Threadripper: The inside story

[ravenshrike]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2017/09/05/amd-ryzen-threadripper-the-fascinating-story-behind-the-processor-that-beat-intel/#7fcdeb25230c

 

Quote

The battle goes on, of course, with Intel due to release processors with even more cores over the coming weeks, but just where did this somewhat unexpected processor come from? It might surprise you to learn that Ryzen Threadripper wasn’t originally part of AMD’s plans, which back in 2015 only included Ryzen and the EPYC server CPU.

 

...

There’s a unique story surrounding Threadripper, but one that gives testament to the spirit that’s emerging in the company as we go through this transition since 2014 when we announced our Zen architecture. It’s not really a story of roadmaps and long-term planning or huge R&D budgets - it’s a lot more personal than that and stemmed from a skunkworks project and a small group of AMD employees who had a vision of a processor they’d really want in terms of a high-performance PC.

...

My boss was sharing a taxi with Jim on the way to Computex 2016 and mentioned Threadripper to him then. He loved it, gave it the green light and found a way to get it on the roadmap. He believed in the idea, especially the way it leveraged existing technology we were using for Ryzen and EPYC, plus the fact as we were so excited about it that we’d already done a lot of the groundwork that would have been involved in the approval process anyway.

 

 

TL;DR A bunch of computer enthusiasts got bored and decided to whip up a competitor to Intel's EXTREME edition CPUs in their spare time. This is quite frankly hilarious given how badly it has discombobulated Intel.

[Guest]

That is absolutely great. That monkey-wrench definitely ended up on my desk.

Definitely wouldn't have felt as good building an X299 system. Threadripper was refreshing.

[emosun]

wow. too bad they sat around and did nothing for several years prior to that. while intels "computer enthusiasts" got bored from waiting for someone to actually compete.

i dont really think intel is very concerned , amd has a history of not really staying on top of things , and a history of never really being at the cutting edge of anything. short of making cheap versions of cpus that already exist , amd doesn't do much better than that.

[Zando_]

Haha! Intel is freaking out over RYzen and AMD is just like "Hey, lets stick a couple Ryzens together and call it Threadripper", they get the go ahead, and now poor (actually, very rich but sometimes lazy) Intel is freaking out! 

[Dylanc1500]

Intel isn't freaking out when they have 18 cores running at 4.8 ghz.

[WereCat]

19 minutes ago, Dylanc1500 said:

Intel isn't freaking out when they have 18 cores running at 4.8 ghz.

Under water at 90*C with at least twice the price.

[Dylanc1500]

2 minutes ago, WereCat said:

Under water at 90*C with at least twice the price.

If you want top tier enthusiast performance you have to pay top tier enthusiast price. As far as being under water that could be a lot of different things and isn't currently known. Being under water doesn't automatically mean better than air.

[PlayStation 2]

Crazy what glueing two Ryzen chips does as an idea.

[WereCat]

1 minute ago, Dylanc1500 said:

If you want top tier enthusiast performance you have to pay top tier enthusiast price.

Depends.

[ravenshrike]

44 minutes ago, Dylanc1500 said:

Intel isn't freaking out when they have 18 cores running at 4.8 ghz.

Except for the fact that it completely eats into the sweet, sweet Xeon money printing machine which they wanted to avoid at all costs, sure. Or the fact that they announced the 14, 16, and 18 core parts at Computex before they even began significant design work on cutting the Xeon it was based off of down in a kneejerk reaction to Threadripper. Hell, I'd give it even odds that the entire Xeon W line was a response to Epyc.

[TidaLWaveZ]

Here we go again with these delusions of grandeur.

[mynameisjuan]

10 minutes ago, WereCat said:

Depends.

Depends on what? Intel is still king in the performance category, but yeah its going to cost you. 

[Dylanc1500]

5 minutes ago, WereCat said:

Depends.

For Intel's purpose and use case expectations and the people this is designed for this is by means an expensive chip compared to past enthusiast products. I'll elaborate more when I get to a computer (in a meeting and they are getting PISSED that I'm browsing a tech forum, not that it matters when I literally just have to be present).

[Dylanc1500]

1 minute ago, mynameisjuan said:

Depends on what? Intel is still king in the performance category, but yeah its going to cost you. 

As they say in racing, if you want to play with the big boys, you have pay like the big boys.

[mynameisjuan]

3 minutes ago, Dylanc1500 said:

As they say in racing, if you want to play with the big boys, you have pay like the big boys.

