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AMD’s third shoe drops at CES 2020: 7nm Zen 2 mobile CPUs
- ChuckNorris89 7y agoI put off upgrading my 3 year old laptop last year waiting for the 7nm Zen and 7nm Nvidia parts. Soo far it looks like it was worth the wait. Now it's Nvidias turn.
- XCSme 7y agoBut next year even new/better CPUs and GPUs will appear, right? Why not wait until next year?
- ChuckNorris89 7y agoBecause in the last few years progress has been slow and mostly incremental with major leaps every 3-5 years. As long as you can wait and upgrade when that major leap happens you're good for a few years. That's why we follow tech news, leaks and rumours, to estimate when the next major leap will be and not be suckered into buying hardware that will be too quickly obsolete. That's why HW manufacturers have NDAs in place. To keep the consumers buying the current stock instead of holding out for the next gen.
- pdimitar 7y agoValid question. My answer would be: because even though AMD made things quite interesting during 2019, I don't foresee them being able to go much further than what they did now. Example: PCIe 4.0 has insane bandwidth allowances. I don't see any SSDs ever going beyond PCIe 4.0 bandwidth. Other iterative improvements like a few dozen MHz more in CPUs, or a few dozen more cores on the GPU, or a few more hundred MHz in RAM... they are usable without their potential being wasted in the new chipsets -- although I am not an expert, it does seem that way after several reads of the their parameters. And even if next-gen stuff with bigger improvements is coming, I don't feel we can go much higher before these things hit big diminishing returns in noticeable performance in all but very specialised programs. Currently I am using a workstation with 10-core 4.0GHz CPU / 64GB 2666MHz DDR4 ECC / NVMe SSD at ~2.8 GB/s. I seriously cannot make any programming software even utilise that SSD to full capacity -- only Postgres manages to saturate it to 50% of its potential when doing `pg_restore`. Granted I haven't run any deep learning stuff and I don't intend to. I am focusing on everyday and professional-but-not-strongly-specialised software. And there, I feel, stopping at motherboards with PCIe 4.0 and their appropriate AMD CPUs and uber-fast SSDs and the fastest RAM you can find today... will be more than enough for like 5 years. All IMO of course.
- happycube 7y agoEarly hints of Zen 3 sound pretty impressive, but it sounds like you're at a good stopping point upgrade-wise for a while :) Even post-mitigations Sandy Bridge is still "good enough" for most people IMO, even though current chips are much nicer.
- ksec 7y agoThere is another data point. Zen 4 will be PCI-E 5.0 and DDR5. Unless Zen 4 is a gigantic leap forward in performance and not an iteration. The cost of Jumping in those tech will be quite expensive. So Zen 3, PCI-E 4.0, DDR4 will be like the sweet spot for desktop for a while. ( I do wish I am wrong and they drive down the cost of PCI-E 5.0 and DDR5 faster. But history has shown those tends to take 2 - 3 years to pick up the pace )
- pdimitar 7y agoI have the same feeling. A lot of people will stay on Zen 3 / PCIe 4.0 / DDR4 for years and PCIe 5.0 will be for min-maxers. Hell, even the current high-end PCIe 3.0 setups like mine seem to be quite future-proof.
- ksec 7y agoWell of coz that is from a PC perspective, and I am stuck on Mac......
- maximente 7y agoi think it's basically consumerism. i'm running a processor that's 10 years old with some RAM and SSD upgrades throughout the years. it's perfectly fine for daily golang/java/scala/haskell work. a coworker of mine has a generation 2 ryzen which runs games like factorio perfectly fine - big setups (according to him) are pretty smooth. no GPU. he says he hasn't yet found any games that can't run fairly well on it yet. it's funny because desktops are now basically the thin clients we thought we'd all be using in a futuristic tech setup, with the actual work being done on "the cloud". your desktop isn't fast enough to do any real "work" other than some unit tests, compiling, etc.
- ksec 7y agoAny reason why not wait for AMD's RDNA 2.0? Or do you need CUDA? I think my problem with Nvidia is they are ( for now ) hard to loathe. They were like the old Intel where their constant innovation just baffles me. And there is nothing but respect. ( Apart from their part with Apple's dispute ) But I have been an ATI Fans since early days. Still has an ATI Mach and Rage somewhere in my room.
