AMD Q4/2013 Desktop Roadmap

[JDG1980]

Freaking A, there go my plan of using my AM3+ mobo as a cheap NAS. I was hoping for a 28 nm AM3+ CPU I could drop in, but noooo. And their FM-whatever garbage doesn't support ECC so that is not an option. UGH. A big fat ugh for those of us waiting on FX.

AMD's roadmap includes a server version of Kaveri, called "Berlin". The slides indicate that it will indeed support ECC. Of course, we don't yet know what pricing will be like on this, or if mainstream boards will support it the way that Asus's current offerings do with AM3+.

If you already have an AM3+ motherboard that supports ECC, I suspect that a FX-8320 would be good enough for a NAS, and these chips are currently on sale for very reasonable prices at several locations. There are plenty of people who run a NAS on much worse chips, even Atoms. Most off-the-shelf NASes use low power ARM processors that are far weaker than Vishera.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Someone explain to me why when Intel drops the rated TDP of their processors is good because all what matters now is perf/watt, but when AMD does it its because they are becoming the new VIA?


Oh yea, because they were trolling. Forgot about that possibility :awe:

Because Intel is leading performance massively. AMD is not even close. 2M/4T chips are compareable to Intel dualcores. And with the ever increasing process difference it just gets worse.

While the power decrease is always nice from my eco point of view. Its just a parameter that hurts for AMD to lower. Specially when they dont have anything else than 2M/4T as a topbin. Thats in the 130$ area if lucky.

And Rory already hinted that AMD gave up on mobile and went for desktop.

this is what via did before dropping out of the x86 consumer market, rgwt dropped tdp, went mobile then bowed out and also went arm...

Yep. VIA also tried the IGP game and security (crypto) processor. All for nothing. Its a desperate seek for something to make people buy your CPUs on, when sales are collapsing. However its a one way road into limbo.

 

[Sweepr]

top of the line bay-trail hardly beats the middle of the range a4-5000 in cpu benchmarks and is completely beaten by the amd part in gpu perf. sure cherrytrail will be better than baytrail...but so will beema/mullins.

also you can get temash in a tablet now, although baytrail has better offerings...cut out the crap fanboi hyperbole

Z3770 (tablet chip) consistently matches/beats A4 5000 (desktop chip) CPU-wise, even lower-end Z3740 can match it according to AnandTech. Also, top of the line Bay Trail is 2.4-2.67GHz Pentium J2900, not 1.46-2.4GHz Z3770. 2C/2T 1GHz A4 1200 is just too slow, even for a tablet CPU, and while Beema should be more competitive it will spend most of its lifecycle competing with Cherry Trail, not Bay Trail. 16 EUs (Gen 8) should beat Beema's (2W SDP) slightly slower than A4 5000 GPU performance (~570 points @ 3DMark11) but thats just speculation at this point.

 

[Ajay]

My sources say 28nm.

I've heard that from two people now. Very sad for AMD. Going from and IDM to an ODM has been bad news for them.

LOL, you actually believe that tripe? What magic do you think AMD concocted to get TWICE the performance per watt on the same process node? Black magic? Voodoo?

I saw a GF roadmap which had FD-SOI for even lower power 28nm, so I guess it is possible (likely at some very specific TDP). Sadly, there will be no FD-SOI w/hidden gate - which could had driven Carrizo up to the same clocks as Richland and made for a nice, but large, DT part.

Lastly, I wonder if quad channel will be available on Carrizo - it's the only way AMD can get decent GFX performance on, what one hopes, will be at least a 768 SP iGPU (since there is no mention of eDRAM anywhere for Carrizo).

 

[ShintaiDK]

Lastly, I wonder if quad channel will be available on Carrizo - it's the only way AMD can get decent GFX performance on, what one hopes, will be at least a 768 SP iGPU (since there is no mention of eDRAM anywhere for Carrizo).

Nope, socket FM2+. eDRAM/eSRAM is their only hope. But I am sure they would have written it if it got it.

 

[inf64]

It's pretty vague roadmap to be honest. Excavator cores and HSA GCN without any details on these key aspects means we know much less then we knew about Kaveri. You can bet SP in iGPU will go up and EX core will be faster than Kaveri (2x SIMD performance due to native 256bit SSE pipes, AVX2 support,etc.)

