AMD shows its Zen CPU can compete with Intel’s best

[Carlosan]

Source

To prove that Zen has the right stuff, AMD officials on Wednesday night demonstrated before a crowd of reporters and analysts that an 8-core Zen could run just as fast as Intel’s newest 8-core consumer Core i7 chip.

The first two Zens will feature an 8-core consumer chip and a 32-core server chip.

[L'Ancien Regime]

Great article. Thanks a lot for posting this.

 

What motherboards will this use? Imagine 2 or 4 of those 64 thread server CPUs on a single motherboard!

 

And any idea of the prices?

[L'Ancien Regime]

It’s not just about the desktop, either. AMD also wowed the crowd by demonstrating its server-oriented Naples SoC running in a dual-processor system. With each Naples packing 32 cores and SMT, that means a Naples-based server would feature 128 threads of compute power.

 

WOW

 

If these are like $400 per cpu this could be incredible news. Can't wait to find out pricing.

 

9. No one knows how much Zen will cost.  AMD won’t disclose pricing or a pricing strategy but the introduction of Summit Ridge will probably start a price war like we haven’t seen the likes of in years. So yeah, if you lifted your eyebrows at the $1,723 Broadwell-E, just wait—that may adjust downward soon.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3109267/hardware/amds-zen-cpu-10-things-you-need-to-know.html

 

And they're not CPUs...they're Systems On A Chip, that is SOCs... so no need  for a big chipset..

 

A system on a chip or system on chip (SoC or SOC) is an integrated circuit (IC) that integrates all components of a computer or other electronic system into a single chip. It may contain digital, analog, mixed-signal, and often radio-frequency functions—all on a single chip substrate.

Edited August 22, 2016 by L'Ancien Regime

[L'Ancien Regime]

here's the dual Zen CPU server motherboard;

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10581/early-amd-zen-server-cpu-and-motherboard-details-codename-naples-32cores-dual-socket-platforms-q2-2017

 

128 threads...imagine 128 render buckets running all at once..

 

[AbnRanger]

2 hours ago, L'Ancien Regime said:

here's the dual Zen CPU server motherboard;

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10581/early-amd-zen-server-cpu-and-motherboard-details-codename-naples-32cores-dual-socket-platforms-q2-2017

 

128 threads...imagine 128 render buckets running all at once..

 

That's pretty awesome, but CPU tech is still WAY behind GPU tech, and thus CPU only renders, with these 2 socket/128 threads doesn't necessarily put it in the same league with a GPU render on a single 1080. So, it would not make financial sense to throw down $2k+ on 2 CPU's and workstation motherboard. Server chips usually have much lower capacities in terms of Ghz, so in some regular tasks it might actually be slower than the desktop (8core) version.

My guess is, initially, AMD will probably try to charge well above $500 for the desktop Zen, and the server chips will probably be around $1k or so.

[AbnRanger]

I would also guess that AMD might have been very close to leapfrogging Intel, by offering a 16 core desktop CPU. That would certainly shake the market up, but it could be that they are trying to get what they have ready, on the market and once Intel responds with some upgrade of their own, AMD can counter-punch with the 16-core, several months later. That would give them time to get it ready for market. Main reason I think it's plausible is because very early reports about ZEN were that it was going to be a 16 core/32 threads CPU for the Desktop FX line. It was scaled back to 8 cores months later.

[L'Ancien Regime]

6 hours ago, AbnRanger said:

That's pretty awesome, but CPU tech is still WAY behind GPU tech, and thus CPU only renders, with these 2 socket/128 threads doesn't necessarily put it in the same league with a GPU render on a single 1080. So, it would not make financial sense to throw down $2k+ on 2 CPU's and workstation motherboard. Server chips usually have much lower capacities in terms of Ghz, so in some regular tasks it might actually be slower than the desktop (8core) version.

My guess is, initially, AMD will probably try to charge well above $500 for the desktop Zen, and the server chips will probably be around $1k or so.

Yeah the articles say that that dual CPU server mother board version will probably run at 2.6 mhz.  But I'm still  not totally sold on GPU rendering...My  mind is still 2 years behind.

