Richland & Kabini rumours

[Blitzvogel]

If the 8 core Jaguar for consoles turns out to be true, what is the feasibility of turning it and quad core Kabini into low power, low cost server platforms? Sounds like a win, especially with small businesses that just need a simple IT framework, and nothing drastic like 6 core Xeons. 8 core Jaguar has plenty of GFLOPS to spare and could be programmed to handle the multitude of requests for data a network will make. AMD could further elaborate on the relationship of building the x86 and/or ARM + Radeon ecosystem.

 

[pablo87]

A video interview was given a few months back by a Global Foundries executive with ties to ATIC. Posters should look it up. My impression is like MRMT said: they don't give a **** about AMD, the relationship is one of master and minion.

 

[Homeles]

Back on topic , i saw an AMD slide at Hardware.fr that show that Piledriver
cores have one of the two integer execution unit enhanced with a hardware
divider , a feature that is explicitly claimed for Kabini but so far , apart from
the said slide i ve seen nothing about it in tech forums.

Curiously , it is not mentionned in all AMD Piledriver related slides
even the ones pointing the enhancements vs BD.

Possibility is that it s present in Trinity but is still not used , wich could
explain the slight improvement expected for Richland vs Trinity assuming
there are other slight improvements.

The hardware divider is old news. It was present in Llano and Bulldozer, but disabled in Bulldozer due to faulty logic. In Llano, it was broken. Piledriver managed to fix it.

For Llano, look up "errata 665."

 

[piesquared]

If the 8 core Jaguar for consoles turns out to be true, what is the feasibility of turning it and quad core Kabini into low power, low cost server platforms? Sounds like a win, especially with small businesses that just need a simple IT framework, and nothing drastic like 6 core Xeons. 8 core Jaguar has plenty of GFLOPS to spare and could be programmed to handle the multitude of requests for data a network will make. AMD could further elaborate on the relationship of building the x86 and/or ARM + Radeon ecosystem.

Indeed, it's looking like Jaguar is going to be a real winner for AMD. I'm looking forward to seeing GCN's compute units and how they interface with the rest of the SoC in Kabini and Temash.

 

[erunion]

So as per the conference call, AMD will be 6-9 months ahead of the competition with a quad core x86 SoC. Pretty significant window of opportunity there.

Well lets look at what that means.

AMD is launching Kabini and Temash against Haswell and Clovertrail. The 6-9 month lead is versus Valleyview, Avaton will supposedly be out before that.

Valleyview will be 4 core, single threaded. Clovertrail is dual core but hyperthread. Valleyview will be considerably faster though. Jaguar should be faster as well. But the biggest difference is going to be due to TDP. Clovertrail is <3W while Temash will be 3.6W and 5.9W.

Kabini's TDP should be 9 -25w, same range as Haswell ULV. It will be AMDs first real competitive product in the segment, Trinity 17W was a no show.

I think Temash has the best chance of success. But even though it should be alone in its TDP range, its going to have competition above and below. Its not obvious that there is a sweet spot between discount Clovertrail tablets and more premium Core tablets. But if battery life is good Temash could obsolete Clovertrail tablets.

 

[piesquared]

This may also relate to Kabini and Temash.

AMD game engineers + a major developer = a never-before-seen DirectX® 11 technology. What do you think it is? #NZS2 #Neversettle

https://twitter.com/AMDGaming/status/293908415351238657

Maybe relates to the full DX11 feature set that GCN supports, although those are just 3 2D acceleration features I think. They might come in handy for accelerating the Win8 UI though. Or maybe PRT that Carmack was very interested in.

 

[erunion]

Sounds more like some graphics technology that a game company is implementing with the help of AMD's Gaming Evolved program.

 

[piesquared]

Sounds more like some graphics technology that a game company is implementing with the help of AMD's Gaming Evolved program.

I believe so. Kabini and Temash could benefit as well because of the similar architecture.

 

[krumme]

Mubadala needs AMD to legitimize GloFo as a foundry. Without AMD they have no leading edge customers to showcase and entice others to GloFo.

As soon as GloFo signs on another high profile customer, say Qualcomm or Apple or Nvidia, then you can kiss Mubadala's interests in AMD goodbye.

GloFo is the national strategic interest there, not AMD. AMD is just a convenient customer for the moment because they are basically the only high profile customer for the moment. That will change, one way or the other.

You are right; thats the way they are thinking. And ofcourse its all about GF - not AMD. But its wrong.

