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Intel Shows 2.5D FPGA at ISSCC
- Groxx 10y agoLink seems to go to "Intel Shows 2.5D FPGA at ISSCC" instead? edit: oh, derp. nevermind. there's a second page: http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331317&page_number=2 http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331317&page_numb... edit edit: so apparently page 2 can't be linked to. whatever. bottom of the article content has a "next page" link.
- LeifCarrotson 10y agoYour link takes me to page 2. Running Chrome with uBlock Origin; not sure why you're being redirected to page 1.
- Groxx 10y ago¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it seems to be working now. maybe strange cookies / site bugs / who-knows-what.
- mrb 10y agoI should have linked to the second page: http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331317&page_number=2 http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331317&page_numb... Relevant quote: "AMD said its upcoming Zen x86 core fits into a 10 percent smaller die area than Intel’s currently shipping second-generation 14nm processor. Analysts and even Intel engineers in the session said the Zen core is clearly competitive though many confidential variables will determine whether the die advantage translates into lower cost for AMD."
- coldtea 10y ago>AMD said its upcoming Zen x86 core fits into a 10 percent smaller die area than Intel’s currently shipping second-generation 14nm processor. Sounds totally irrelevant.
- vosper 10y agoMaybe the implication is that a 10% smaller die means fewer transistors per chip, and therefore lower failure rate per chip, meaning that they get more working chips out of each wafer or something? And maybe that makes them less expensive, so that they could undercut Intel?
- B1FF_PSUVM 10y agoChip fabrication costs are usually a direct value per mm2 the chip takes up in the wafer. Besides that, a smaller area is also good for yield (% of chips that test out OK out of all fab'ed, in case random defects occur in any of the many processing steps.)
- mtgx 10y agoIt's actually super-relevant. Here's what this means. Intel has about 10% advantage in process technology. Yet despite that, AMD's chip is still 10% smaller than Intel's chip. That gives AMD an effective 20% architectural advantage over Intel for similar performance. This is why Intel is now scrambling to "streamline" its architecture as soon as possible (but won't be able to do it for the next 3 years or so). A smaller, more "efficient" chip (in terms of performance/die area) means AMD can sell it significantly cheaper and still make as much profit as Intel does on that chip. But from the looks of it, AMD is going to price its equivalent chips at around half or less of Intel's chips, which will make AMD chips a complete no-brainer. Add to this the fact that Intel will begin to make Xeons rather than its mainstream chips on new process nodes, at first, which means a delay of 6-12 months for the mainstream chips using Intel's latest process technology, and AMD looks to have a tremendous opportunity to steal a ton of market share from Intel over the next few years.
- coldtea 10y ago>Here's what this means. Intel has about 10% advantage in process technology. Yet despite that, AMD's chip is still 10% smaller than Intel's chip. That gives AMD an effective 20% architectural advantage over Intel for similar performance. The key is the "similar performance" part. Intel can just as well sacrifice 10% of their die too and get the same, or better, performance as AMD. Does it make sense? No. Does it make AMD's chip in any way better? Only if it's smaller AND faster / more efficient (which it is not). And even if it was, it would only matter if AMD could sustain it -- which it hasn't proven it can.
- kogepathic 10y ago> AMD said its upcoming Zen x86 core fits into a 10 percent smaller die area than Intel’s currently shipping second-generation 14nm processor. We need to compare apples to apples. AMD's Zen chips have no IGP, while most Intel chips are shipping with an Intel GPU. If you look at an Intel die shot, about half of the area is taken by the GPU. [0] Since the current batch of Zen SKUs lacks any IGP, I'd be worried if they weren't able to come up with a die that's smaller than Intel's with an IGP... [0] https://www.techpowerup.com/215333/intel-skylake-die-layout-detailed https://www.techpowerup.com/215333/intel-skylake-die-layout-...
- snovv_crash 10y agoThe i7-6900k doesn't have an IGP. Besides which, they are already comparing just the areas of the cores (and their L2 cache).
