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AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency

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Re: AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency

#161

Post by xattt »

bayindirh wrote: post #85
aidenn0 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not up-to-speed on modern chipsets, but WTF is the Southbridge doing that it needs that much power? Is Thunderbolt going through it or something? I think of the Southbridge as a mostly ignorable part of the chipset (up until something goes horribly wrong).

Single word: PCIe. Lots of fast PCIe lanes eat a lot of energy. A server motherboard contains tons of more PCI devices when compared to a consumer desktop systems, and they are not the cards, but the small units enabling the advanced features in servers, which are embedded on the motherboards themselves. Thunderbolt is just a PCIe encapsulator of some sort, which can also do plethora of other things.

> Single word: PCIe

This explains Intel’s squandering of PCIe lanes for consumer desktops versus AMD’s generosity.

Re: AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency

#162

Post by emacs28 »

rektide wrote: post #32

AMD has done extremely well with multi-chip(let) modules. Zen cores & zen clusters (on Core Chiplet Die, CCD) are wonderfully small, and a huge amount of the regular stuff cores do is relegated to the IO Die (CCX), which is not as cutting edge. But wow there's a bunch of power burned on interconnect between CCDs and CCX. And now AMD's new southbridge, Promontory 21, made by Asmedia, is another pretty significant powe…

CCX stands for Core Complex

CCD stands for Core Complex Die (and neither terms refer to the IO die)

Re: AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency

#163

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

tankenmate wrote: post #146
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manufacturing costs force them to go down the chiplet path. Its actually impressive they can remain competitive at all given TSMCs margin of 67%. [0] If Intel Foundry manages to keep up with TSMC, thats a lot of pricing power advantage over AMD. Or they could make lower-power CPUs that would be uneconomical for AMD. [0] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSM/taiwan-semicon...

But don't forget that TSMC's margins for massive bulk purchasers like AMD will be lower than the average.

Does TSMC even have non-bulk customers at 7nm/5nm/4nm? I would have thought the mask costs are so high that it isn't economical except for the biggest companies.

Re: AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency

#164

Post by jeffparsons »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #34
cletus wrote: post #12

Put another way: if AMD (and especially Intel) don't do something about this they're going to get completely eaten alive by ARM. The amount of processing power available in a modern smartphone is truly mind-boggling. I'd love to see a chart showing the chip cost and energy cost of the power on an M1 chip in each previou syear. I would guess that 30+ years ago you'd be in the millions of dollars and watts of power but…

> Put another way: if AMD (and especially Intel) don't do something about this they're going to get completely eaten alive by ARM. AMD’s latest parts are actually quite close to M1/M2 in computing efficiency when clocked down to more conservative power targets. They crank the power consumption of their desktop CPUs deep into the diminishing returns region because benchmarks sell desktop chips. You can go into the BIO…

I care a lot about idle power, even on my desktop PC. It seems crazy to me that in 2023 I still need to consider whether maybe I should shut down my computer when I'm not using it.

What should I be buying to not have to ask myself that question?

Re: AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency

#165

Post by andy_ppp »

jeffparsons wrote: post #164
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Put another way: if AMD (and especially Intel) don't do something about this they're going to get completely eaten alive by ARM. AMD’s latest parts are actually quite close to M1/M2 in computing efficiency when clocked down to more conservative power targets. They crank the power consumption of their desktop CPUs deep into the diminishing returns region because benchmarks sell desktop chips. You can go into the BIO…

I care a lot about idle power, even on my desktop PC. It seems crazy to me that in 2023 I still need to consider whether maybe I should shut down my computer when I'm not using it. What should I be buying to not have to ask myself that question?

A Mac?

Re: AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency

#166

Post by favaq »

cookiengineer wrote: post #25
cletus wrote: post #12

Put another way: if AMD (and especially Intel) don't do something about this they're going to get completely eaten alive by ARM. The amount of processing power available in a modern smartphone is truly mind-boggling. I'd love to see a chart showing the chip cost and energy cost of the power on an M1 chip in each previou syear. I would guess that 30+ years ago you'd be in the millions of dollars and watts of power but…

Honestly I don't understand why there's not something like a 256 core ARM laptop with 4TB RAM. The benefit of ARM is scale of multitasking due to not requiring the same kind of lock states that Intel's architecture requires, and can additionally scale much better than only one physical+virtual core pair. I guess the only thing that's holding back ARM is Microsoft, as laptops are expected to run an desktop OS that peo…

Really looking forward to buying a 256-core laptop and seeing almost all tasks using 1 single core.

Let's get real here, most things can't be parallelised at all. We must strive for better single core performance.

Re: AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency

#167

Post by borissk »

xattt wrote: post #161
bayindirh wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Single word: PCIe. Lots of fast PCIe lanes eat a lot of energy. A server motherboard contains tons of more PCI devices when compared to a consumer desktop systems, and they are not the cards, but the small units enabling the advanced features in servers, which are embedded on the motherboards themselves. Thunderbolt is just a PCIe encapsulator of some sort, which can also do plethora of other things.

> Single word: PCIe This explains Intel’s squandering of PCIe lanes for consumer desktops versus AMD’s generosity.

There's very little difference in the number of PCIe and M2 slots between Intel and AMD on their consumer platforms. The only difference really between AM5 and LGA 1700 motherboards is a lot more AMD boards have one M2 PCIe 5.0 slot, while only the very top Intel boards have this feature.

Re: AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency

#168

Post by snovv_crash »

jorvi wrote: post #38
Salgat wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you take a Zen 3 running at optimal clocks for efficiency (such as the 5800U) the difference between its computing performance per watt is competitive with the M1 if you account for the difference in node size (which TSMC claims gives 30% less power consumption at the same performance). As the article points out, the real efficiency gains will be domain specific changes such as shifting to 8 bit for more calculati…

How would x86-64 be as efficient with the same transistor & power budget when they have to run an extra decoder and ring within that budget? Seems physically impossible.

The decoder has negligible power consumption and die area on a modern CPU.

Re: AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency

#169

Post by jillesvangurp »

Typical for a company that is stuck to be calling out what they should have been doing for the last decade as the thing to focus on. Basically he's promising more of the same.

What he should be doing is announce the next big thing. Which I imagine might include trendy things like tackling AI with some hardware/software stack that is energy and cost efficient and competitive with nvidia. Or a non intel architecture based chip intended for high end gaming/ar/vr type devices where energy efficiency and performance are going to matter more than compatibility with legacy PC hardware. AR is going to suck if you have to be tethered to a huge power supply or battery and carry a liquid cooling apparatus with you. This requires a different approach.

And even those things really should have been the focus for the last ten years. A slightly faster version of the thing they've been selling for the last ten years is not going to turn things around and there are only so many people still assembling PCs from parts that actually know and appreciate AMD as a brand.

Re: AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency

#170

Post by speedgoose »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #169

Typical for a company that is stuck to be calling out what they should have been doing for the last decade as the thing to focus on. Basically he's promising more of the same. What he should be doing is announce the next big thing. Which I imagine might include trendy things like tackling AI with some hardware/software stack that is energy and cost efficient and competitive with nvidia. Or a non intel architecture ba…

I think it’s a she.
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