- bitL 7y agoNow please get some proper high-end laptops (HiDPI, 32GB, TB3) and a NUC clone that can be used as a SteamBox.
- a012 7y agoIt may take forever for a vendor to make a Mini PC like NUC which is comparable with AMD CPUs. I assume the chicken and egg problem here because the market is small and Intel NUC is already well established.
- gowld 7y agoIt could take as long as -1 years. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-mini-pc-intel-nuc-ecosystem-Ryzen-embedded-R1000-V1000 https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-mini-pc-intel-nuc-ecos...
- a012 7y agoI saw but most of them have different targets than consumers, so still no.
- Already__Taken 7y agoThey seem to be coming https://www.asrockind.com/overview.asp?Model=4X4%20BOX-R1000V https://www.asrockind.com/overview.asp?Model=4X4%20BOX-R1000...
- aeyes 7y agoZOTAC has been selling AMD based Mini PCs for a while, I don't see why they shouldn't make one based on this new CPU: https://www.zotac.com/us/product/mini_pcs/all?processor=AMD https://www.zotac.com/us/product/mini_pcs/all?processor=AMD
- bitL 7y agoZotac has a better Ryzen-based computer in their Magnus line with a proper GPU though...
- heyflyguy 7y agoThe article mentions it, but I stay consistently frustrated by my marriage to NVIDIA at this point. A heavy user of image processing, image mosaicing, tensorflow, et al - I should invest in NVIDIA stock.
- gowld 7y agoWarren Buffet recommended investing in the companies who make products you can't not use.
- wolfgke 7y ago> Warren Buffet recommended investing in the companies who make products you can't not use. Let's put it this way: My taste for products that I can't not use is rather different from the majority of society.
- WillPostForFood 7y agoWarren Buffet's recommendation may particularly relevant to himself because of his aw shucks main street tastes.
- jacek 7y agoI have been waiting for mobile 7nm Zen 2 to get a new laptop. However, it seems most of the newly introduced laptops with Zen 2 are gimped compared to Intel counterparts. Some AMD laptops from Lenovo don't have a high-res display options (Intel versions do), 16GB memory options (Intel versions do). Acer Swift 3 with Intel comes with high res 3:2 display. AMD version comes with 16:9 FHD. I hope the next generation Thinkpad line will be more interesting.
- opencl 7y agoThey announced these chips 2 days ago, there's still plenty of time for nicer laptops to get announced. Hopefully the Matebook D gets updated with these at least.
- jacek 7y agoYou are right, we need a bit of patience. Reviews of last generation Thinkpads with AMD have been very positive. I hope the next generation will be even better. I would love to see one with 16:10 screen, but that's rather unlikely.
- bjoli 7y agoLet's make it 3:2! I make extensive use of either 2 windows side by side, or multiple windows in Emacs. I never have horizontal space issues.
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y agoI play a lot of retro games, so why not 4:3!?
- y4mi 7y agoI don't remember 4:3 being frequent, wasnt almost everything 5:4?
- Roritharr 7y agoI really hope they find a way to include a compatible Thunderbolt 3 experience. Using a Thunderbolt 3 Dock has become a must for me at this point, i'd hate to go back to multiple cables/less than 2*4k/60
- jakamau 7y agoI share that sentiment and I can't wait for USB 4 to show up in consumer products.
- Roritharr 7y agoI wonder if USB4 Devices will be actually really compatible with current Thunderbolt 3 Devices, or if it's a "technically yes but not really" situation.
- Marsymars 7y agoThere exist desktop AMD motherboards with Thunderbolt 3. Laptops will probably be trickier due to power use.
- AtlasBarfed 7y agoalso handily nosed past Intel's most recent full-on gaming CPU, the i7-9700K, on both content creation and physics engine benchmarks, despite being a mobile form factor with under half the TDP. ...wow
- nickcw 7y agoYour standard disclaimer about nm when referring to modern chips: > Most recently, due to various marketing and discrepancies among foundries, the number itself has lost the exact meaning it once held. Recent technology nodes such as 22 nm, 16 nm, 14 nm, and 10 nm refer purely to a specific generation of chips made in a particular technology. It does not correspond to any gate length or half pitch. Nevertheless, the name convention has stuck and it's what the leading foundries call their nodes. Since around 2017 node names have been entirely overtaken by marketing with some leading-edge foundries using node names ambiguously to represent slightly modified processes. Additionally, the size, density, and performance of the transistors among foundries no longer matches between foundries. For example, Intel's 10 nm is comparable to foundries 7 nm while Intel's 7 nm is comparable to foundries 5 nm. https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node So 7nm does not mean the chip has 7nm features, it means that the marketing team called it "7nm".
