AMD's Excavator: A Revolution?

[nicehat]

 

 

 

Some revealing information gleaned from the people at X-bit labs indicate that the fourth generation Bulldozer core code-named Excavator will support 256-bit AVX2 floating point instructions, which means that a huge leap and change from the current gen which calls for two 128 bit floating point pipelines per module that get unified into a single 256-bit-wide unit. 

 

Essentially, the entire architecture calls for a unified FPU process instead of a shared one. This means that the architecture will either have to be considerably upgraded, or redone from scratch. There is not much more information on Excavator yet, only that Steamroller will feature a highly improved frontend with two decoders per module.

 

 

"AMD recently released a patch to the GCC community that enables support for its future high-performance micro-architecture code-named Excavator, which the chip developer calls "bdver4" internally. The initial patch is designed to bring very general support of Excavator to Linux operating system, but even that general support may reveal some of the secrets the Excavator may have. Based on the information released by AMD, the Excavator will support all the instructions found in the modern Intel code-named Haswell microprocessors, including SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AES, PCLMUL, AVX, BMI, F16C, MOVBE, AVX2, BMI2, RDRND and so on.

.

.

Keeping in mind that by the time AMD’s Excavator begins to roll commercially, Intel will release its brand-new Skylake high-performance micro-architecture that will support 512-bit AVX instructions known as AVX3.2, upgrading FPU is simply a must."

 

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20131018224745_AMD_Excavator_Core_May_Dramatic_Performance_Increases.html

 

 

So are you guys excited or what!? With the graphical war in full swing, AMD is getting ready to duke it out with Intel.. This is a pretty awesome time to be a PC enthusiast! 

 

Oh yea, Kaveri is confirmed for Jan 7th 2014! Start researching FM2+ boards now if interested!

Edited November 7, 2013 by nicehat

[Sarcasm]

I was planning on upgrading my proc several months ago, still have the funds secured for it. But something tells me if I wait for the dust to settle, I'm gonna be using this i3 for a LONG time...

 

 

Side note: Is that Borderlands? I swore that was an nVidia title...

[MbV93]

I really hope AMD comes back to the top to give Intel a run for its money.

[CatCloud]

Yeah, Skylake, oh why wont you come tomorow, still excited thou. Only thing excite me more is Extreme CPU's

[Gunzkewl]

I was planning on upgrading my proc several months ago, still have the funds secured for it. But something tells me if I wait for the dust to settle, I'm gonna be using this i3 for a LONG time...

 

 

Side note: Is that Borderlands? I swore that was an nVidia title...

Yes it is.

[Eroda]

if AMD are redesigning the FPU from scratch they probably will go straight for 512bit  as excavator wont be out till 2015 

[nicehat]

if AMD are redesigning the FPU from scratch they probably will go straight for 512bit  as excavator wont be out till 2015 

 

They may have two shared 256 units combining for a 512 ala Piledriver. I dont know. I sure hope they change it to a 512 unified pipe

[Guerrero]

I was planning on upgrading my proc several months ago, still have the funds secured for it. But something tells me if I wait for the dust to settle, I'm gonna be using this i3 for a LONG time...

 

 

Side note: Is that Borderlands? I swore that was an nVidia title...

i3 FOR THE WIN

[TheMissxu]

i3 FOR THE WIN

With Mantle, the chip should do just fine...

[LogicDeifying]

Yes,I really hope AMD pulls this one off with something to compete even more in the higher end.

[nicehat]

With Mantle, the chip should do just fine...

 

Mantle? What chip? The i3? excavator? 

....

Its a low level API for gpus 

[orangecat]

Cool not that I'm going to use a AMD CPU anytime soon. i just got my 3570K not that long ago and its fast enough for what I do.

[TheMissxu]

Mantle? What chip? The i3? excavator? 

....

Its a low level API for gpus 

AMD claims that Mantle can generate up to 9 times more draw calls per second than comparable APIs by reducing CPU overhead. The reason why an i3 is holding you slightly back is because it struggles to give the GPU draw calls fast enough (I guess I should add a disclaimer: among other reasons).

[EChondo]

What did AMD say a while back? Each new CPU will have differences of up to 15%?

 

That was the difference between Bulldozer and Piledriver, lets see if that continues with Steamroller and then Excavator as well

[Ookami]

[New AMD processor comes out]

[Takes 300W and needs half of Arctica to cool it]

[Fenzee]

Can't wait to see the performance charts.

[maximilian4o]

I was planning on upgrading my proc several months ago, still have the funds secured for it. But something tells me if I wait for the dust to settle, I'm gonna be using this i3 for a LONG time...

 

 

Side note: Is that Borderlands? I swore that was an nVidia title...

The giant excavator thing is not from BL2 IMO. But the vehicles are 100% from Borderlands 2. And yes it is an Nvidia title... Weird, huh ?

[Opsilon]

I love it how we already have news about Excavator, but have 0 real info on the steamroller, we have no 8 or at least 6 cores on the way, i get that APU-s are the future, but will AMD just be a surviving the next year or will they fight.

 

The highest end APU is a quad core..., the last truly well performing one was the phenom II x4 ( quad core ), and the APU-s do not come close, so AMD is going to make a step back with 4 cores, an APU that only makes sense if you do not buy a GPU.

APU-s work well with high speed ram, well for the price of that mega speed ram to have a real effect in games i can get the cheap 1600 ram, Athlon II, and a decent GPU... 

 

If they want to make APU-s that's fine, but they should really be focused on more cores. 2 year old fx CPU will be more powerful than the next gen APU, this is not acceptable... Intel is dragging it's ass, but i have not seen them make a worse performing chip than the one made 2 years before.

[matin94]

I really hope AMD comes back to the top to give Intel a run for its money.

wasnt that what we all wanted with the 290x and nvidia?

[ForsakenLive]

Kind of scary, AMD moves like the next 2 years of market were going to be progressing at the pace they are doing today. Is the CPU wars going to be this very small leaping frogs we have seen with GPUs?

I hope we see more hardware specific APIs usage, Crystal Well-like technology, hUMA developing, dedicated video encoding,  even more parallel processing and DDR4 on the AMD route, specially with APUs.

I do believe one day the low- and mid- end gamer will only have to rely on their APU to game just like they do today.

[Humbug]

What did AMD say a while back? Each new CPU will have differences of up to 15%?

 

That was the difference between Bulldozer and Piledriver, lets see if that continues with Steamroller and then Excavator as well

AMD made this claim while saying that would release annually. They delivered with piledriver but have failed to deliver steamroller.

 

If they had kept increasing performance by 15% per year like they did from bulldozer to piledriver then they would be in a decent position.

[Andrew48]

hope it comes to AM3+ as well  :rolleyes:

[LonliestofAll]

I wish more people saw what AMD is doing with their APUs. The GPU can be used to offload some of the lighter floating point operations freeing up the CPU to do the heavy lifting and reduce time on the entire calculation. All AMD needs to do after that is make their fetching process faster to keep up with it.

[mk005]

hope it comes to AM3+ as well  :rolleyes:

Word on the street is they're retiring AM3+ within the next year or so.  Among other problems it has issues with low memory bandwidth.

[Ddm5]

The giant excavator thing is not from BL2 IMO. But the vehicles are 100% from Borderlands 2. And yes it is an Nvidia title... Weird, huh ?

To be honest, both may be from the game, check Caustic Caverns you'll see the same style excavator things there.