They are looking way to narrow on it, and not brutal enough

GF is going to compete with TSMC and Intel
Its pretty much a race for, who have the biggest wallet
Now, every strategic action that Mubadala can do that hurt fx. Intels wallet is getting them an advantage. What they dont understand is, that AMD is the perfect company to hurt Intels profit, for very little investment. Putting 2B into AMD is far more costeffective than investing say 4B in GF. Ofcourse it have disadvantages, you are pouring money into something that have no interest to you, and some of it is even getting to TSMC - one of your main competitors.

Look how the market would be for Intel without the kabini and temash? And kaveri? - it would be a return to pure monopoly prices, and Intel profit would skyrocket transferring those ressources to process development. What Mubadala dont want, is that to happen. Intels monopoly status is the same as constant oil.

I have no doubt, that if Otellini was managing the show for mubadala, he would think like that. Its about attacking and hurting with few ressources.

Mubadala political purposes make them think business weak.

(edit: well who knows AMD might even start to make their own money some day. Not that i find it likely, but its a possible upside of the above strategy)

 

[NTMBK]

I believe so. Kabini and Temash could benefit as well because of the similar architecture.

Given the emphasis on DX11, it could well be a Temash demo. I can see AMD sticking it to Intel for only having a DirectX 9 GPU in Atom.

 

[zlatan]

Sounds more like some graphics technology that a game company is implementing with the help of AMD's Gaming Evolved program.

It might be a light-based rendering implementation. The new Tomb Raider will use this for surface effects.

 

[MightyMalus]

Any word yet on how exactly Richland is suppose to provide those gains over Trinity?

 

[USER8000]

SemiAccurate leaked this in 2011:

http://semiaccurate.com/2011/10/27/amd-far-future-prototype-gpu-pictured/

http://semiaccurate.com/forums/showpost.php?p=140928&postcount=26

http://semiaccurate.com/forums/showpost.php?p=144203&postcount=35

Thanks! Yep it all looks very interesting. I guess 2+ years could be considered 'far future'.

On a related note Crystalwell is seemingly seeing very little interest from OEM's, as per Charlie's article. Could OEM's and SI's be embracing HSA due to it's openness and customizability, etc.?

There is a better picture in this document:

http://www.i-micronews.com/upload/Rapports/3D_Silicon_&Glass_Interposers_sample_2012.pdf

i.imgur.com/I634RfM.jpg

Amkor lists gaming consoles and Sony in the same segment,so it appears,the arrangement is being used for the GPU in the PS4 with stacked memory.

 

[inf64]

So this could be semi-custom APU based on Jaguar core that utilizes the HBM modules via TSV technology? Or maybe even Kaveri has similar tech ? Very interesting find!

 

[frozentundra123456]

Given the emphasis on DX11, it could well be a Temash demo. I can see AMD sticking it to Intel for only having a DirectX 9 GPU in Atom.

DX 11 is a great bullet point, but is it really that significant in a tablet or phone? I mean I have an i5 and a HD7770 in my desktop and it struggles with DX11 in some games. Are you really going to be able to run this on a tablet? Plus, maybe it is my old eyes, but I cant really tell that much difference. I have run the Metro 2033 demo on all 3 dx settings, and if I watched one without knowing the dx version, I dont think I could tell the difference.

More to the point to me would be the relative performance in dx9, and granted Atom is still weak there.

 

[MightyMalus]

DX 11 is a great bullet point, but is it really that significant in a tablet or phone? I mean I have an i5 and a HD7770 in my desktop and it struggles with DX11 in some games. Are you really going to be able to run this on a tablet? Plus, maybe it is my old eyes, but I cant really tell that much difference. I have run the Metro 2033 demo on all 3 dx settings, and if I watched one without knowing the dx version, I dont think I could tell the difference.

More to the point to me would be the relative performance in dx9, and granted Atom is still weak there.

DX11 is just an API, it provides an amount of "features" or "abilities". More features than DX9. You can have a DX11.1 Virtual Fighter 1 if you wanted...Also, the "difference" won't be much since most games have added DX11 features instead of built from the ground up with DX11.

 

[zlatan]

DX 11 is a great bullet point, but is it really that significant in a tablet or phone?

In games it will allow you to create faster effects. So yes a modern API will be very useful for tablet gaming.