- agumonkey 7y agonm is the new Hz
- ChuckNorris89 7y agoNot really. Everyone can check the frequency of the CPU so the one on the box mostly matches the one you'll get but no consumer can put the silicone under the electron microscope and measure all the transistor features and feel cheated that it doesn't match the advertised size. Outside techies, most consumers don't know wtf nm is and how that correlates with performance, maybe some might even think that more nm is better, but on the other hand, most have a vague idea that more MHz is better. That's one of the reasons why consumer grade tech has its specs totally different emphasized than the professional stuff. If you look at the ryzen box you won't find many specs but you'll find a VR logo. :)
- jagged-chisel 7y agoFor marketing purposes, nm is the new Hz. Once, clock speed 'mattered' and was used in marketing to indicate a CPU that did work faster. There was a period of time where Hz was still used by marketing, yet it had stop reflecting how much work the CPU actually performed in a given amount of time. The public caught on that Hz mattered less. Now, they're hoping nm matters in marketing (no as 'this is a faster chip' but 'this chip uses 'better' technology than TheOtherGuys/ThePreviousGeneration/WhatEver) for at least a few moments before the marketing team has to come up with some other differentiator.
- agumonkey 7y agoSide effect of these: SFF, NUC, fanless desktops too.
- dghughes 7y agoAMD should market it as "7en".
- kijin 7y agoThat looks disturbingly reminiscent of a certain David Fincher movie.
- blinkingled 7y agoCould signify an end to INTC's most recent 7 MDS sins.
- omnimus 7y agoSo it was CPU in the box?
- blackhaz 7y agoI'll probably be downvoted, and sorry for the off-topic, but I miss those days when you could approximate computing power by looking at the processor's model number. 386SX-33, 386DX-40, 486DX2-66, and so on... Right now it's all becoming gibberish to me.. 1075, 4800u, 3950, 6600U. I don't even remember what CPU do I have. All the romance is gone!
- faitswulff 7y agoOn the upside, why worry about the features or clock speed when you can use a processor's model number to estimate its price? [0] [0]: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15318/amds-64core-threadripper-3990x-3990-sd https://www.anandtech.com/show/15318/amds-64core-threadrippe...
- jbarberu 7y agoI think that's called shifting priorities, and I can relate.
- blihp 7y agoI suspect that's been deliberate at least on Intel's part since their year over year changes haven't been compelling for the better part of a decade. So their model numbers indicate 'new' without really quantifying 'improved' since that hasn't been a very good story for a while now.
- ajross 7y agoThat's just fundamental. In the golden age of VLSI scaling, from 1985 to 2003[1] or so, we really were seeing that doubling of transistor density with every 1.5-2 year generation, and the shrinking transistors were getting faster more or less linearly with size, leading to a quadratic improvement over time. Those days are almost two decades in the past, and they aren't coming back, ever. We happen to be seeing a bump right now due to AMD migrating across two process nodes at once (and Intel having fallen a little behind), but that's just an instantaneous thing. The days of the 486 are still gone. [1] My own dates. I'm bounding this roughly by the point where EDA tools caught up with process improvements (allowing straightforward die shrinks and scaling of logic) and the end of "free" frequency scaling due to thermal and power limits. Someone else probably has a different definition. Fight me.
- mikece 7y agoSorry if this is off-topic but how would this chip compare to an ARM design that could handle 16 threads? Would thermal dissipation, power consumption, and performance be roughly the same or would they be significantly different? I want to be excited about this chip but thought that this was supposed to be the year we all get ARM-powered laptops/Chromebooks.
- toast0 7y agoThere's several popular ARM cores around these days. You would need to pick a specific processor family, at least. That said, I have seen plenty of ARM powered Chromebooks and I don't think any of them had more than four cpus or were known for high performance. It's not impossible to make a high performance ARM chromebook, but it's not the market people are building for. High performance x86 Chromebooks happen because once you've built for a dual core mainstream x86 laptop processor, you can also easily solder in a higher performance processor with the same footprint.