In order for iGPU SP bump to make sense and materialize in better performance they need to alleviate the memory BW bottleneck. Since it uses FM2+ socket that rules out any embedded memory on the platform level and leaves us with APU as the only candidate. They can stack up eDRAM on it, Charlie had an article on this topic from 2011.

 

[jpiniero]

To be fair, the Intel products AMD will be competing with won't have Crystalwell either. DDR4 is another story, but DC Skylake will probally not be out in 2015 anyway so it may not matter.

 

[Ajay]

In order for iGPU SP bump to make sense and materialize in better performance they need to alleviate the memory BW bottleneck. Since it uses FM2+ socket that rules out any embedded memory on the platform level and leaves us with APU as the only candidate. They can stack up eDRAM on it, Charlie had an article on this topic from 2011.

Yeah, I remember that. It's just that we haven't heard anything new from AMD on this. Of course, they may just be being tight lipped.

If the NB on FM2+ supports quad GDDR5, is it possible that AMD's partners could put a 1-2 GB of GDDR5 on the mobo? Even @ 4 GHz, 256b wide GDDR5 would help out the iGPU immensely, assuming the NB link can handle the bandwidth (for Carrizo).

 

[ShintaiDK]

If the NB on FM2+ supports quad GDDR5, is it possible that AMD's partners could put a 1-2 GB of GDDR5 on the mobo? Even @ 4 GHz, 256b wide GDDR5 would help out the iGPU immensely, assuming the NB link can handle the bandwidth (for Carrizo).

1-2GB? What OS and games are you gonna try run?

The minimum would be around 8GB today. Thats 88$ just in wholesale price for the chips.

But again, there is no quadchannel and the socket is FM2+.

 

[AtenRa]

Thats in the 130$ area if lucky.

$40.00 to $150-160.00 is 90% of Intel's desktop shipments.

And Rory already hinted that AMD gave up on mobile and went for desktop.

Your FUD has no equal, RR never said AMD gave up on mobile.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Your FUD has no equal, RR never said AMD gave up on mobile.

Semantics. He said the focus was the lower priced desktop. And AMDs mobile sales continues to drop fast. Its not hard to see they gave up.

$40.00 to $150-160.00 is 90% of Intel's desktop shipments.

Got documentation?

 

[SiliconWars]

Semantics. He said the focus was the lower priced desktop. And AMDs mobile sales continues to drop fast. Its not hard to see they gave up.

As usual Shintai, the numbers disagree with your "facts". AMD lost 6% mobile share last quarter but did you forget about the 12% gain the previous quarter? They should give up on stuff more often!

Last quarters losses were more down to the console effort so by sheer luck of timing you may actually have a point of sorts and mobile share will continue to drop in Q4 as even more effort goes there, but that is pretty far removed from giving up on mobile.

 

[ShintaiDK]

As usual Shintai, the numbers disagree with your "facts". AMD lost 6% mobile share last quarter but did you forget about the 12% gain the previous quarter? They should give up on stuff more often!

Last quarters losses were more down to the console effort so by sheer luck of timing you may actually have a point of sorts and mobile share will continue to drop in Q4 as even more effort goes there, but that is pretty far removed from giving up on mobile.

You funny enough left out half the story.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/175...ling-misconceptions-about-amd-pc-market-share

http://investorvillage.com/mbthread.asp?mb=476&tid=12970932

Based on these numbers It seems like their ASP must have taken a good sized hit in Q2.

Replacing Llano/Richland/Kaveri with Bobcat/Kabini/Beema is not really progress is it? Lower revenue, lower margins. And its was nothing but temporary.

 

[SiliconWars]

Replacing Llano/Richland/Kaveri with Bobcat/Kabini/Beema is not really progress is it? Lower revenue, lower margins. And its was nothing but temporary.

Revenue was up 12% as already noted. They also gained 3 points of mobile share over intel and that puts paid to your theory that it was all down to replacing their own products. Margins are down due to consoles, not mobile.

And once again I'll say that consoles are getting fully focused for AMD now and for the next 6 months at least. Nowhere has AMD said they are getting out of mobile, in fact based on the recent Beema and Mullins slides it's quite obvious they are gearing up for a big comeback. The only problem they'll have next year is trying to compete with Intel's $1 billion bay trail tablet give-away.

