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AMD Zen 2 Update: 7nm EPYC in Labs Now, Launching in 2019

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Re: AMD Zen 2 Update: 7nm EPYC in Labs Now, Launching in 2019

#51

Post by tscs37 »

gascan wrote: post #50
tscs37 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The peeps building Mill CPU are claiming they can do 10x performance over traditional (x86). IIRC in an early talk they explained this is mostly by bringing the IPC on a level with high IPC microcontroller arches. They do VLIW which can do a lot of things more efficiently if your compiler can handle it (Rust should be able to pull a lot of performance out of VLIW IIRC)

VLIW plus a "sufficiently smart compiler"? Isn't that IA-64 in a nutshell?

Basically, though Mill also is belt-based (think stack with size-limit) not registers and compilers nowadays are a bit better at VLIW than when IA-64 was introduced. They also have a shitload of security addons that would mitigate most modern exploits and other nice-to-haves.

Re: AMD Zen 2 Update: 7nm EPYC in Labs Now, Launching in 2019

#53

Post by ChuckMcM »

Roritharr wrote: post #2

Am I missing something here or is Intel starting to lag behind on Fab Tech? I thought they were years and billions ahead?!?

"All exponentials are s-curves" - basically you can be years ahead until it takes years to make any sort of gain. Intel fab technology has been years ahead of the rest of the industry for a while, but as we reach the flattening off point of power, performance, and cost gains, the difference in capabilities between a chip that is years behind the leader gets to be less and less.

Google in search, Intel it processor fabs, ARM in power efficiency, Etc. During the time of fast growth it is a huge differentiator, and once that fast growth has been exhausted you need a different differentiator.

Re: AMD Zen 2 Update: 7nm EPYC in Labs Now, Launching in 2019

#54

Post by kbenson »

dogma1138 wrote: post #12
veebat wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most likely cause of Intel's lagging is a wall of cost/benefit to being both designer and fab. This hit AMD earlier by being smaller(and arguably, with a different management style, AMD could have held on to their fabs longer) but each node only gets more expensive and harder to keep busy with orders which in turn means a greater need for external customers to fund R&D. Intel had a reprieve of almost a decade wit…

Intel's biggest mistake over the past 10 years was not to open it's foundry services sooner now it's custom foundry services are nearly irrelevant outside of a few niche markets. Mobile SoC design and being answerable to a huge number of very large customers forced fabs to evolve their processes in a way where market forces and customer demand forces requirements rather than office politics. Intel has still an edge o…

> Luckily for them their 10nm was much more ambitious than any of the 7nm designs and they are facing problems that other fabs will not face until their 5nm and beyond processes.

I've always wondered about this. What's to keep the hard won experience and knowledge of how to do cobalt from escaping into the wile and being adopted at a much higher rate by their competitors?

It goes both ways I guess, and some experience and working at smaller scales can also come to Intel, but I would imagine the gains for a leg up are greater with the harder process.

Sure, there are IP laws in place, but just not having to waste months (or manpower in parallel research) on paths where you can get a hint (path B is a dead end, don't devote much to it) seems like a gain in itself.

Re: AMD Zen 2 Update: 7nm EPYC in Labs Now, Launching in 2019

#55

Post by gameswithgo »

et2o wrote: post #40
bhouston wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Case in point, Apple's ARM chips are huge (and hot) compared to the stock ARM chips and that is because they are throwing transistors at the problem.

Would you have a particular reference for this? I have read that the Apple ARM chips are more power efficient than comparable ARM chips powering Android devices.

light up the cpu, get the work done fast, then shut down. that is typically the energy efficient thing to do.

Re: AMD Zen 2 Update: 7nm EPYC in Labs Now, Launching in 2019

#56

Post by dogma1138 »

kbenson wrote: post #54
dogma1138 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel's biggest mistake over the past 10 years was not to open it's foundry services sooner now it's custom foundry services are nearly irrelevant outside of a few niche markets. Mobile SoC design and being answerable to a huge number of very large customers forced fabs to evolve their processes in a way where market forces and customer demand forces requirements rather than office politics. Intel has still an edge o…

> Luckily for them their 10nm was much more ambitious than any of the 7nm designs and they are facing problems that other fabs will not face until their 5nm and beyond processes. I've always wondered about this. What's to keep the hard won experience and knowledge of how to do cobalt from escaping into the wile and being adopted at a much higher rate by their competitors? It goes both ways I guess, and some experienc…

My ex is a process improvement engineer at Intel she told me a story about considerably higher failure rate for silicon that was manufactured in a northern part of a room vs the southern part what’s more odd is that it only affected some products that shared this room in their pipeline.

The cause was that the water pipes under that section would impact that part of the process because of mechanical vibration the reason why it didn’t impact all processes because they were tied to the cooling system and it only had an effect when other procsses put stress on it.

