Very surprising to me there are no big die Steamroller parts on that roadmap. With the WSA, it makes sense to me to make those big die chips.
My sig limit is reached, so I'm out of luck .
Very surprising to me there are no big die Steamroller parts on that roadmap. With the WSA, it makes sense to me to make those big die chips.
Very surprising to me there are no big die Steamroller parts on that roadmap. With the WSA, it makes sense to me to make those big die chips.
What I get from that is "GF 28nm volume production issues", why else would they be making only 1 version of Steamroller (2 module) and refreshing Piledriver (32nm) for multisocket. Perhaps limited production is aggravated by having at least one of the console chips produced on GF 28nm. XBox chip is rumored to be having problems with yield...
As to their bog standard ARM A57 chips, 2-4x the cores of Jaguar X series and slide says 2-4x performance so the A57 cores will be close to current Jaguar but probably more power efficient. Depending on the sales of the current Jaguar version AMD may maintain both lines depending on whether they will continue to develop successors of the cat family.
It's more likely to be due to the huge improvement of the ARM cores. Note that the slide says 2-4x performance, not performance per Watt.
Why dont they make one? They are still working on SR now, so if they wanted to, they could make a 4m SR.
Die size perhaps? If, and thats a big if, the rumored IPC gains are accurate for SR they must have added a great deal of transistors/circuit logic to make it happen.
Question for the AMD crowd:
- If steamroller is everything Bulldozer was supposed to be, if we're going to see smaller die together with 20% higher IPC and same power consumption, why we're not going to see Steamroller server chips as soon as it is launched?
Because if there is one market that needs this wonderchip is servers/workstations, and it would be profitable enough to make up for the incurred costs.
That could only be a reason if they knew that they would not be able to find a price point for 4m SR that could make them money.
That is to say, larger die size means more expensive to manufacture. They can pass that cost onto business consumers (talking about the server market), however, it might be that they will be unable to compete with Intel on price for this particular market segment.
Die size perhaps? If, and thats a big if, the rumored IPC gains are accurate for SR they must have added a great deal of transistors/circuit logic to make it happen.
I said why I think that is, production volume issues. Would explain why they are only producing one chip layout of 2 modules + iGP on GF 28nm. If the capacity was there why wouldn't they have 4+ module Steamroller for both consumer and server?
Question for the AMD crowd:
- If steamroller is everything Bulldozer was supposed to be, if we're going to see smaller die together with 20% higher IPC and same power consumption, why we're not going to see Steamroller server chips as soon as it is launched?
Because if there is one market that needs this wonderchip is servers/workstations, and it would be profitable enough to make up for the incurred costs.
TCO on serverside is primarily electricity and especially cooling cost. Even if SR had 40% better efficiency and 20% better ipc it would not be able to compete with HW - neither on ipc or running cost. Die size does only play a very minor role.
Add some software licens is build on number of cores favoring top ipc.
That's what I'm asking. Couldn't AMD spare a few wafers from the mobile chips just to have a token quantity of halo Steamroller parts if the thing was so great for servers? It would make them far more money than mobile chip, so why not?
Ed: Prices in the server market are so high that you can swallow low yields and still make a descent amount of money.
Agreed here, and wouldn't Steamroller close a bit of the gap with Intel on IPC and power efficiency? Couldn't they sell the thing at discount, as they have been doing since Clovertown?
Considering they've been getting the cold shoulder from OEMs due to not being a reliable supplier, I'd say splitting limited production doesn't make good sense. Then factor in that even with a really solid improvement from Piledriver to Steamroller a halo part is just going to be somewhat competitive to Intel server chips. Server purchasers aren't as easily blinded by seeing "5 GHz" on the product specs.
If you have volume big enough to run a mobile line up, how can you not have the volumes for running a server line up?
The slide states that ARM will supersede Jaguar in their server line up, not coexist with it.
Because the volume is just enough (if that) to meet mobile demands? Crank out exactly one die layout- anything that doesn't pass mobile requirements gets kicked up to desktop and server.
Why wouldn't they have at least a 4 module desktop Steamroller being produced if 28nm production was fine?
This needs highlighted a LOT more. Future "cat" cores dead?
Agreed here, and wouldn't Steamroller close a bit of the gap with Intel on IPC and power efficiency? Couldn't they sell the thing at discount, as they have been doing since Clovertown? To me it seems that whatever improvements Steamroller brings to the market it won't be able to close any gap with Intel, quite the opposite, tick-tock will still wide the gap regardless of Steamroller.
And if tick-tock killed AMD on the server market, how long until it kills AMD on the mobile market?
They can continue to sell Piledriver facelift at a hefty discount, but they are still only considered for the very few cases where the load on the cpu is low most of the time, and the arch is fit for the task - a niche in a niche sold at rock bottom prices.