[Carlosan]

AMD 8-core ZEN Packs a Whallop with Multithreaded Performance

by

btarunr

Thursday, November 3rd 2016 11:12Discuss (54 Comments)

AMD's upcoming 8-core "ZEN" processors pack serious multithreaded performance muscle. The company's design focus on empowering the cores, and getting rid of the shared-resource approach to multi-core chips; appears to have paid of big dividends in multithreaded performance, as tested on the Blender benchmark. An 8-core "ZEN" engineering sample was found to be belting out performance rivaling 10-core Intel Xeon E5-2600 V2 series chips, indicating that AMD appears to have made huge gains in per-core performance over its previous generation chips.

The Blender benchmark scores of an alleged AMD ZEN "Summit Ridge" engineering sample were posted by Blender benchmark scores aggregator Blenchmark; and unearthed by this redditor. According to these scores, the "ZEN" sample cruches the Blender benchmark render in 69 seconds, the same time it takes for a 10-core Xeon E5-2650 V2 processor. The ZEN chip is also closely trailing Xeon E5-2600 V4 series chips. AMD is expected to launch its first ZEN "Summit Ridge" 8-core processors in early 2017.

[AbnRanger]

Don't think that is revealing any new news, but I hope it at least rivals the Intel i7 6900k (8 core/16 threads @ $1100) and costs no more than $600-ish

[L'Ancien Regime]

http://wccftech.com/amd-zen-event-december-13/

 

 

AMD has officially announced a special preview event on December 13th for its upcoming Zen CPUs. The event, titled “New Horizon”, will take place in Austin Texas and will be hosted by gaming journalist Geoff Keighley. The event will also be livestreamed.

The company is promising an exclusive preview of its highly anticipated next generation high-end Zen processors. AMD has also announced that this will be the very first time that the public will be able to get a hands-on experience with its new chips. The company has expressed excitement in allowing people to get a true sense of what Zen CPUs are capable of and run them through the paces before the official product launch in early 2017.

 

Zen has been one of AMD’s most eagerly anticipated products for as far as I can remember. It’s the company’s first attempt to compete at the high-end, enthusiast, CPU market since the introduction of the Bulldozer microarchitecture five years ago. Zen breaks new ground for AMD in many ways. It’s the company’s first ever CPU architecture to feature simultaneous multithreading. It’s also the very first product for AMD to be built on a process technology that’s very close to parity with Intel since the days of the original Athlon more than a decade ago.

 

This fact alone is huge. It means that for the very first time since the early 2000s AMD’s CPU products won’t be at an inherent disadvantage due to Intel’s process lead. From an architectural point of view Zen is a brand new clean-slate design that’s been led from the get-go by accomplished CPU architect Jim Keller. The very same engineer that played a pivotal role in designing the original Athlon XP and Athlon64 processors. The most competitive CPU products in the history of the company. It’s without a doubt that Zen is AMD’s biggest long-term technology bet and one of the largest engineering efforts undertaken by the company to date.

 

An exclusive preview of AMD’s new “Zen” CPU

Join AMD at New Horizon on 12/13 at 3pm CST for an exclusive advance preview of our new “Zen” CPU ahead of its 2017 Q1 release. New Horizon is AMD’s fan-focused event, designed to engage our most dedicated customers.

As well as a hands-on preview of the power of “Zen”, attendees will be able to talk to the AMD minds behind the chip itself and grab expert gaming advice from eSports & Evil Geniuses legend PPD.

The event is hosted by industry veteran Geoff Keighley, who’ll introduce special guests throughout the day.

 

http://wccftech.com/amd-zen-8-core-35ghz-cpu-spotted/

 

AMD Zen 8 Core SR7 Flagship To Sell For $499, Boost To 3.5Ghz & Outperform Intel’s $999 i7 5960X

 

According to leaks originating from China, the highest end part will carry a surprisingly restrained MSRP of $499, rather than the $1000+ MSRPs we’ve seen with Intel’s extreme edition i7s. Nevertheless, this $499 part is purported to favorably compete with Intel’s $1199  eight core i7 6900K and $999 i7 5960X CPUs.

