooth, USB 2.0 ports, and the rest of the system.

 

I wonder... can we build a processor only system without the need of chipset?

 

Regards,

Chiyawa

I'm fascinated to know this. Can it be done??? Well, try out your best!!!

[Chiyawa]

5 hours ago, Kisai said:

So in theory this is doable, but it's impractical except in server environments.

I see.

 

Actually, I watched the latest Youtube video from ExplainingComputer.com, and I was fascinated of the UDoo Bolt Single Board Computer. Of course it features a Ryzen embedded CPU, which still has good performance (the best among all SBC features in the video). So I'm wondering if it is possible to create a Ryzen processor SBC (Well, I mean, we need to add a GPU and RAMs so technically it isn't) but since Intel did come out something like having the CPU and components cramped in 1 board while having PCIe x16 slot available for graphic card, so I guess why not.

 

Anyway, it's just another crazy idea I had, so even if I can envision it, I still have to get all the expert such as board manufacturing and all to come up with the design and such. But still, we can always imagine how it can be, right?

[Chiyawa]

3 hours ago, roxwrld said:

I'm fascinated to know this. Can it be done??? Well, try out your best!!!

I do hope so. But I really need all those technical know-how guys to assist me. Still, it seems to be a viable concept for the time being.

[Chiyawa]

6 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Thts basically what a300 systems were. And most laptops do.

 

Its just most desktop boards want the extra io it seems.

I can understand it because desktop is big, so why not cramp all the stuff into it. Having more I/O is always good, but now it seems a little too excessive (I think I only use up to 6 USB ports, but my system is like having 14 ports (without counting the unused USB headers from the motherboard).

[Nena Trinity]

I think it's called system on a chip? :3

[Haro]

50 minutes ago, Chiyawa said:

but now it seems a little too excessive

No not really 

Also yes while zen chips are technically SOC's

A chipset will still provide more lanes for general purpose stuff 

The lanes on the chip rn won't be enough to provide 

Decent SATA ports 

Enough lanes for nvme and decent IO 

One of the complaints about b550 is the lacking IO

Dmi 3 for the cpu just was not enough to get somewhat acceptable IO , and even if there was no chipset 

What would the benifits be ? It's an interesting thing but certainly not new 

 

[Kisai]

6 hours ago, Chiyawa said:

I see.

 

Actually, I watched the latest Youtube video from ExplainingComputer.com, and I was fascinated of the UDoo Bolt Single Board Computer. Of course it features a Ryzen embedded CPU, which still has good performance (the best among all SBC features in the video). So I'm wondering if it is possible to create a Ryzen processor SBC (Well, I mean, we need to add a GPU and RAMs so technically it isn't) but since Intel did come out something like having the CPU and components cramped in 1 board while having PCIe x16 slot available for graphic card, so I guess why not.

 

Anyway, it's just another crazy idea I had, so even if I can envision it, I still have to get all the expert such as board manufacturing and all to come up with the design and such. But still, we can always imagine how it can be, right?

For the most part a Ryzen SBC probably isn't out of the question, like a third party could make a "chipset" for an AMD Ryzen board at present, and it would feel like a return to the Socket 7 era, but back then a chipset consisted of two or more chips (a north bridge, which was the memory controller and PCI bus controller, and the South Bridge which was the super I/O (parallel, serial, keyboard, mouse, ATA controller), and largely the "chipset" for both Intel and AMD chips have really just been what was formerly the south bridge chip, as the north bridge features were moved onto the CPU since the Intel Core series and AMD64 parts.

 

The current market however will likely not result in a third party chipset, as nobody has anything to gain by making one. Like you could flip the script here and instead of having a chipset, put the chipset on an PCIe 4 lane expansion card itself, and sell a MB that removes all of that from the MB. There would be no i/o ports on the MB portion except for the USB ports that are part of the CPU. The "chipset" board would have the SATA ports, additional USB, Ethernet, WiFi, etc.

 

Who knows, many AMD will just release an AM5 CPU at somepoint that has no chipset to speak of.

[Chiyawa]

22 hours ago, Nena Trinity said:

I think it's called system on a chip? :3

Yeah, now our CPU line is very blur since they integrate Northbridge into the CPU.

[Chiyawa]

22 hours ago, TofuHaroto said:

No not really 

Also yes while zen chips are technically SOC's

A chipset will still provide more lanes for general purpose stuff 

The lanes on the chip rn won't be enough to provide 

Decent SATA ports 

Enough lanes for nvme and decent IO 

One of the complaints about b550 is the lacking IO

Dmi 3 for the cpu just was not enough to get somewhat acceptable IO , and even if there was no chipset 

What would the benifits be ? It's an interesting thing but certainly not new 

 

I see. Well, actually, I'm thinking if I can make an SBC using Ryzen processor. SBC, well, doesn't really need a lot of I/O, so I'm just wondering if we can just opt out the chipset altogether. UDoo uses Ryzen embedded system, which is some what similar to Ryzen 3400G (quad core, 8 threads, Vega 8 GPU), but what if people still want the PCIe x16 slot for the graphic card and wish to go further than 4 cores while trying to get the board smaller than an ITX board, creating an ultra-portable system with the processing power of a desktop or could game Shadow of the Tomb Raider with more than 150fps.

[Chiyawa]

17 hours ago, Kisai said:

For the most part a Ryzen SBC probably isn't out of the question, like a third party could make a "chipset" for an AMD Ryzen board at present, and it would feel like a return to the Socket 7 era, but back then a chipset consisted of two or more chips (a north bridge, which was the memory controller and PCI bus controller, and the South Bridge which was the super I/O (parallel, serial, keyboard, mouse, ATA controller), and largely the "chipset" for both Intel and AMD chips have really just been what was formerly the south bridge chip, as the north bridge features were moved onto the CPU since the Intel Core series and AMD64 parts.

 

The current market however will likely not result in a third party chipset, as nobody has anything to gain by making one. Like you could flip the script here and instead of having a chipset, put the chipset on an PCIe 4 lane expansion card itself, and sell a MB that removes all of that from the MB. There would be no i/o ports on the MB portion except for the USB ports that are part of the CPU. The "chipset" board would have the SATA ports, additional USB, Ethernet, WiFi, etc.

 

Who knows, many AMD will just release an AM5 CPU at somepoint that has no chipset to speak of.

Well, if CPU maker is going that way, we might see more mini computers available in the market, maybe nano-ITX will become main stream.