These vibaration were apparently so small that they couldn’t measure the difference they identified this through a process of elimination.

This is a classical story of practical vs theoretical engineering the secret sauce isn’t the recepie it’s the cook.

If you think about it this way if it was so easy to recreate a process through reverse engineering a few hot chips talks and poaching Intel wouldn’t be in this mess and GloFo didn’t had to scrap their 20nm process.

When you almost at the level of moving atoms around the wing flaps of a butterfly start to really matter.

We’re well pass the time where you had Disney animators draw transistors on sheets and copper masks were cut by hand it wouldn’t surprise me if there are no beans days at foundries these days since a fart across the building might increase your defect rate by 3%

Re: AMD Zen 2 Update: 7nm EPYC in Labs Now, Launching in 2019

#57

Post by kbenson »

dogma1138 wrote: post #56
kbenson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Luckily for them their 10nm was much more ambitious than any of the 7nm designs and they are facing problems that other fabs will not face until their 5nm and beyond processes. I've always wondered about this. What's to keep the hard won experience and knowledge of how to do cobalt from escaping into the wile and being adopted at a much higher rate by their competitors? It goes both ways I guess, and some experienc…

My ex is a process improvement engineer at Intel she told me a story about considerably higher failure rate for silicon that was manufactured in a northern part of a room vs the southern part what’s more odd is that it only affected some products that shared this room in their pipeline. The cause was that the water pipes under that section would impact that part of the process because of mechanical vibration the reas…

> If you think about it this way if it was so easy to recreate a process through reverse engineering a few hot chips talks and poaching Intel wouldn’t be in this mess and GloFo didn’t had to scrap their 20nm process.

That's what I'm talking about. Who's to say there aren't a few gotchas like this in the new cobalt processing, and that's not exactly something that can be protected under IP law (or even necessarily by NDA, at least provably).

How much time does it save to have the second company attempting it get a hint of "hey, the new process is much more susceptible to problems of X,Y and Z than you would think, and you can save yourself months of headaches by being extra vigilant with respect to those from the beginning." ?

The benefit of the lead time you get as the first really needs to pay off, since the followers almost always have it easier. It's not hard to imagine that sometimes the pain and cost of being first is actually higher than the benefit and profit for that time period.

Re: AMD Zen 2 Update: 7nm EPYC in Labs Now, Launching in 2019

#58

Post by bhouston »

et2o wrote: post #40
bhouston wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Case in point, Apple's ARM chips are huge (and hot) compared to the stock ARM chips and that is because they are throwing transistors at the problem.

Would you have a particular reference for this? I have read that the Apple ARM chips are more power efficient than comparable ARM chips powering Android devices.

Apple uses a six wide decoder where as there is only a 4 wide decoder on the ARM stock chips.

Re: AMD Zen 2 Update: 7nm EPYC in Labs Now, Launching in 2019

#59

Post by sandworm101 »

Brockenstein wrote: post #46
sandworm101 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want AMD to overtake intel on single-core performance. There are only a handful of things that a chip manufacturer can be best at. If AMD is ahead on per-core and total number of cores, then they can and will demand the premium prices intel does today. I like AMD because they are the underdog who must keep prices low to keep my business. AMD taking the lead could also make them complacent when it comes to the…

Your post is strange in how heavily it reflects your values instead of what's best for AMD or consumers. There's nothing so great about the current status quo that we should actively discourage change or real competition. In the unlikely event AMD were ever to supplant Intel (in market share) it would just force Intel into AMD's position now. OH NO! Your business isn't so valuable that it's incentive for AMD to activ…

Econ 101: Competition is good. Econ 102: Unhealthy competition is bad. Econ 201: The wrong kind of healthy competition is also bad.

Where only two competitors sell too similar a product, two dogs chasing the same rabbit, market forces will only amplify this lack of diversity. I want a range of core/clock options at a variety of price points. If AMD and Intel become too similar on close speeds I fear the inevitable race will reduce my options to a binary of two very similar product lines. This is s recognized realworld phenomena.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law

Re: AMD Zen 2 Update: 7nm EPYC in Labs Now, Launching in 2019

#60

Post by nadioca »

dogma1138 wrote: post #56
kbenson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Luckily for them their 10nm was much more ambitious than any of the 7nm designs and they are facing problems that other fabs will not face until their 5nm and beyond processes. I've always wondered about this. What's to keep the hard won experience and knowledge of how to do cobalt from escaping into the wile and being adopted at a much higher rate by their competitors? It goes both ways I guess, and some experienc…

My ex is a process improvement engineer at Intel she told me a story about considerably higher failure rate for silicon that was manufactured in a northern part of a room vs the southern part what’s more odd is that it only affected some products that shared this room in their pipeline. The cause was that the water pipes under that section would impact that part of the process because of mechanical vibration the reas…

Thanks for sharing this story!
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