[Nossgrr]

All depends what you need it to do.. For a pure server environment, these could be really awesome, I'm already thinking of my next VSphere / HyperV environment running these suckers.. You can spin a lot of VMs with that many cores. For the tech geek in me, these sound awesome.

On the 3D end of things, apps that rely mostly on CPU power might get a serious boost from these, ZBrush anyone? For rendering, there are a lot of render engines that are not yet on the GPU.. All in all, I think there's a healthy market for these. <- Again, depends on what you need it to do.

[L'Ancien Regime]

 

33 minutes ago, Nossgrr said:

All depends what you need it to do.. For a pure server environment, these could be really awesome, I'm already thinking of my next VSphere / HyperV environment running these suckers.. You can spin a lot of VMs with that many cores. For the tech geek in me, these sound awesome.

On the 3D end of things, apps that rely mostly on CPU power might get a serious boost from these, ZBrush anyone? For rendering, there are a lot of render engines that are not yet on the GPU.. All in all, I think there's a healthy market for these. <- Again, depends on what you need it to do.

What do you think of running your entire system on a tiny Linux kernel then using QEMU?

From what I've heard QEMU accesses all your CPU and GPU assets to almost 100%.

 

 

[Nossgrr]

Good question, I only have experience with VMWare vsphere / HyperV in a corporate environment ( Think 100's of VMs, that's our setup).. I've not use QEMU personally.

Edited December 5, 2016 by Nossgrr

[AbnRanger]

I've been waiting on this CPU to upgrade my desktop. Been using a 6yr old i7 970 for the longest. Problem is, Intel basically sat on their hands all this time and didn't really do much to improve performance since. Each successive generation was only a small 3-10% bump. That's not enough to warrant spending $1500+ on a new system.

I bet by this time next year, they will be talking about 12-16 core variants....because they already have 16 core server versions of this CPU. I think they just wanted to challenge Intel's top range CPU's and come in at half the price, to steal a bunch of market share. If I had a big chunk of cash to invest, I'd buy some AMD stock right about now. I bet their market share will go up at least 10-25% more (of the market...not just bump in sales). That might change drastically if Intel has a big surprise up it's sleeve. But if they have indeed been slacking, they have allowed AMD to catch up and make things competitive again. Which is good for all of us.

[L'Ancien Regime]

16 hours ago, AbnRanger said:

I've been waiting on this CPU to upgrade my desktop. Been using a 6yr old i7 970 for the longest. Problem is, Intel basically sat on their hands all this time and didn't really do much to improve performance since. Each successive generation was only a small 3-10% bump. That's not enough to warrant spending $1500+ on a new system.

I bet by this time next year, they will be talking about 12-16 core variants....because they already have 16 core server versions of this CPU. I think they just wanted to challenge Intel's top range CPU's and come in at half the price, to steal a bunch of market share. If I had a big chunk of cash to invest, I'd buy some AMD stock right about now. I bet their market share will go up at least 10-25% more (of the market...not just bump in sales). That might change drastically if Intel has a big surprise up it's sleeve. But if they have indeed been slacking, they have allowed AMD to catch up and make things competitive again. Which is good for all of us.

NVidia knows that the GPU market is rapidly turning to AI driven cars and now we see that AMD is leaking info with lots of new mysterious code names for products or firmware  that may have something to do with AI driven cars.

"AMD Zen Trademarks Spotted, “RyZen” & “ThreadRipper” – Potential AI Codenames Jitzu, Joro & Grok Also Discovered"

 

http://wccftech.com/amd-zen-cpu-potential-trademarks-spotted-ryzen-threadripper/

Edited December 7, 2016 by L'Ancien Regime

[L'Ancien Regime]

http://wccftech.com/amd-zen-16-core-cpu-pictured/

 

This particular sixteen core chip is only one of several variants, the highest end of which comes in a 32 core, 64 thread configuration. Which is the largest core and thread count in x86 CPU history. Easily outnumbering the 24 cores of Intel’s largest server processor to date, the E7-8890 v4.