 

[SiliconWars]

DX 11 is a great bullet point, but is it really that significant in a tablet or phone? I mean I have an i5 and a HD7770 in my desktop and it struggles with DX11 in some games. Are you really going to be able to run this on a tablet? Plus, maybe it is my old eyes, but I cant really tell that much difference. I have run the Metro 2033 demo on all 3 dx settings, and if I watched one without knowing the dx version, I dont think I could tell the difference.

More to the point to me would be the relative performance in dx9, and granted Atom is still weak there.

Dx11 can also be used to make games faster, WoW being one of the most obvious cases - http://www.pcgameshardware.de/World...zu-50-Prozent-schneller-als-DirectX-9-822073/

 

[happysmiles]

DX 11 is a great bullet point, but is it really that significant in a tablet or phone? I mean I have an i5 and a HD7770 in my desktop and it struggles with DX11 in some games. Are you really going to be able to run this on a tablet? Plus, maybe it is my old eyes, but I cant really tell that much difference. I have run the Metro 2033 demo on all 3 dx settings, and if I watched one without knowing the dx version, I dont think I could tell the difference.

More to the point to me would be the relative performance in dx9, and granted Atom is still weak there.

The more developers optimize their software/games for AMD hardware/DX11 the better it'll perform.

I definitely think that the next Xbox being both DX11 and AMD hardware will help with cross development and ports.

 

[NTMBK]

DX 11 is a great bullet point, but is it really that significant in a tablet or phone? I mean I have an i5 and a HD7770 in my desktop and it struggles with DX11 in some games. Are you really going to be able to run this on a tablet? Plus, maybe it is my old eyes, but I cant really tell that much difference. I have run the Metro 2033 demo on all 3 dx settings, and if I watched one without knowing the dx version, I dont think I could tell the difference.

More to the point to me would be the relative performance in dx9, and granted Atom is still weak there.

DirectX 11 could well be useful for its compute features- GCN is very good at GPGPU tasks, so offloading tasks to it would be useful for plenty of applications (not just games). But yes, most games use DirectX 11 as their "thrash the graphics card as hard as you can" because mainstream DX11 cards are on average far more powerful than DX9 ones. But it has plenty of features that could be used to perform tasks more efficiently, if developers wanted to.

 

[Ajay]

DirectX 11 could well be useful for its compute features- GCN is very good at GPGPU tasks, so offloading tasks to it would be useful for plenty of applications (not just games). But yes, most games use DirectX 11 as their "thrash the graphics card as hard as you can" because mainstream DX11 cards are on average far more powerful than DX9 ones. But it has plenty of features that could be used to perform tasks more efficiently, if developers wanted to.

I wonder if developers would use DX compute, or use AMP (MSVS) or CUDA directly. I don't know what the relative performance is between them (+OpenCL). Hmm, maybe I'll write a paper on this if I can find some peer reviewed articles.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Dx11 can also be used to make games faster, WoW being one of the most obvious cases - http://www.pcgameshardware.de/World...zu-50-Prozent-schneller-als-DirectX-9-822073/

I have not tried that game, but in Metro, the benchmark is the same FPS with Dx11 vs dx 9, and very little visual quality difference. I have really not seen much benefit from dx 10 or 11, although I have only played a few games with DX 11 since getting a new card. Actually one of the best looking games I have played is Skyrim on ultra. I have not played any of the new games like FC3 or such though.

 

[SiliconWars]

I have not tried that game, but in Metro, the benchmark is the same FPS with Dx11 vs dx 9, and very little visual quality difference. I have really not seen much benefit from dx 10 or 11, although I have only played a few games with DX 11 since getting a new card. Actually one of the best looking games I have played is Skyrim on ultra. I have not played any of the new games like FC3 or such though.

Dx11 can be used for better visuals and better performance (at the same time). It is considered as an overhead mainly due to bad programming, and many games do suffer a Dx11 hit but that really is down to the Dx9 mindset prevalent in the industry and not the actual API itself.

 

[MightyMalus]

I wonder if developers would use DX compute, or use AMP (MSVS) or CUDA directly. I don't know what the relative performance is between them (+OpenCL). Hmm, maybe I'll write a paper on this if I can find some peer reviewed articles.

CUDA is completely out of the question for console games as AMD is the GPU provider for all "next-gen consoles" and CUDA is NVIDIA only.

I personally hope they use the compute capabilities more, I want better physics, destructable enviroments and such!

 

[Haserath]

I personally hope they use the compute capabilities more, I want better physics, destructable enviroments and such!

That would be better than enhancing visual quality, but CPU might be better at handling that kind of workload efficiently.