"But a Chevy Cruze has a better price/performance than a Hellcat. It must be better!" -AMD fanboy buying a racing car

[Dylanc1500]

16 minutes ago, ravenshrike said:

Except for the fact that it completely eats into the sweet, sweet Xeon money printing machine which they wanted to avoid at all costs, sure. Or the fact that they announced the 14, 16, and 18 core parts at Computex before they even began significant design work on cutting the Xeon it was based off of down in a kneejerk reaction to Threadripper. Hell, I'd give it even odds that the entire Xeon W line was a response to Epyc.

I'll say this, all of this had been in the lineup before AMD had anything to do with it, that being said I wont argue that the release timing was bumped up slightly to counteract the hype with ZEN. They aren't really worried so much about ZEN as a product as much as the hype and image that they were getting.

[WereCat]

19 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

Depends on what? Intel is still king in the performance category, but yeah its going to cost you. 

If you do a workload that can take advantage of 18 cores then you will still benefit from much more cores rather than higher clock speed, which means that you can get EPYC for the same price of the Intel 18-core and you will get much more performance for your workload.

Not to mention that Threadripper at least supports ECC.

Paying more is not always getting better performance for your money. And being enthusiast has nothing with buying the best/most expensive stuff.

[The Benjamins]

9 minutes ago, Dylanc1500 said:

I'll say this, all of this had been in the lineup before AMD had anything to do with it, that being said I wont argue that the release timing was bumped up slightly to counteract the hype with ZEN. They aren't really worried so much about ZEN as a product as much as the hype and image that they were getting.

The 14c, 16c, and 18c was not planned to be release on x299 as a HEDT until TR showed its head.

[Dylanc1500]

2 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

The 14c, 16c, and 18c was not planned to be release on x299 as a HEDT until TR showed its head.

I don't mean to question you on that or to sound rude, but where do you get that conclusion?

[samcool55]

Whoever the guys/girls were that came up with threadripper deserve a big bonus.

Well done! That's exactly the reason why it's important to hire people that have a passion for their job even if they are below average.

[The Benjamins]

1 minute ago, Dylanc1500 said:

I don't mean to question you on that or to sound rude, but where do you get that conclusion?

The fact that the leaked x299 slides first only had up to 10c, then after ryzen release. newer leaked slides showed up to 12c. in some videos of CES motherboard manufactures said they never new that the 14c-18c existed until it was announce at the conference and they were mad they they never new about this before they were going to show off their boards.

[mynameisjuan]

2 minutes ago, WereCat said:

If you do a workload that can take advantage of 18 cores then you will still benefit from much more cores rather than higher clock speed, which means that you can get EPYC for the same price of the Intel 18-core and you will get much more performance for your workload.

Not to mention that Threadripper at least supports ECC.

Paying more is not always getting better performance for your money. And being enthusiast has nothing with buying the best/most expensive stuff.

First of all you bring price to performance in to the equation which is not my point. Then you compare two different performance brackets, compare core count and totally ignore the processors that intel has that will demolish AMD's Epyc line. Ignoring price, intel is king in any use case scenario 

[samcool55]

2 minutes ago, Dylanc1500 said:

I don't mean to question you on that or to sound rude, but where do you get that conclusion?

2 things.

1) it's not a coincidence the amount of cores is just a bit over the maximum of threadripper (16 vs 18)

2) The die of Skylake-X only has 12c, the only die Intel has that's last-gen and more than 12 cores is their server stuff so they are going to use that for the top-end of the X299 platform.

 

And at launch there was almost no information about those cpu's. We knew they would be launched later and the core count but that's it, no core speeds, TDP, nothing.

[Dylanc1500]

8 minutes ago, WereCat said:

If you do a workload that can take advantage of 18 cores then you will still benefit from much more cores rather than higher clock speed, which means that you can get EPYC for the same price of the Intel 18-core and you will get much more performance for your workload.

Not to mention that Threadripper at least supports ECC.

Paying more is not always getting better performance for your money. And being enthusiast has nothing with buying the best/most expensive stuff.

That's very dependent on the workload, clock speed can have a great effect on multicore workloads. (Example of a workload I'm personally familiar with) If you have a database running transaction records, which can saturate ever core you give it, you increase the clock speed and every core can finish its individual workload quicker and move on to the next task.

[bobhays]

29 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

"But a Chevy Cruze has a better price/performance than a Hellcat. It must be better!" -AMD fanboy buying a racing car

to be fair the Cruze is probably faster too as soon as you take a turn