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AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops

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Re: AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops

#42

Unfortunately anyone who takes their security or privacy seriously will be totally unable to use this. Every AMD chip contains a likely backdoored system called AMD Secure Processor (formerly “Platform Security Processor” or “PSP”) [1]. This separate processor contains closed source, proprietary binaries that have complete and unrestricted access to the host. Despite a large petition for AMD to opensource this, they…

So the same as Intel Management Engine?

Re: AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops

#43

Unfortunately anyone who takes their security or privacy seriously will be totally unable to use this. Every AMD chip contains a likely backdoored system called AMD Secure Processor (formerly “Platform Security Processor” or “PSP”) [1]. This separate processor contains closed source, proprietary binaries that have complete and unrestricted access to the host. Despite a large petition for AMD to opensource this, they…

> Unfortunately anyone who takes their security or privacy seriously will be totally unable to use this. Every AMD chip contains a likely backdoored system called AMD Secure Processor

This is fear mongering to the extreme. Intel has the exact same type of system embedded in their processors called Intel Management Engine. You can't escape this problem by buying Intel.

I notice you provided a lot of sources, but none for the claim "a likely backdoored system". Your post reads like something a bad Intel astroturfing shill would say.

Re: AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops

#44

How are the Linux Radeon drivers these days. Last time I tried (8 years ago) they were awful compared to the NVidia equivalent. But now that I might be able to get a 3 pound ultrabook with decent graphics, I'm willing to put up with a lot more inconvenience .

For the proprietary ones, Nvidia is still better in my experience on a Gentoo system where most everything else is from source. This Gentoo system started with Nvidia in 2009, was AMD in 2013, and this year is back on Nvidia now. AMD's old driver wasn't too bad and mostly an Nvidia-like experience with setup and stability, but after AMD's somewhat recent driver overhaul their proprietary one is a lot worse than it used to be, lacks many features or even a configuration UI, and worst it's required if you want an up-to-date X on your system. I also tried the open source AMD driver, which was its own pain (and the procedure wanted to bloat my kernel a lot) and didn't work in the end.

Re: AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops

#46
post #43

Unfortunately anyone who takes their security or privacy seriously will be totally unable to use this. Every AMD chip contains a likely backdoored system called AMD Secure Processor (formerly “Platform Security Processor” or “PSP”) [1]. This separate processor contains closed source, proprietary binaries that have complete and unrestricted access to the host. Despite a large petition for AMD to opensource this, they…

> Unfortunately anyone who takes their security or privacy seriously will be totally unable to use this. Every AMD chip contains a likely backdoored system called AMD Secure Processor This is fear mongering to the extreme. Intel has the exact same type of system embedded in their processors called Intel Management Engine. You can't escape this problem by buying Intel. I notice you provided a lot of sources, but none…

The Intel one has a known technique to disable the ME, the AMD one does not (for the moment).

Re: AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops

#47
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you referring to? Provide some links!

"50+ Segmentation Faults per Hour: Continuing to Stress Ryzen" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14936468 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ryzen-seg...

This seems to be resolved: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=new-ryze...

Re: AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops

#48
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think if the 8-core APU isn't happening this generation (obviously with 45+ W TDP), then it should definitely happen whenever AMD switches to the 7nm process.

I believe that they will actually go to 6-core APU, not 8. The reason for this belief is that currently the basic building block of Zen line is the CCX, which is 4 cores. Raven ridge is 1 CCX and GPU, Ryzen chips are 2 CCX, EPYC CPUs are made of 4x ryzen, for a total of 32 cores. But, when AMD advertised their server platform, the promised that in the next generation there will be 48-core chips that will be drop-in c…

Thanks, thats the analysis depth i'm usually looking for but never find anywhere!

Re: AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops

#49
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you referring to? Provide some links!

"50+ Segmentation Faults per Hour: Continuing to Stress Ryzen" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14936468 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ryzen-seg...

This is a known issue that only affects early revisions of Ryzen CPUs under specific workloads, so it's unlikely to appear in new ones like the mobile Ryzen. If you're affected, AMD will RMA your chip for free.

And AMD isn't the only manufacturer to have such issues. Intel had a bug in Skylake where it would crash under heavy load with Hyperthreading enabled. Modern CPUs are complicated beasts.

Re: AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve bought a Ryzen 5 for a home server, but sadly is awfully unstable. Apparently there is a bug in the Ryzen family. I’m using it with Freenas 11 (FreeBSD) and the system is having horrible random freezes with black screen. There are some threads talking about same issues, this make me lose faith in AMD, and going back to Intel.

This is an acknowledged and solved fab issue. Get it RMA'd.

It is not a solved issue at all. Chips are still coming off the line with the issue, the only solid fix is getting an RMA'd processor (AMD are hand-checking these units for the issue).

The assertion of there being a "safe date range" (ostensibly, date codes >= 1730, i.e. chips manufactured during/after Week 30 2017) was made by the Phoronix Forums webmaster on the basis that he hadn't seen any user posts reporting problems with chips that had been manufactured within the last 3 weeks. Obviously it takes a while for stock to move through packaging and distribution, so this was a pretty stupid proclamation to make. Since then, chips from the "safe date range" (eg 1733) have started showing up with the segfault problem, but his mis-information persists.

https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1770&tstart=0

The only processors that are relatively certain to not have this issue are the ones that come from filing an RMA with AMD. Full stop. And even some of those still have the issue.

It's a broad-base issue that causes general application and OS instability under load, it is not restricted to either Linux nor compilation workloads. I definitely encourage everyone to test their processor and RMA if necessary.

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