 

[AtenRa]

Semantics. He said the focus was the lower priced desktop. And AMDs mobile sales continues to drop fast. Its not hard to see they gave up.

mrmt tryed the same thing, dont do the same mistake, it will only make you look sily.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=35738540&postcount=60

 

[maddie]

Semantics. He said the focus was the lower priced desktop. And AMDs mobile sales continues to drop fast. Its not hard to see they gave up.



Got documentation?

This HAS to be one of the funniest things you have ever written.

 

[ShintaiDK]

This HAS to be one of the funniest things you have ever written.

Is it? If his claim is true, only 10% of desktop chips are quadcores. And that would be a rather interesting observation.

 

[jpiniero]

Is it? If his claim is true, only 10% of desktop chips are quadcores.

IIRC, it was about 10% Quad for both desktop and mobile so the percentages might be slightly higher for desktop but not substantially.

 

[ShintaiDK]

IIRC, it was about 10% Quad for both desktop and mobile so the percentages might be slightly higher for desktop but not substantially.

If true, then its just another statement why 4 cores are more than plenty. And there is no incentive to release more into the performance/mainstream segment. Also backing up AMDs decision of dumping the hopeless FX line and not make any 3M/6T SR chips.

 

[sniffin]

Since when have AMD been more interested in desktops? Could you provide a link to this hint Rory dropped? Or are you basing this off Kaveri launching on destops first? I find it very hard to believe the desktop side of the business is showing more promise than mobile

If true, then its just another statement why 4 cores are more than plenty. And there is no incentive to release more into the performance/mainstream segment. Also backing up AMDs decision of dumping the hopeless FX line and not make any 3M/6T SR chips.

2M/4C makes more sense anyway with Steamroller removing the CMT penalty. The only real use for octo core FX's is being able to load 1 execution unit per module to avoid said penalty. The L3 is useless for consumer workloads (from AMDs own mouth) so whats the point in producing those enormous dies when they'll only sell for $200.

 

[Ajay]

1-2GB? What OS and games are you gonna try run?

The minimum would be around 8GB today. Thats 88$ just in wholesale price for the chips.

But again, there is no quadchannel and the socket is FM2+.

Looks like NB can handle GDDR5 and run DDR3 off the IMC on the APU, so it's just graphics RAM. 1-2 GB would be a fine amount of GFX RAM for an APU and less than $25 wholesale, using your numbers. Now if the slide inf64 has for the NB configuration is wrong, well, that's a different story - otherwise, it's a pretty smart solutions, IMO.

I know the socket is FM2+ :whiste:

 

[AtenRa]

Got documentation?

With Socket 2011 less than 1%, how much do you believe Core i5 and Core i7 Desktop segment has ??
Ill give you a hind, more than 50% is entry/value . That is Entry level Celerons to higher end Pentiums.

 

[NTMBK]

Looks like NB can handle GDDR5 and run DDR3 off the IMC on the APU, so it's just graphics RAM. 1-2 GB would be a fine amount of GFX RAM for an APU and less than $25 wholesale, using your numbers. Now if the slide inf64 has for the NB configuration is wrong, well, that's a different story - otherwise, it's a pretty smart solutions, IMO.

I know the socket is FM2+ :whiste:

The "NB" is integrated into the APU die, and has been for years. Any extra memory bandwidth would need to be attached through the FM2+ socket... which doesn't have the pins for it.

 

[inf64]

@ Ajay

The "slide" was real. It's actually a screen capture of a page from "Preliminary BIOS and Kernel Developer's Guide for AMD Family 15h Models 30h-3Fh Processors".

AMD canned the support for GDDR5 and 3 module version early on but the die area is there (wasted if you will). I was told it's not a huge die space wasted so no big deal. Also the configuration for QC GDDR5 was 4x32bit . The motive for cancellation of GDDR5 support was purely based on current market situation (at that time).

 

[Shivansps]

I think it has to do with other thing, GDDR5 support means the mb has to come with the memory to provide a gaming focused APU and i supect that GDDR5 will also hurt CPU performance a bit.

The thing is, the place for that sort of product in the desktop market is small, most of the time you will be better off just buying a dGPU, i think the best way was to provide GDDR5 support only for the IGP, in a sideport style, offcourse that breaks hUMA and HSA...

Mobile is another thing in mobile the GDDR5 could have been very handy.
Also it looks like they had no idea about the posibility of Steam machines, Intel bringing Broadwell+Crystalwell on LGA its probably because of SM.