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AMD’s Rome is indeed a monster

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Re: AMD’s Rome is indeed a monster

#61

Post by vondur »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #18

Looking forward to these chips but always have concerns for AMDs ability to execute consistently. Opteron, the original 'Sledgehammer' series was way ahead of Intel because Intel just couldn't bring themselves to put 64 bit features into their Pentium line, and AMD squirreled away that advantage by not following up, and having other issues with later spins of the Opterons. That said, this really does look like a pret…

I'm thinking a lot of their recent success may have to do with Lisa Su becoming their CEO back in 2014. She seems really smart and focused on their core business. I hope some of this success on the CPU market will bleed over to their GPU developments.

Re: AMD’s Rome is indeed a monster

#62

Post by jamesu »

vondur wrote: post #54

I’ve been wondering lately if the reason for the Mac Pro replacement not coming out until 2019 may be due to Apple switching to the 7nm refresh of the AMD ThreadRipper. That would certainly make for some interesting news.

But then you've got other people who seem adamant they are switching the mac to their magically scaled up ARM chips. What on earth is really going on at Apple HQ?

Re: AMD’s Rome is indeed a monster

#63

Post by nemothekid »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #18

Looking forward to these chips but always have concerns for AMDs ability to execute consistently. Opteron, the original 'Sledgehammer' series was way ahead of Intel because Intel just couldn't bring themselves to put 64 bit features into their Pentium line, and AMD squirreled away that advantage by not following up, and having other issues with later spins of the Opterons. That said, this really does look like a pret…

>AMD squirreled away that advantage by not following up, and having other issues with later spins of the Opterons.

AMD didn't squirrel away the advantage. Intel abused their monopoly to starve out AMD by giving OEMs discounts if they agreed not to carry AMD chips. They paid a paltry 1.5B in fines for abusing their market dominance.

Re: AMD’s Rome is indeed a monster

#65

Post by fipple »

jamesu wrote: post #62
vondur wrote: post #54

I’ve been wondering lately if the reason for the Mac Pro replacement not coming out until 2019 may be due to Apple switching to the 7nm refresh of the AMD ThreadRipper. That would certainly make for some interesting news.

But then you've got other people who seem adamant they are switching the mac to their magically scaled up ARM chips. What on earth is really going on at Apple HQ?

That will take several years. AMD could happen in months.

Re: AMD’s Rome is indeed a monster

#66

Post by vondur »

jamesu wrote: post #62
vondur wrote: post #54

I’ve been wondering lately if the reason for the Mac Pro replacement not coming out until 2019 may be due to Apple switching to the 7nm refresh of the AMD ThreadRipper. That would certainly make for some interesting news.

But then you've got other people who seem adamant they are switching the mac to their magically scaled up ARM chips. What on earth is really going on at Apple HQ?

I would think that the use cases for a laptop CPU and high end desktop may call for different CPU's. Plus the X64 arch is well supported by all of the apps you would use a MacPro for.

Re: AMD’s Rome is indeed a monster

#67

Post by pacificmint »

fipple wrote: post #64

How are 7nm and 14nm mixed? Are they made separately and then... attached together? Isn’t a die made from a single wager “burned” with a single wavelength?

7nm and 14nm do not refer to the wavelength of the light. They describe the size of the features on the chip (though that is getting increasingly inaccurate).

Either way, Zen chips are already multi die chips. For Zen and Zen+ each die has (up to) four cores. Chips with more cores than four contain multiple dies.

For Zen 2 they are going to be mixed differently, which is what you are referring to.

Re: AMD’s Rome is indeed a monster

#68

Post by The_rationalist »

captaincoont wrote: post #48

I wish AMD could catch up in single core performance as despite having huge potential in offline parallel processing it falls short in real-time applications.

No it doesn’t fall short, Intel single core lead is Btw, zen 2 will take the lead at every metrics.

Re: AMD’s Rome is indeed a monster

#69

Post by atq2119 »

fipple wrote: post #64

How are 7nm and 14nm mixed? Are they made separately and then... attached together? Isn’t a die made from a single wager “burned” with a single wavelength?

You're mixing up a bunch of things.

Each wafer, which is the disk on which many dies are produced, is produced using a single technology process. This means that Rome's IO dies (14nm process) are produced on separate wafers from the core dies (7nm process). The wafers are sliced into dies, the dies are tested and binned separately, and sufficiently good dies are then packaged together into a single package that goes into your server's CPU socket.

The wavelength of the laser used for the manufacturing is a different story entirely. Pretty much all state-of-the-art photolithography uses 193nm wavelength lasers, and this has been the case for many years. Yes, the wavelength is larger than the size of the features produced with those lasers. There's a lot of magic involved.

Since it's getting a bit too much magic, the industry has been trying to upgrade to 13.5nm (extreme ultraviolet) lasers for a long time. They're now starting to be used in actual practice. And EUV lasers are still basically magic, but of a different kind.

Re: AMD’s Rome is indeed a monster

#70

Post by atq2119 »

pacificmint wrote: post #67
fipple wrote: post #64

How are 7nm and 14nm mixed? Are they made separately and then... attached together? Isn’t a die made from a single wager “burned” with a single wavelength?

7nm and 14nm do not refer to the wavelength of the light. They describe the size of the features on the chip (though that is getting increasingly inaccurate). Either way, Zen chips are already multi die chips. For Zen and Zen+ each die has (up to) four cores. Chips with more cores than four contain multiple dies. For Zen 2 they are going to be mixed differently, which is what you are referring to.

Mostly correct, except Zen (and Zen+, and Zen 2) has eight cores per die. You may have been thinking of core complexes (CCXs), of which there are two on a die, and each CCX has four cores.
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