- kogepathic 10y ago> they are already comparing just the areas of the cores (and their L2 cache) Thanks, this wasn't obvious from the linked article.
- zamalek 10y agoI strongly doubt AMD are specifically targeting the desktop/laptop CPU market. * Cloud computing has an absurd market cap.[1] * Ryzen has some features that specifically target cloud computing: * * More PCIe lanes than a Xeon. These are basically useless for desktop/gaming (as SLI doesn't scale beyond 2 cards). This shines for cloud computing because you can fit more GPUs in a blade. There's also ML to consider. * * Virtualization security features. The chip can automatically encrypt pages, mitigating some of the virtualization attacks that we have seen recently. * * More compute per watt. Cost is nice to have (which Ryzen has), but cooling is one of the main concerns when selecting chips for high density. Intel's brand power is a waste of time and money to compete with. Unless AMD can sort something out with Apple (for example), Intel are going to continue dominating the desktop market - irrespective of which chip is actually superior. It's incredibly likely that only enthusiasts would buy a Ryzen - who AMD has catered for with XFR. Essentially, ignoring IGP is likely a strategic decision because it's irrelevant for the markets that AMD can easily attack. [1]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2015/06/18/byron-deeter-state-of-the-cloud/#350677d41034 http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2015/06/18/byron-deet...
- bdconsulting 10y agoLink points at something else. Even the edited link below..
- kunaltyagi 10y agoGroxx has the correct link
- qeternity 10y agoAMD really needs to start competing on price. Match Intel and Nvidia performance, at 75% TCO.
- TwoBit 10y agoWhat do you mean by "start"? They already do so and their FX CPUs are cheaper than equivalently performing Ibtel CPUs.
- loeg 10y agoThat's pretty much what they do.
- anonova 10y agoGiven early benchmarks are showing that the Ryzen 7 1700X ($390) is performing similarly to the Intel Core i7-6900K ($1050), they definitely are going in that direction. http://hothardware.com/news/amds-ryzen-7-1700x-delivers-i7-6900k-performance-at-bargain-price http://hothardware.com/news/amds-ryzen-7-1700x-delivers-i7-6...
- vorticalbox 10y agoIf that's true they are vastly under cutting the market and I do see these cheap prices staying for the next gen. I could be AMD trying to steal market share.
- mtgx 10y agoWhich is what they need to do. They need a "rapid" increase in both market share and relevance, and the two are tied together. They can delay making a lot of profits until later. But it looks like AMD's architecture is significantly more cost-effective than Intel's, so even if they have to sell the chips at "only" 70% of Intel's price later on, for the same performance, they could still make significant profit on those chips.
- peatmoss 10y agoI think they could carve out a niche by being the chip maker that produces a trustworthy computing environment that supports blob-free computing without the equivalent of Intel Management Engine. That plus your point about TCO could be a nice way of competing with Intel.
- chx 10y agoThere's a lot that goes into CPU performance. Go to http://wccftech.com/ryzen-smaller-die-intel-zen-architecture-not-good-hpc/ http://wccftech.com/ryzen-smaller-die-intel-zen-architecture... and search for "Table courtesy of the Linley Group" without quotes to see an extremely interesting table: http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Zen-Double-Precision.png http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Zen-Doubl... > Intel has a double precision IPC of 16 FLOPs per Clock with Skylake as well as 2x 256 bit FMA whereas Zen only has 8 FLOPs per clock and 2* 128 bit FMA. FMA=Fused multiply-add. It remains to be seen whether dollar for dollar AMD matches Intel or not -- it's likely to be very application dependent.
- AlphaSite 10y agoDiffer t workloads will be if it in different ways from the trade offs. I do t imagine many applications will miss AVX 512.
- jcoffland 10y agoIt's actually quite difficult to use AVX512 and have it pay off significantly unless you design something to specifically take advantage of it.