- blihp 7y agoYou can't expect comparable core for core performance as the architectures have different objectives. Thermals, power consumption and performance would all be significantly lower on existing mainstream ARM chips.
- kllrnohj 7y agoARM vs. X86 is just the instruction set. The instruction set plays almost no role in power / performance these days. Maybe once in a very distant past when an x86 decoder was a significant chunk of silicon, but not these days. So instead you'd need to ask how does Zen 2 compare to Cortex A76 or something like that. Which we don't know since we don't have the 15W Zen 2 mobile parts to benchmark yet.
- awill 7y agoIt's super annoying that AMD's 3000 desktop line is 7nm zen2, while their 3000 laptop line is 12nm zen+. It's confusing and dishonest. Multiple times I've jumped at almost getting a Ryzen 3000 laptop only to remember that it's not really Ryzen 3000.
- jlei523 7y agoIt's only confusing to a small minority of buyers. Most people who buy these laptops know nothing about Zen2, Zen1, Zen+.
- cabaalis 7y ago> Intel focused on AI acceleration—but AMD went unapologetically hard on gaming. I don't think you can go wrong focusing on gaming. This is my opinion of how Microsoft succeeded so well. The network effects push all of computing forward.
- jszymborski 7y agoDoes this not all just boil down to marketing? GPUs turned out to be a outsized boon to ML performance, but they go there by fulfilling the needs of gamers. I feel like this just boils down to what we've known for a while: Intel is catering to an enterprise crowd while AMD is catering to the average PC enthusiast.
- Havoc 7y agoStadia etc could still ruin it for AMD. You no longer need local power to game
- int_hdlr 7y agoThe verdict is out there. Reviews of Stadia haven't been flattering.
- jotm 7y agoThe new OnLive? Nah
- kllrnohj 7y agoStadia doesn't run on fairy dust. It still uses CPUs & GPUs, and the more people use Stadia the more it will need. And since Stadia uses AMD GPUs I don't think AMD would be that sad about selling more super high margin enterprise GPUs to Google. And of course you still need that local client to play it, which might as well be an AMD-powered ultrabook. At which point Stadia just resulted in AMD selling up to 3 products instead of just 1 (GPU & CPU in the server + APU in the laptop)
- dijit 7y agoStadia doesn’t target enthusiast gamers, I don’t know why people are trying to judge it on those merits. Stadia is for the person who has 1hr every few days to play a game casually on the TV or 20 minutes during lunch. It caters perfectly for the crowd of people who do not want to be locked to a specific device (gaming pc) or update their console/games. The high static time cost of gaming in 2020 is what stadia mitigates. And anyway. Stadia is powered by AMD underneath.
- bloody-crow 7y agoMeantime, Apple is stuck with Intel for CPUs and AMD for GPUs — the worst of both worlds.
- dijit 7y agoI would not say “stuck”. They have good reason for telling Nvidia to fuck off. Maybe you remember some time ago where Nvidia graphics cards didn’t meet the spec that they gave to Apple, and thus overheated and de-soldered themselves from MacBook Pro’s. This was not helped by the fact that Nvidia insisted on integrating itself into the north bridge of the motherboard. Meaning a card failure was fatal in the weirdest of ways. Or the other time where Nvidia didn’t ship their graphics chip to them with support for the old school Cinema Display. So they sat in warehouses for 18months while Nvidia produced the part and only then, Apple could start integrating. Then Nvidia tried to sue Samsung+Qualcomm when the iPhone came out (because apple used GPUs from these companies) claiming patent infringement. Then in 2016 Apple said “no” to Nvidia on putting their GPUs into their laptops due to power consumption to performance concerns. And apparently that was not a healthy conversation. Nvidia is a bully, and Apple is a big player. I will not shed a tear over 10% performance in predominantly game workloads. Intel on the other hand has an edge with thunderbolt right now, but that’s an open standard and Apple could produce an AMD machine with thunderbolt now. I would suspect that they’ll live with the lesser performance until ARM is possible.
- ksec 7y ago>Then Nvidia tried to sue Samsung+Qualcomm when the iPhone came out (because apple used GPUs from these companies) claiming patent infringement. Apple has always been using PowerVR for iPhone since day 1. Even the recent so called self designed GPU are pretty much 80% PowerVR with all PowerVR proprietary and patented features.