Edited December 10, 2016 by L'Ancien Regime

[AbnRanger]

38 minutes ago, L'Ancien Regime said:

http://wccftech.com/amd-zen-16-core-cpu-pictured/

 

This particular sixteen core chip is only one of several variants, the highest end of which comes in a 32 core, 64 thread configuration. Which is the largest core and thread count in x86 CPU history. Easily outnumbering the 24 cores of Intel’s largest server processor to date, the E7-8890 v4.

I don't know why AMD doesn't just go for Intel's jugular by completely changing the CPU paradigm. Why keep trying to squeeze more and more cores into the same space, where you are limited by "process" constrains? Why not expand the size of the socket and CPU die 2-4 times the size, so you can fit a huge number of cores on them? I understand it will upset the apple cart a bit for Motherboard manufacturers, but why should that keep technology constrained? There are many instances where form factors have had to change/adapt to fit a smaller or larger size of a device. Design the CPU and they will find a way to adapt their designs to fit it.

Some would say that it will cost more because each one will take more of the silicon wafer and the yield might be reduced, but that too, is something that too is something they can adapt to. I mean Intel has been charging 2-3 times what their chips are worth....just because they can. So, AMD, instead of charging half of what Intel is, for the high end models, why not charge what they are, but deliver 2-3x's what Intel is? If they came out with a 32 core CPU that was 3x as fast as Intel's $1700 i7 6950x, why not charge $1k?

[L'Ancien Regime]

7 hours ago, AbnRanger said:

I don't know why AMD doesn't just go for Intel's jugular by completely changing the CPU paradigm. Why keep trying to squeeze more and more cores into the same space, where you are limited by "process" constrains? Why not expand the size of the socket and CPU die 2-4 times the size, so you can fit a huge number of cores on them? I understand it will upset the apple cart a bit for Motherboard manufacturers, but why should that keep technology constrained? There are many instances where form factors have had to change/adapt to fit a smaller or larger size of a device. Design the CPU and they will find a way to adapt their designs to fit it.

Some would say that it will cost more because each one will take more of the silicon wafer and the yield might be reduced, but that too, is something that too is something they can adapt to. I mean Intel has been charging 2-3 times what their chips are worth....just because they can. So, AMD, instead of charging half of what Intel is, for the high end models, why not charge what they are, but deliver 2-3x's what Intel is? If they came out with a 32 core CPU that was 3x as fast as Intel's $1700 i7 6950x, why not charge $1k?

On the plus side these massive AMD CPUs will have 512mb L3 Cache...

 

[AbnRanger]

14 hours ago, L'Ancien Regime said:

On the plus side these massive AMD CPUs will have 512mb L3 Cache...

 

My concern with AMD server class CPU's is they tend to be rather low on the GHz. Desktop CPU's are usually well above 3Ghz, whereas server chips tend to be around 2.4 or so, and no capacity to overclock.

[kenmo]

I wonder what the specs will be for the power supply for this mobo?

[L'Ancien Regime]

http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-desktop-zen-cpu-xfr/

 

AMD’s new desktop Zen CPUs are officially called RYZEN. They boast 8 cores, 3.4Ghz+ clock speeds & will overclock themselves automatically. You heard that right. AMD’s upcoming enthusiast line of “Summit Ridge” desktop processors based on the Zen microarchitecture come with an auto overclocking feature right out of the box.

It’s all thanks to a new technology that the company calls “XFR”, short for Extended Frequency Range. Which automatically boosts the clock speed of RYZEN CPUs beyond their official nominal values and stretch them as far as the cooling will allow, without any intervention from the user. It sounds like the stuff of sci-fi and fan fiction, but it’s very much real.

Thanks to a leak by VCZ we have learned several new exciting things about AMD’s next generation family of desktop Zen processors, code named “Summit Ridge”. First things first, the new CPU family will carry the “RYZEN” brand pronounced, risen. These chips will feature up to 8 cores and 16 threads and will run at a clock speed of 3.4Ghz+ right out of the box.

