16 Core / 32 Thread - AMD APU with Artic Islands '400 series' Graphics + HBM: exascale supercomputer

[Boomstick777]

An interesting article published by AMD of IEEE Micro outlines the strategy and the future projection of the house Sunnyvale within the class of exascale supercomputers (ie systems with very high computing power capable of performing a trillion [10 ^ 18] of operations per second).

According to AMD also 'exascale computing requires a diverse approach - which combines the CPU and GPU (in one chip) structures on multi-node cluster to a park right software - as it is the only solution that can guarantee a computational power high quality at relatively low cost and low energy consumption (cost reduction is achieved by using general-purpose architectures instead of expensive dedicated hardware solutions).

What AMD wants to do, it is to bring the concept of HSA (Heterogeneous Systems Architecture) within HPC servers via a new APU. APU powerful enough to be renamed with the acronym EHP (exascale Heterogeneous Processor) and consists of a chip with 16 cores Zen x86 (can process 32 threads in parallel), with a powerful integrated GPU belonging to the next generation "Arctic Islands "(something like a report DP / SP equal to 1/2, NDA), combined with memories HBM2 on-package.

As for the launch period, the roadmap of the HPC / Workstation of the arrival of the new AMD APU is expected between 2016 and 2017.

Source: http://www.bitsandchips.it/9-hardware/5858-amd-exascale-heterogeneous-processor

Source Translated: https://translate.google.co.uk/tran...le-heterogeneous-processor&edit-text=&act=url

 

[Boomstick777]

I'm not convinced gamers are going to get a lot out of the Zen line, I hope I'm wrong about that as I'm holding out on the off chance.

It could be great with DX12 but I keep thinking about the performance charts cutting off at 6 cores. We have no real idea (or atleast I don't) if that was just a beta limitation. If it wasn't and we will see similar limitations when we get some real DX12 gaming, I'm thinking 6/8 powerful cores is the way to go.. I wonder if they could make a few mega cores with a lot of smaller support cores for multithreaded.

I just can't see it being good for older games stuck on DX11 or lower and that's going to be a major segment of gaming for at least 5 years.

I see the opposite, AMD finally having all their ducks in a row..

New architecture, CPU and GPU, die shrink and HBM. This should be great from laptops all the way to full desktop towers.

Should be a positive step for AMD. Remember the huge core parts are for server etc, typical consumer Zen 'APU' will likely have 4 cores / 8 threads and new Graphics architecture along side HBM and on a die shrink.

The Zen 'CPU' line will likely be 8 core / 16 thread+ (No GPU).