[Techpowerup] AMD "Zen" CPU Prototypes Tested, "Meet all Expectations"

[Erenhardt]

From The Stilt:

Are we still talking about desktop ATX motherboards?
I thought your team said overclocking on mobile was a bug.

Can you link me his DDR4 carrizo tests?

 

[looncraz]

http://techfrag.com/2015/12/09/conf...aped-out-yet-reveals-chief-financial-officer/

According to this, Zen hasn't taped out yet.

Of course, tape-out doesn't actually refer to one single event, you have an initial tape-out, test silicon (prototypes), refinements, then final production tape-out. Production tape-out to first product is about six months, IIRC. About half the time waiting for the new layer masks/tooling and the remainder spooling up production.

If Zen hasn't had its initial tape-out, it would not be released in Q4 '16 under anything but the best of circumstances with some considerable risk taking involved (starting full production before validation is complete). If they expect final tape-out to be around February or March, late Q3 or Q4 '16 still makes sense.

At least that's what I think.

 

[Abwx]

http://techfrag.com/2015/12/09/conf...aped-out-yet-reveals-chief-financial-officer/

According to this, Zen hasn't taped out yet.

They use Seekingalpha (a site that advise buying Intel and Nvidia stocks...) fuddy and deliberatly misleading article as reference, in short a shill site quoting another shill site, they can make a quite resonating feedback loop with the help of some not that uninterested drones...

 

[coercitiv]

http://techfrag.com/2015/12/09/conf...aped-out-yet-reveals-chief-financial-officer/

According to this, Zen hasn't taped out yet.

1. Read the transcript.
2. If you have the patience, read the thread

 

[svenge]

They use Seekingalpha (a site that advise buying Intel and Nvidia stocks...)

1) Seeking Alpha publishes transcripts of conference calls conducted by major corporations (of which AMD barely qualifies as these days). Do you really think they're going to distort those transcripts (which is not the same as subsequent stories based on them) based on their editorial stance and alienate their readership?

2) INTC and NVDA have been much better investments than AMD over the last decade as seen below:

INTC:  +63.12% over last 10 years
NVDA: +117.59% over last 10 years
AMD:   -94.38% over last 10 years

EDIT: Fixed mis-assignment of numbers.

 

[Fjodor2001]

2) INTC and NVDA have been much better investments than AMD over the last decade as seen below:

That selects a peak for AMD's stock price as starting point. Not so sure if you did that intentionally, but it does not give a fair picture.

Here's a bit longer history (click on "All" above the diagram to see the complete history):

http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp...q=NASDAQ:AMD&ntsp=0&ei=K49oVojBIYmesgGzuLnQDg

Having said that, sure Intel has been a better investment anyway.

 

[Dresdenboy]

2) INTC and NVDA have been much better investments than AMD over the last decade as seen below:

INTC: +117.59% over last 10 years
NVDA:  +63.12% over last 10 years
AMD:   -94.38% over last 10 years

You mixed the numbers. NVDA is +117.59% in your chart (red).

But that's a bad investment methology anyway, as a) future data is not available (incl. the next financial crisis etc.), and b) past performance is no indicator of the future performance. Timing is also important and some have a buying plan to average things out. I seek to buy dips or bottoms, and trade short to medium term. 10 years is good to extract 3 to 4 digit percentage returns. All of the three are good trading stocks.

 

[DrMrLordX]

http://techfrag.com/2015/12/09/conf...aped-out-yet-reveals-chief-financial-officer/

According to this, Zen hasn't taped out yet.

Of course, tape-out doesn't actually refer to one single event, you have an initial tape-out, test silicon (prototypes), refinements, then final production tape-out. Production tape-out to first product is about six months, IIRC. About half the time waiting for the new layer masks/tooling and the remainder spooling up production.

If Zen hasn't had its initial tape-out, it would not be released in Q4 '16 under anything but the best of circumstances with some considerable risk taking involved (starting full production before validation is complete). If they expect final tape-out to be around February or March, late Q3 or Q4 '16 still makes sense.

At least that's what I think.

All indicators point to AMD already having test silicon in-hand. I believe Kumar was talking about final tape-out. People are reading too much into those statements.

 

[looncraz]

All indicators point to AMD already having test silicon in-hand. I believe Kumar was talking about final tape-out. People are reading too much into those statements.

:thumbsup:

 

[mahoshojo]

All indicators point to AMD already having test silicon in-hand. I believe Kumar was talking about final tape-out. People are reading too much into those statements.

My friends in AMD told me they have 14nm&16nm chips in their lab several months ago. They did mention something running @ 4Ghz without any problem. haha.

 

[TechGod123]

My friends in AMD told me they have 14nm&16nm chips in their lab several months ago. They did mention something running @ 4Ghz without any problem. haha.

You have no source or way to validate your authenticity.

 

[Phynaz]

Techreport is saying the remour is what taped out was another spin of Excavator, not Zen.

 

[looncraz]

Techreport is saying the remour is what taped out was another spin of Excavator, not Zen.

There was no doubting that AMD had multiple FinFet tapeouts, they confirmed this directly.

http://wccftech.com/amd-confirms-taping-finfet-chips/

Then GloFo and AMD both confirmed, right on schedule, that they had working silicon on 14nm LPP.