AMD has also confirmed that RYZEN features 16MB of L3 cache and 4MB of L2 cache for a total of 20MB of cache.
The new caches feature a brand new, clever prefetcher. Which recognizes mission critical data based by actually learning the data access patterns of a given application. This vital data is then tagged and prefetched for immediate use. It can also learn the location of future data accesses by analyzing the code of whatever program is running.

 

Zen has been one of AMD’s most eagerly anticipated products for as far as I can remember. It’s the company’s first attempt to compete at the high-end, enthusiast, CPU market since the introduction of the Bulldozer microarchitecture five years ago. Zen breaks new ground for AMD in many ways. It’s the company’s first ever CPU architecture to feature simultaneous multithreading. It’s also the very first product for AMD to be built on a process technology that’s very close to parity with Intel since the days of the original Athlon more than a decade ago.

 

This fact alone is huge. It means that for the very first time since the early 2000s AMD’s CPU products won’t be at an inherent disadvantage due to Intel’s process lead. From an architectural point of view Zen is a brand new clean-slate design that’s been led from the get-go by accomplished CPU architect Jim Keller.
The very same engineer who played a pivotal role in designing the original Athlon XP and Athlon64 processors. Which were and remain the most competitive CPU products in the history of the company. It’s without a doubt that Zen is AMD’s biggest long-term technology bet and one of the largest engineering efforts undertaken by it to date.

 

 

[L'Ancien Regime]

http://wccftech.com/watch-amd-new-horizon-zen-summit-ridge-livestream/

 

AMD is holding their “New Horizon” live event today, where they will be showcasing Summit Ridge enthusiast class processors. Based on the Zen architecture, the Summit Ridge CPUs will deliver an exponential increase in performance compared to previous generation processors along with increased performance per watt that will rival their competitors current-gen processors.

Watch AMD’s Zen “New Horizon” Summit Ridge CPU Live Stream Here – Live Demos of Ryzen Processor
The event will be purely fan focused as AMD plans to showcase several live demos and performance preview of their upcoming CPU. AMD has already revealed that Zen core features a 40% IPC increase over prior gen CPU architectures. We know a few details about Zen but we will cover them in separate articles which you can view after the event is finished.

[AbnRanger]

 

[L'Ancien Regime]

http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-zen-cpu-benchmarks-official/

 

It handles 50 million polygons in Zbrush  at the 42 min mark of Abn Ranger's video above/ Almost RTR with CPU raycast rendering in Keyshot of 53 million poly model.

Edited December 13, 2016 by L'Ancien Regime

[PolyHertz]

On 12/13/2016 at 2:43 AM, L'Ancien Regime said:

http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-desktop-zen-cpu-xfr/

 

Looks like performance/spec wise the new Ryzen CPUs should be very comparable with modern Intel CPUs. Good to finally see some competition.

Not sure why they're trying to play off auto-overclocking as something special though ( " auto overclocking/XFR...It sounds like the stuff of sci-fi and fan fiction, but it’s very much real. " ), considering Intel CPUs have been using Turboboost technology for nearly a decade.

[AbnRanger]

5 hours ago, PolyHertz said:

 

Looks like performance/spec wise the new Ryzen CPUs should be very comparable with modern Intel CPUs. Good to finally see some competition.

Not sure why they're trying to play off auto-overclocking as something special though ( " auto overclocking/XFR...It sounds like the stuff of sci-fi and fan fiction, but it’s very much real. " ), considering Intel CPUs have been using Turboboost technology for nearly a decade.

It sounds like it goes way beyond Turbo Boost. After all, AMD CPU's have had a boost feature for years, as well. I think it is somewhat like NVidia's overclocking. It doesn't really have a set limit. If you have sufficient cooling, it will continue to boost clock speeds until it reaches a temperature threshold....not an arbitrary value. I like that, actually, as it gives them more control over overclocking, to maintain CPU longevity and fewer returns to deal with.

I'm just glad somebody is forcing Intel to compete and to bring their prices back down to earth. Even if Intel drops the price, to match this new AMD CPU, I'm giving AMD my business because Intel price-gouged for years. This kept me from upgrading my CPU, when I normally would have done so once or twice by now. I hope Intel really takes it in the shorts for this reason.