[OLD SemiAccurate] AMD kills off big cores, Kaveri, Steamroller, and Excavator

[Burpo]

Fact or fiction?
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/11/19/amd-kills-off-big-cores-kaveri-steamroller-and-excavator/

Do please try to check the date of articles before posting...
-ViRGE

 

[Chicken76]

That article is from 2012.
And they did kill off something at the time, only it was big-die CPUs, not all big-cores.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

Don't know, but I have been hearing this stuff for years.There is always some truth behind rumors so maybe.What I think AMD meant was that they were killing off what we know as there Current Uarch for future releases and what we would get from then on would be a new Uarch AKA Carrizo And then Zen?? Don't quote me but that's just my thoughts.

 

[ThatBuzzkiller]

Not exactly the most recent material to start a thread on but onto the subject ...

It's pretty clear that AMD isn't going to release a high performance Excavator part at this point since AMD knows that it'll hardly be competitive with Intel offerings and that it won't have a sizable advantage against their older high performance CPUs so they just didn't bother at all.

The only time I could possibly see AMD releasing another higher performance part is with their completely new microarchitecture, "Zen".

 

[Burpo]

I know.. just all this hub bub about amd excavator.. 2 yrs later & nothing changes.. Same ole AMD

 

[Abwx]

Seems that the OP didnt read the article down to the last lines, otherwise he would had noticed at the bottom of the page that :

Updated 11/19/2012@10:15am: AMD contacted us with an official denial of the story and stated that Kaveri and the big cores are still on track.

Anyway that s telling about thoses past rumours, two years later Kaveri is here for months while Excavator was confirmed quite a long time ago, i wonder where all this viral marketing material is coming from.

 

[Burpo]

Oh, I read it.. The whole thing's a joke.. Fan boys are allowed to muse about "Excavator likely to beat intel 2500K"..
So I figure why not?

 

[szatkus]

He's right. Kaveri 1.0 failed the evalution.

http://cdn2.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/AMD-Kaveri-APU-Platform-Details.png

 

[positivedoppler]

Oh, I read it.. The whole thing's a joke.. Fan boys are allowed to muse about "Excavator likely to beat intel 2500K"..
So I figure why not?

Fan boys can be annoying to some but speculating on future part is a part of this forum. Dragging up a time proven false rumor and saying "jk"...what is the point of such a thread?

 

[NTMBK]

Seems that the OP didnt read the article down to the last lines, otherwise he would had noticed at the bottom of the page that :



Anyway that s telling about thoses past rumours, two years later Kaveri is here for months while Excavator was confirmed quite a long time ago, i wonder where all this viral marketing material is coming from.

You're accusing Charlie of viral marketing for Intel? lol... no.

Looks like the actual key rumour Charlie heard was this:

Word has reached our ears that pretty much the entirety of the AMD big core line was a casualty of the last round of layoffs.

And he extrapolated from there. Given how delayed and underwhelming Steamroller was, and how delayed Excavator is, and that after Excavator the entire construction core line is being shut down and replaced with Zen... yeah, I can believe that most of the team was laid off.

 

[Abwx]

You're accusing Charlie of viral marketing for Intel? lol... no.

Looks like the actual key rumour Charlie heard was this:

And he extrapolated from there. Given how delayed and underwhelming Steamroller was, and how delayed Excavator is, and that after Excavator the entire construction core line is being shut down and replaced with Zen... yeah, I can believe that most of the team was laid off.

You would have guessed that i m aware that Semiaccurate is just repeating some noise that they heard here or there, i didnt point Demerjian as your post is suggesting otherwise i wouldnt wonder from where it comes.

The bolded part of your post is just non sense, you think that they layed off their design team to replace it with a new one just because they decided to design a new uarch.??..lol..

 

[Cerb]

They killed off future CPUs that were destined for manufacturing processes that got axed. That's the sort of thing they have to deal with, being fabless.

 

[NostaSeronx]

AMD cancelled development of Bulldozer architectures at Sunnyvale related teams. So, Sunnyvale could focus on Zen(x86)/K12(AArch64) architectures. Bulldozer(SteamrollerB/Excavator) has then been developed by Boston Design Center related teams.

Here is an exact quote from Linkedin.

Program Director for the Excavator x86 CPU core, with overall responsibility for all development activities across 4 North America sites and India, with a team size of ~200 engineers. This is the 4th generation of the Bulldozer core family which was initially launched in 2011 in server and 2012 in client SOCs. The program was successfully headed towards completion in late 2012, when we decided to do a technology change. The ownership and most of the work to complete the project was shifted to our Boston Design Center, which enabled the Sunnyvale team to take on a new from scratch design.

