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The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores

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21–30 of 126 posts

Re: The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores

#21

Bloody hell, this processor has more cores than the dual socket Xeon HPCs that my lab bought 2 years ago. Amazing. Honest question: Isn't the memory throughput an issue when you try to feed 32 hungry processors?

Well, it's got four fairly fast memory channels but yes, you'll probably tend to be more memory limited with this guy - though the 64 MB of L3 should help in many cases.

Re: The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores

#23
Curious that there's quad-channel DDR4. AMD's similar Epyc processors that have four chips on the module are octal-channel (because there's a dual-channel controller on each chip). Won't these therefore perform worse than they should?

Re: The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores

#24

Bloody hell, this processor has more cores than the dual socket Xeon HPCs that my lab bought 2 years ago. Amazing. Honest question: Isn't the memory throughput an issue when you try to feed 32 hungry processors?

For TR kind of. In the newer models only half the cores have direct access to a DDR channel. This shows in memory bounded benchmarks, but Epyc (server line) elevates this problem by have 8 (!!) memory channels, instead of the consumer TR’s 4.

Ultimately it depends on how cache friendly your workload is.

The 32c/64t is kind of a marketting gimmick selling binned Eypcs. If your doing memory bound HPC consider the 16c/32t model for roughly equal performance at a lower price.

Re: The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores

#25

Bloody hell, this processor has more cores than the dual socket Xeon HPCs that my lab bought 2 years ago. Amazing. Honest question: Isn't the memory throughput an issue when you try to feed 32 hungry processors?

It's the unfortunate downside to these. Two of the dies don't have direct access to memory, but it seems like AMD didn't want to do a refresh of the pinouts and force socket updates. I suspect this will be left for the Zen 2 version of Threadripper. That being said, I imagine in most circumstances the performance should still be pretty good.

Re: The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores

#26
post #4

That pricing is actually more reasonable than I was expecting. I might get myself a 32 core quad GPU workstation. Unthinkable even just a year ago.

Good god! Why on earth you need 32 core quad GPU workstation?

For the same reason Apple is selling an 18-core Mac Pro for $20,000 or whatever the price is now. Some people need that power. It's just that with AMD, you can get more of it and for a tiny fraction of the cost of Apple's Mac Pro.

Re: The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores

#27

Given Intel's struggles around their process shrink, AMD may have come up with the perfect product at the perfect time. You can already see their effect with Intel finally adding more cores to their chips to try and stay competitive. I do think that Intel will manage to get silicon out a bit earlier then their current end of CY19, but if they don't, TR and Ryzen may be the default go-to for manufacturers.

It is time to give AMD a chance. Intel is plagued by problems with the 10nm process technology resulting in no significant innovation on their CPUs' performance or power consumption for over two years now. And just recently they pushed their 10nm products even further back to the second half of 2019. AMD might have the first 7nm CPUs out by then. Of course process technologies are not easily comparable between fabs b…

> It is time to give AMD a chance. Intel is plagued by problems with the 10nm process technology resulting in no significant innovation on their CPUs' performance or power consumption for over two years now.

The difference between 14nm and 14nm+++ is pretty close to a full node step...

> And just recently they pushed their 10nm products even further back to the second half of 2019. AMD might have the first 7nm CPUs out by then. Of course process technologies are not easily comparable between fabs but it is still crazy to see Intel starting to fall behind in process technology - a game they dominated for decades.

The numbers used for process 'sizes' don't really hold any meaning anymore and can't be directly compared. Intel's 14nm is 'better' in almost every metric than other fabs 10nm process. Intel's 10nm process is expected to be similarly comparable to other fabs 7nm.

Intel isn't really behind on process tech, but the competition has closed the gap considerably.

Re: The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores

#28

Given Intel's struggles around their process shrink, AMD may have come up with the perfect product at the perfect time. You can already see their effect with Intel finally adding more cores to their chips to try and stay competitive. I do think that Intel will manage to get silicon out a bit earlier then their current end of CY19, but if they don't, TR and Ryzen may be the default go-to for manufacturers.

> Given Intel's struggles around their process shrink, AMD may have come up with the perfect product at the perfect time.

Yes -- AMD got lucky, this time. I sincerely doubt they (or anyone else) had any idea how Intel will struggle with their 10nm when they started on Zen in 2012. Back in 2013 Intel said they will have Cannon Lake out in 2015 (!) https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/16/intel_10nm_14nm_pla... and today, mid 2018, the only released Cannon Lake CPU is a sad little dual core with the graphics chip disabled ( i3-8121U) selling in "very limited quantities".

65nm: 2006

45nm: 2007

32nm: 2010

22nm: 2012

14nm: 2014

10nm: 2019 (?)

Re: The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores

#30
post #2

I'm very excited for AMD and their market successes lately. I never wanted a world controlled by Intel, and even if all my computers are Intel at the moment I feel the world benefits from this competition. That being said... Processor pre-orders? I had No idea that was a thing. Hope you get a QA discount. It doesn't talk about sockets but for sake of preorderers I hope it's compatible with original threadripper board…

What is strange about pre-ordering hardware that might initially be in short supply?

Pre-orders don't make sense in the case of downloadable games, where there is no scarcity.

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