- m_mueller 10y agoExactly. IMO doing GPGPU is actually easier than porting code to use vectorisation, since GPU cores are quite a bit more capable (allow branching/context switches, just with a performance penalty) than the CPUs vector units (vector code AFAIK completely breaks if you try to do an early return on one unit). I'm waiting for the day when the CPU designers learn from GPU and just give us full OpenMP kernel support, such that you can use both multicore and vectorization by just scattering the OpenMP kernel call, including branching and early returns inside the kernels. I actually think that the higher core Xeons would still be quite competitive with GPUs if that was the case, but as it stands even the Intel MICs are a pain to program effectively. Doing this all with OpenMP is IMO just not good solution, it's very hard figuring out where things goes wrong.
- webaholic 10y agoreddit has some benchmarks (rumored): http://i.imgur.com/9bXzF5B.png http://i.imgur.com/9bXzF5B.png https://videocardz.com/65913/how-fast-is-ryzen https://videocardz.com/65913/how-fast-is-ryzen
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pshposh 10y agoWhy do both of these feature only the physics benchmark? The second link illustrates that Intel still wins in single core performance.
- gcp 10y agoI don't think there's any question that Intel will win in single-thread performance. AMD has never stated the opposite. They will, though, manage to deliver much more cores despite only being a tiny bit behind in single-core, which is a very big difference from e.g. Bulldozer.
- phire 10y agoYeah, Intel will remain the single-thread king. But I feel like intel have backed themselves into a corner here. The main reason intel is getting better single-thread performance is the higher clock speeds. I think the graphs even suggest that zen is getting higher IPC. I really doubt Intel can push the clock speeds much higher. Intel really need to find more IPC somewhere, otherwise future versions of Ryzen (Zen+, Zen++) will overtake the intel chips as AMD refine the Zen design to improve IPC and improve clock speeds at the same time.
- floatboth 10y agoIntel wins on single thread… on the desktop line (4 cores max). Summit Ridge is competing against the overpriced "enthusiast" lineup (Haswell-E/Broadwell-E), which doesn't clock nearly as high as Skylake/Kaby Lake.
- iand675 10y agoSo the latest AMD cores seem like they might be more competitive... does anyone know which AMD processors are likely to support ECC memory? My one big gripe with Intel CPUs is that they currently only support ECC memory for non-consumer chips. I run a personal ZFS cluster and am more concerned about data integrity / cost than I am about pure CPU performance.
- sandyjames 10y agomy friend's ex wife gets 62 every hour at home... she's been unemployed for ten months and the previous month her pay check was 19916 just working on the internet for 3 hours a day. go here to this site... http://tinyurl.com/lidfk88kl http://tinyurl.com/lidfk88kl
- matt_wulfeck 10y agoIf you aren't worried about power consumption, you're probably better off with a Xeon class processor that's a few generations old. Still very fast and capable, if a bit hot.
- witty_username 10y agoI think that most AMD processors support ECC.
- Already__Taken 10y agoThe catch appears to be finding a motherboard to do it.
- watersb 10y agoI am re-building my ZFS array with consumer parts. GIGABYTE GA-X150M-PRO ECC Kingston 16GB ECC DIMM KVR21E15D8/16 Pentium G4600 CPU Toys arrive in a couple of days. Total outlay was $220. When I first built my storage box, in 2009, the AMD CPUs all supported ECC DRAM, but I could not find a motherboard-chipset-BIOS setup that would actually implement it.
- 10y ago
- akerro 10y agoAnd consumes twice less WATs!
- oliwarner 10y agoGetting a bit bored of leaks, press releases and even specs. The proof of a CPU is in how it benchmarks across real workloads. We're 2-3 weeks away from global release. People buying components NOW are exactly the sort of people AMD should be working their socks off to stop buying Intel parts. But instead of any firm performance figures, we have rumour. The only reason I can imagine AMD is still keeping the press under cover is because these Zen chips still can't compete where it matters and if AMD lets that be known, everybody will go back to Plan A and buy an i7 6900K.
- agumonkey 10y agoYou don't trust the presentation demo AMD made a few weeks ago ?
