Zen Engineering Samples, Specs Spotted

[Misanthrope]

Hopefully AMD is better on IPC this time it's time we force Intel to 8 core cpus for the i7s none of this 4 hyperthreaded cores crap no more.

[SurvivorNVL]

Just now, Misanthrope said:

Hopefully AMD is better on IPC this time it's time we force Intel to 8 core cpus for the i7s none of this 4 hyperthreaded cores crap no more.

God I would love that.  Just eight physical cores, no HT.  Or just a straight up twelve core, no HT, lock it to 4.0ghz and I'd be happy.

[patrickjp93]

Just now, Misanthrope said:

Hopefully AMD is better on IPC this time it's time we force Intel to 8 core cpus for the i7s none of this 4 hyperthreaded cores crap no more.

You do realize most software doesn't even remotely make those 4 cores sweat, and the only way games do it is unsustainable no matter how many cores you throw at the problem. It's not like games are pushing a 2600K by doing things the efficient way using the instructions VMWare and Prime95 do. They push Sandy Bridge by taking the slow route. The car is super high mileage, but you're taking all the back roads instead of the highway.

 

Intel should be perfectly allowed to sell any products it wants. When software catches up and makes my computer choke, that is the time to upgrade.

[The Benjamins]

Just now, SurvivorNVL said:

God I would love that.  Just eight physical cores, no HT.  Or just a straight up twelve core, no HT, lock it to 4.0ghz and I'd be happy.

why not have 8 with HT? (8x2)

[Misanthrope]

Just now, patrickjp93 said:

You do realize most software doesn't even remotely make those 4 cores sweat, and the only way games do it is unsustainable no matter how many cores you throw at the problem. It's not like games are pushing a 2600K by doing things the efficient way using the instructions VMWare and Prime95 do. They push Sandy Bridge by taking the slow route. The car is super high mileage, but you're taking all the back roads instead of the highway.

 

Intel should be perfectly allowed to sell any products it wants. When software catches up and makes my computer choke, that is the time to upgrade.

I do, yet I am not sure we don't have a chicken and egg situation here: Consumer software doesn't uses too many cores since consumer chips don't have many cores and consumer chips don't have many cores since consumer software doesn't uses too many cores.

 

Eventually you've got to build it so they'll come so to speak.

[SurvivorNVL]

Just now, The Benjamins said:

why not have 8 with HT? (8x2)

I'd rather skip the HT, and go right for pure, physical cores on Intel's front.  I'm strange, however.  I'd like either just straight 8 -12 cores, no HT, or a 4-core with 4xSMT.

[AlTech]

Just now, The Benjamins said:

why not have 8 with HT? (8x2)

HT can provide a power penalty or may cause more heat output.

[patrickjp93]

Just now, Misanthrope said:

I do, yet I am not sure we don't have a chicken and egg situation here: Consumer software doesn't uses too many cores since consumer chips don't have many cores and consumer chips don't have many cores since consumer software doesn't uses too many cores.

 

Eventually you've got to build it so they'll come so to speak.

We have the chicken. Use as many threads are available. OpenMP has made this stupidly easy since 2002, and it's been an open standard library since 2006 and is fully maintained by many people, including Intel.

 

No, you build what the market demands now and provide an out so it can move on more easily.

[SurvivorNVL]

1 minute ago, patrickjp93 said:

You do realize most software doesn't even remotely make those 4 cores sweat, and the only way games do it is unsustainable no matter how many cores you throw at the problem. It's not like games are pushing a 2600K by doing things the efficient way using the instructions VMWare and Prime95 do. They push Sandy Bridge by taking the slow route. The car is super high mileage, but you're taking all the back roads instead of the highway.

 

Intel should be perfectly allowed to sell any products it wants. When software catches up and makes my computer choke, that is the time to upgrade.

When can we probably expect to actually see 4-way SMT appear in the mainstream or at least, enthusiast sections of Intel's product range?  I have to imagine before 2020, hopefully.

[iamdarkyoshi]

Idling at less power than my LED flashlights. Intriguing.

[Misanthrope]

2 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

We have the chicken. Use as many threads are available. OpenMP has made this stupidly easy since 2002, and it's been an open standard library since 2006 and is fully maintained by many people, including Intel.

 

No, you build what the market demands now and provide an out so it can move on more easily.

But what happens now that we're quickly approaching the limits of what we can do in terms of IPC and die size? I'd be regrettable if progress for consumers got to a screeching halt since most people will say "Well, we can't really code software that's any better and your hardware is good enough for that, go ahead and stop buying new hardware"

[The Benjamins]

3 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

HT can provide a power penalty or may cause more heat output.

