AMD Excavator on 28 nm, some production moving back to GF?

[mrmt]

Although it is debatable whether they will call it FX. Such a shame, they completely blew all the brand equity.

There's no amount of brand equity that can survive such a streak of bad products.

 

[jhu]

There's no amount of brand equity that can survive such a streak of bad products.

Pentium hs faired pretty well since the netburst days.

 

[CHADBOGA]

Pentium hs faired pretty well since the netburst days.

It has been relegated to the low end of Intel's offerings, a 2nd class citizen.

 

[mrmt]

Pentium hs faired pretty well since the netburst days.

Pentium was Intel prime brand for both mobile and desktop before Netburst. In the middle of the netburst debacle Intel shifted its mobile offers to Centrino, and once Conroe arrived Intel moved Pentium to the backburner in desktops too. It would be the equivalent of GM giving the Cadillac brand to the Chevy Spark. GM wouldn't do that if the Cadillac brand weren't seriously eroded, and Intel did that with the Pentium brand because it was seriously eroded.

 

[Exophase]

Unless for mobile they are making an SOC version??

It seems unusual for it to be called SOC on a profile,which people use for job hunting. Such a crass error would reflect badly on them.

I think AMD wouldn't have all of the southbridge functionality on-die but disabled just to fit it in the same socket, nor make a special die with the features removed (AMD has been very conservative with die variations the last few years). They'd easily sacrifice the ability for users to upgrade if it meant lowering system cost. The number of people looking to upgrade from desktop Kaveri to Carrizo is going to be small. Consider that they were willing to move Kaveri to a new socket while gaining less (yeah, you can use FM2 CPUs on FM2+ motherboards, but who cares)

 

[ElFenix]

Unless for mobile they are making an SOC version??

It seems unusual for it to be called SOC on a profile,which people use for job hunting. Such a crass error would reflect badly on them.

Edit to post.

I just looked back at the roadmap from that video:

cdn4.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/AMD-Carrizo-APU.jpg

The server version of Carrizo is called Toronto - I forgot that!

Both versions of Toronto(CPU and APU) seem to have SOC in the description,and it is an AMD roadmap.

Plus we know it has both a DDR3 and DDR4 memory controller.

The Kaveri based Opterons mention the Bolton SCH and the FX CPUs mention the socket too.

However,the Toronto CPUs don't mention the Bolton SCH and instead have it replaced by SOC.

HR spiders are scraping for particular terms, so it doesn't seem at all odd to me that "SoC" would appear in a page someone was using as a CV. and far more people are using the term "SoC" than "APU"

here's from anandtech's review of kaveri:

With Intel now on board, processor graphics is a big deal. You can argue whether or not AMD should continue to use the acronym APU instead of SoC, but the fact remains that it's tough to buy a CPU without an integrated GPU.

In the absence of vertical integration, software optimization always trails hardware availability. If you look at 2011 as the crossover year when APUs/SoCs took over the market, it's not much of a surprise that we haven't seen aggressive moves by software developers to truly leverage GPU compute.

 

[NostaSeronx]

Excavator will have an integrated south-bridge on BGA and on an undisclosed LGA socket. (On die or on chip)

 

[norseamd]

will amd get rid of modules after this next round of prcessors

 

[NTMBK]

will amd get rid of modules after this next round of prcessors

And you're basing that on what source?

 

[NostaSeronx]

will amd get rid of modules after this next round of prcessors

Nope, you will see modules within modules of modules inside more modules.

And you're basing that on what source?

He is asking a question.

 

[NTMBK]

Excavator will have an integrated south-bridge on BGA and on an undisclosed LGA socket. (On die or on chip)

And you're basing that one what source?

As for the socket, Carrizo is confirmed to be on FM2+, not some fantasy LGA socket.

 

[NTMBK]

He is asking a question.

Oops, my bad. I misread his post, the lack of a question mark confused my tired mind

 

[norseamd]

4 am?

 

[jhu]

Nope, you will see modules within modules of modules inside more modules.He is asking a question.

It's modules all the way down.

 

[mrmt]

It's modules all the way down.

Why do you think that? Modules didn't work for Sun and didn't work for AMD. Why would they continue down this path?

Btw, with the consoles eating a sizable chunk of the WSA and with Jaguar successor and some GPUs moving to Globalfoundries, what's the future of the modular product line? Do they have the money to pour in four separate product lines?

 

[jpiniero]

Do they have the money to pour in four separate product lines?

No, which is why I still think Excavator is the end of the line. I imagine they will milk it for what it's worth though, so minor updates are possible. But I imagine they would be spending the bulk of their design efforts on the ARM stuff along with the Cats.

 

[norseamd]

what will come out for x86 after this

 

[Fjodor2001]

No, which is why I still think Excavator is the end of the line. I imagine they will milk it for what it's worth though, so minor updates are possible. But I imagine they would be spending the bulk of their design efforts on the ARM stuff along with the Cats.

So you're saying in less than 2 years AMD will just be GPUs, low-end notebook APUs, and ARM stuff? FX-line, desktop APUs, and server CPUs will all discontinued? I don't think that's a realistic scenario.

 

[witeken]

We don't know. I'd guess another iteration of the Bulldozer family.

 

[Fjodor2001]

I wonder why Intel and AMD have been so secretive the last few years. Previously the used to make their long term roadmaps public, but now they are both not revealing very much about their plans for the future at all.

 

[JDG1980]

So you're saying in less than 2 years AMD will just be GPUs, low-end notebook APUs, and ARM stuff? FX-line, desktop APUs, and server CPUs will all discontinued? I don't think that's a realistic scenario.

A more likely possibility is that they will create a scaled-up version of the 'cat' cores for the desktop. This would be basically the same move as Intel did when they went from Netburst to Conroe (which was based on Pentium-M), and for basically the same reason (the existing big-core architecture just wasn't working out as expected).

 

[Fjodor2001]

A more likely possibility is that they will create a scaled-up version of the 'cat' cores for the desktop. This would be basically the same move as Intel did when they went from Netburst to Conroe (which was based on Pentium-M), and for basically the same reason (the existing big-core architecture just wasn't working out as expected).

Ok, but is it reasonable to expect that the Jaguar/Puma core can be modified for desktop use, so that its performance will surpass the Steamroller/Excavator cores? Is the Jaguar/Puma original uArch design suited for that?

 

[norseamd]

remember that raja kodura and jim keller have been hired. they could come up with something very nice

 

[norseamd]

We don't know. I'd guess another iteration of the Bulldozer family.

modules have not worked out that great. throw together the general improvements from bulldozer to excavator with the traditional full core design and you could get at least decent performance i think

 

[NTMBK]

A more likely possibility is that they will create a scaled-up version of the 'cat' cores for the desktop. This would be basically the same move as Intel did when they went from Netburst to Conroe (which was based on Pentium-M), and for basically the same reason (the existing big-core architecture just wasn't working out as expected).

Desktop doesn't really seem like that big a priority for AMD these days. With Kaveri it was pretty clear that the performance/W sweet spot was down in the laptop range, not the 100W range, especially when you consider the narrow memory interface. Carrizo is reportedly not even going to ship a 100W SKU, and only ship 65W or less. Could this be an indication of AMD's future plans?

(I really hope not, because I want them to ship an APU with the big CPU cores, GDDR5 and a PS4 size GPU. But that's just wishful thinking.)