It need not be Zen, it could be Nintendo's SoC (but do you really think they'd be willing to go all-in when they can so easily not do so and still emasculate the competition?) and Arctic Islands, sure. Excavator, though? Extremely doubtful, though I'd be quite interested to see Excavator on 14nm LPP :thumbsup:

 

[coercitiv]

It need not be Zen, it could be Nintendo's SoC (but do you really think they'd be willing to go all-in when they can so easily not do so and still emasculate the competition?) and Arctic Islands, sure. Excavator, though? Extremely doubtful, though I'd be quite interested to see Excavator on 14nm LPP :thumbsup:

It could still be something semi-custom.

Great. On the embedded -- the semi-custom area, what's the update there? You had a couple of new wins that should come to production soon. What else do you have on the pipeline?

[...] those products come to fruition in the second half of '16 to get multiple products and if I give you the range of revenue it is in the range of $1.2 million to $1.5 billion starting in the second half of 2016 and from a modelling standpoint you can look at it as a three-year cycle for those products to go ahead and generate revenue over that time frame. So, the product wins are not there, the work is going on in terms of getting the products ready. When we introduce the products is obviously depending on our customer. But we are doing everything to go ahead and stage, the work to be done based on the milestone basis, earning the NRE dollars or spending the resources to go ahead and get the products ready. And revenue will start sometime in the second half of 2016, is our current estimation.

Just out of curiosity, I don't know if you guys have mentioned this, but if the semi-custom projects are processing-related, are they x86 or ARM-based?

Right now for the ones that we are talking about, the few that I talk about are all non arm-based products there.

 

[mysticjbyrd]

If Zen has Haswell IPC, would the I7-5960x be a fairly decent representation of it's performance or would it be better due to the die shrink?

 

[coercitiv]

If Zen has Haswell IPC, would the I7-5960x be a fairly decent representation of it's performance or would it be better due to the die shrink?

We have no clear idea of what both Zen IPC and product lineup will look like, making any comparison with current top of the line Intel products is irresponsible to say the least.

We should stop comparing Zen with Haswell or other Intel uarch until there's some solid info on the table. It's easier and far more productive (conflict free) to compare gains in relation to current AMD products. That's why we see a lot of Excavator references in this thread.

 

[mahoshojo]

You have no source or way to validate your authenticity.

It's fine. I don't really mind.

 

[Dresdenboy]

I give you the range of revenue it is in the range of $1.2 million to $1.5 billion

That's a true save harbor statement, isn't it?

 

[coercitiv]

That's a true save harbor statement, isn't it?

That is most likely a typo from Seeking Alpha, but I chose to quote it as is.

 

[cbn]

Techreport is saying the remour is what taped out was another spin of Excavator, not Zen.

There was no doubting that AMD had multiple FinFet tapeouts, they confirmed this directly.

http://wccftech.com/amd-confirms-taping-finfet-chips/

Then GloFo and AMD both confirmed, right on schedule, that they had working silicon on 14nm LPP.

It need not be Zen, it could be Nintendo's SoC (but do you really think they'd be willing to go all-in when they can so easily not do so and still emasculate the competition?) and Arctic Islands, sure. Excavator, though? Extremely doubtful, though I'd be quite interested to see Excavator on 14nm LPP :thumbsup:

For FM2+ owners, having something to update their systems would be nice.

And if it is on 14nm, I would assume it is more than quad core :thumbsup:

 

[ShintaiDK]

For FM2+ owners, having something to update their systems would be nice.

And if it is on 14nm, I would assume it is more than quad core :thumbsup:

There any updates for FM2+. Its all AM4.

 

[The Stilt]

There any updates for FM2+. Its all AM4.

Not true.

AMD will release Excavator based Athlon parts for FM2+ socket too. They are Carrizos with iGPU and FCH permanently disabled. It is yet to be seen if they will be available in retail or if they are OEM only.

Most likely they will be available in retail too, since most if not all ASUS FM2+ boards support them with their latest bios releases

 

[The Stilt]

Regarding AMD´s FinFet tape-outs, I know as a fact that one of the first (if not the first) design they taped out on 14nm LPE (early version) process was a GCN GPU.
This happened in June-July time frame.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Techreport is saying the remour is what taped out was another spin of Excavator, not Zen.

Are they cribbing from Nosta? Of course, he'd say it was 22FDX . . .

My friends in AMD told me they have 14nm&16nm chips in their lab several months ago. They did mention something running @ 4Ghz without any problem. haha.

But can it run Crysis?

That is most likely a typo from Seeking Alpha, but I chose to quote it as is.

It's more fun that way.

For FM2+ owners, having something to update their systems would be nice.

And if it is on 14nm, I would assume it is more than quad core :thumbsup:

No, they'll be 28nm GF28A 2m/4t. Failed Bristol Ridge, basically.

 

[LTC8K6]

Why buy XV once it's been announced that Zen is so much faster?

I'd just wait for Zen and build new if I wanted to stay with AMD.

I guess a few folks will want to drop an XV chip into an older system, but it doesn't sound like much of an upgrade.

Depends on the price, I guess?