- flukus 10y agoNo. I trust independent comparisons a lot more than I would ever trust the company making the product.
- untoreh 10y agoI think the benchmarks shown by amd can be trusted. But they are very very cherry picked, example the demonstration they did when they released the rx480
- flukus 10y agoI've found out the hard way that the rx480 is actually a counter example to my earlier point. I'm happy with the performance but was misled about the state of Linux support.
- agumonkey 10y agoFollowing that event, a french magazine tried to replicate the bench and said they were similar to AMD's claims. So far no lies have been uncovered.
- 10y ago
- vegabook 10y agopersonally hoping for ECC support on the AMD consumer chips, because Xeon pricing right now is just a total and utter ripoff. For the growing in-memory database world this would be huge.
- robotjosh 10y agoMaybe a big L2 cache is nice, but overall performance is all that really matters. I suspect the figures we have seen are from running the chip hot with a fancy cooler. Gamers won't be able to overclock much and regular people will have heat and noise to deal with. Just a hunch, we'll see in a few weeks. I'm going to buy a ryzen setup if they are not awful.
- jackmott 10y agoa big l2 cache will tend to lead to good overall performance. In that it will positively impact the performance of a wide range of programs. Especially ones that adhere to common OOP or functional programming practices. (Pointer hopping, virtual functions, linked lists, etc) Games or other carefully tuned programs that carefully lay out data in memory may not be much affected I guess.
- gm-conspiracy 10y agoWas this headline changed? I thought it referenced AMD originally?
- minsight 10y agoThe AMD news is on the second page. Changing the title here to match that of the linked article, while in keeping with HNpolicy, has ruined the utility of the link.
- LeifCarrotson 10y agoYes, it originally linked to the second page of this article, which is subtitled "Zen squeezes x86 area and power" and has a completely different topic. The HN submission received the editorialized title "AMD Zen core is 10% smaller than Intel's current gen, and has 2x larger L2" which is why the top comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13642442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13642442) references AMD as the focus of the article. Like EETimes articles (and to be fair, they're not alone in the practice), this article is basically just a collation of manufacturer press releases. To hammer this point home, or perhaps to reach a 500 word target, the author concludes by discussing a new Mediatek mobile SOC completely unrelated to either Intel's FPGAs on page 1 or the AMD Zen cores on the top half of page 2.
- pjc50 10y agoI'm slightly confused why everyone's talking about CPUs and ignoring the FPGA! Anyway, it's an interesting technique. An extension of chip-on-module packaging where instead of having a circuit board made of FR4 you have a tiny PCB made of multilayer silicon. This allows fast connections between chips made with different processes (CPU/DRAM/Flash are somewhat incompatible), and joining small chips together into large ones to improve yield.
- baobrain 10y agoSeems like the title was changed from last night. It was about how AMD's new processors took 10% less die space than intel chips
- matt_wulfeck 10y agoCan you ELI5 how putting an FPGA on a cisc die will ultimately improve performance? Does it affect both multi core and single core benchmarks?
- pjc50 10y agoIt doesn't, there are two unrelated announcements in a separate article! The use of multi-die technology lets Intel build transcievers that run at a higher speed than the main die - 28GHz SERDES on a 1GHz FPGA.
- nrclark 10y agoAdding an FPGA onto a desktop CPU probably doesn't speed up any existing benchmark tests, but it does have a lot of potential. At an ELI5 level, FPGAs are reconfigurable blocks of digital logic gates. So a CPU-connected chunk of FPGA fabric could be reconfigured on-the-fly to create task-specific CPU instructions. A smart C compiler might be able to detect an ultra-common 16-instruction block of code and synthesize it into FPGA logic (effectively collapsing it down to a single instruction as far as the CPU is concerned). edit: as pjc50 points out, Intel isn't making any FPGA/x86-64 hybrids just yet. But I'd bet good money that they're on Intel's roadmap after the Altera aquisition.
- mrb 10y ago