One of the heads at BDC is also a Vice President at SOITEC.

 

[Abwx]

Fan boys can be annoying to some but speculating on future part is a part of this forum. Dragging up a time proven false rumor and saying "jk"...what is the point of such a thread?

In principle none since the quoted SA article end by this :

Updated 11/19/2012@10:15am: AMD contacted us with an official denial of the story and stated that Kaveri and the big cores are still on track.

So the quoted article expressely say that they have confirmation from AMD that it was only a rumour yet we have someone creating a thread and asking if said rumour could had some validity, do the conclusions you want about it...

 

[Remobz]

AMD death rumors will be next?

 

[Exophase]

Here is an exact quote from Linkedin.

Program Director for the Excavator x86 CPU core, with overall responsibility for all development activities across 4 North America sites and India, with a team size of ~200 engineers. This is the 4th generation of the Bulldozer core family which was initially launched in 2011 in server and 2012 in client SOCs. The program was successfully headed towards completion in late 2012, when we decided to do a technology change. The ownership and most of the work to complete the project was shifted to our Boston Design Center, which enabled the Sunnyvale team to take on a new from scratch design.

So the program director of Excavator doesn't even know that Bulldozer launched as a client product first in 2011? And that there was no version that you could dare call an "SoC"...

 

[NostaSeronx]

So the program director of Excavator doesn't even know that Bulldozer launched as a client product first in 2011? And that there was no version that you could dare call an "SoC"...

I know this sentence is pretty hard for those who aren't excelling at reading.

This is the 4th generation of the Bulldozer core family; [the Bulldozer core family] which was initially launched in 2011 in server [markets], and 2012 in client SOCs [markets].

I fixed it for you, to make it easier to read.

 

[szatkus]

So the program director of Excavator doesn't even know that Bulldozer launched as a client product first in 2011? And that there was no version that you could dare call an "SoC"...

Apparently they have different definition of SoC. You can find Trinity SoC and Kaveri SoC on Linkedin profiles. Weird.

Also Interlagos launched in 2011.

 

[erunion]

He's calling AM sockets server products and FM sockets client products. I dont see the problem with that, Vishera is a server part being sold in the retail channel.

 

[Idontcare]

They did kill them off pretty much in all but name name only. Sure they kept the same project names but the scope of the core designs was very much scaled back to reflect the declining R&D and "focus" on small-core and non-x86 (ARM and GPU) products.

 

[Exophase]

I know this sentence is pretty hard for those who aren't excelling at reading. I fixed it for you, to make it easier to read.

How does that change anything with respect to my response? He said that Bulldozer was released for client markets in 2012. That's wrong, that release was in October 2011.

If he's really talking about APUs and Trinity with 2012 then he shouldn't have called the 2011 release for server markets. The FX-series Bulldozer parts were not for server markets.

Apparently they have different definition of SoC. You can find Trinity SoC and Kaveri SoC on Linkedin profiles. Weird.

That's unfortunate.

Also Interlagos launched in 2011.

Didn't say otherwise. It launched about a month after the FX-series processors did in November 2011.

He's calling AM sockets server products and FM sockets client products. I dont see the problem with that, Vishera is a server part being sold in the retail channel.

But that's not right. Valencia used Socket C32, Interlagos used Socket G34. AM socket has nothing to do with server parts.

 

[NostaSeronx]

How does that change anything with respect to my response? He said that Bulldozer was released for client markets in 2012. That's wrong, that release was in October 2011.

If he's really talking about APUs and Trinity with 2012 then he shouldn't have called the 2011 release for server markets. The FX-series Bulldozer parts were not for server markets.

Your huge reading impediment is striking hard and swift Exophase.

Interlagos'/Valencia's SKUs launched May 1st, 2011 for Server markets.
Trinity SKUs launched May 15, 2012 for Client SOC markets.

AM socket has nothing to do with server parts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...teron_1200-series_.22Santa_Ana.22_.2890_nm.29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...pteron_1300-series_.22Budapest.22_.2865_nm.29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...#Opteron_1300-series_.22Suzuka.22_.2845_nm.29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...#Opteron_3200-series_.22Zurich.22_.2832_nm.29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...s#Opteron_3300-series_.22Delhi.22_.2832_nm.29

I want to say BS so hard.