 

3 minutes ago, SurvivorNVL said:

I'd rather skip the HT, and go right for pure, physical cores on Intel's front.  I'm strange, however.  I'd like either just straight 8 -12 cores, no HT, or a 4-core with 4xSMT.

 

come on who doesn't like seeing 16+ graphs in task manager

 

[Djole123]

Will this be the first AMD CPU (or APU) that won't burn my house down? Hooray!

[patrickjp93]

11 minutes ago, SurvivorNVL said:

When can we probably expect to actually see 4-way SMT appear in the mainstream or at least, enthusiast sections of Intel's product range?  I have to imagine before 2020, hopefully.

At least

 

8 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

But what happens now that we're quickly approaching the limits of what we can do in terms of IPC and die size? I'd be regrettable if progress for consumers got to a screeching halt since most people will say "Well, we can't really code software that's any better and your hardware is good enough for that, go ahead and stop buying new hardware"

1) You change to new instructions that do more (sometimes all this takes is recompiling with a fresh optimization flag, sometimes it takes reimplementing critical parts of an algorithm with intrinsic functions and then using alignment attributes on your data structure)

 

2) You optimize programs that used to just run well enough and then got faster because of IPC and all else from Intel (reorganize data accesses to optimize your cache usage for instance, add prefetches for data or instructions, unroll your loops to reduce overhead, etc..).

 

3) You start from the ground up with performance in mind.

 

I think it's just fine. The pressure on both the software companies and on Intel and AMD will force them to try even harder, or it will invite new competition. That is the free market at work.

[patrickjp93]

3 minutes ago, Djole123 said:

Will this be the first AMD CPU (or APU) that won't burn my house down? Hooray!

Usually it was the boards failing that did that

[ace_cheaply]

6 minutes ago, patrickjp93 said:

Usually it was the boards failing that did that

 

[Coaxialgamer]

5 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

I'm confused. @patrickjp93 Why does the quad core have 2MB L3 cache when the Eight core has 8MB?

 

Shouldn't the quad core have 6MB L3 cache or 8MB like Intel's quad cores do?

It's 8MB for the quad and 16MB for the 8 core. 

[Coaxialgamer]

Interesting.  Looking at the clock speeds and TDP,  it seems amd will have to make a choice :keep the clocks low to stay under 65/95w TDP,  or ditch the tdp limit and run at high clocks in order to beat intel in benchmarks 

[AlTech]

Just now, Coaxialgamer said:

It's 8MB for the quad and 16MB for the 8 core. 

I know. I was told by Patrick

[patrickjp93]

14 minutes ago, ace_cheaply said:

 

Yes, that's the board dying, not the CPU itself lighting on fire. The socket went first.

[ace_cheaply]

Just now, patrickjp93 said:

Yes, that's the board dying, not the CPU itself lighting on fire. The socket went first.

yep

[patrickjp93]

8 minutes ago, Coaxialgamer said:

Interesting.  Looking at the clock speeds and TDP,  it seems amd will have to make a choice :keep the clocks low to stay under 65/95w TDP,  or ditch the tdp limit and run at high clocks in order to beat intel in benchmarks 

It's the tug of war between scale-up design needs and scale-out. With enterprise software being licensed per core, Intel has been beefing up its cores and increasing the count more slowly. IBM has been going much more slowly still. Power 8 tops out at 12 cores going at 4.7GHz, but each core can run 8 threads. The CPU has a 250W TDP too. For scale-up workloads like databases and analytics, IBM's platform is more preferable, even if actually buying the hardware (most just rent a few servers from IBM) looks prohibitively more expensive than Intel's own solutions. Now Intel is fighting back with some of its specialized high-speed Xeons too, but these are niche.

[patrickjp93]

Just now, Tedny said:

lower than Intel)))

Historically AMD has matched prices with Intel when it's been performance-competitive (Phenom X6, FX 9590, and some of the older extreme Athlons cost $1000 at launch just like Intel's flagship.

[Valentyn]

Are they using Global Foundries again? If so I hope they can manage to get clocks higher and get production quantities sorted.

If Zen really does come in a smidge under Haswell, but has decent base clocks and cores it'll certainly be a hit.

[Energycore]

3 minutes ago, Valentyn said:

Are they using Global Foundries again? If so I hope they can manage to get clocks higher and get production quantities sorted.

If Zen really does come in a smidge under Haswell, but has decent base clocks and cores it'll certainly be a hit.

AMD's CPU dept is cntractually locked into using GloFo for a while IIRC

 

And as a saying goes in my land, Mariachi pagado toca mal son