• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

*** AMD ThreadRipper ***

String said:
Why sell with an AIO as standard, that seems like a strange decision?
Click to expand...

Maybe because there are no coolers out there atm, and not many going to make for this platform?
We know Noctua makes an air cooler, and EK waterblocks, but nothing about AIOs.
 
String said:
Why sell with an AIO as standard, that seems like a strange decision?
Click to expand...

AMD bundles AIO water coolers with their higher end graphics cards,so there might be economies of scale here,and remember the Threadripper CPUs have a 180W TDP too,so a good stock cooler would mean it should perform at its best in reviews too.
 
It's a niche of a niche product, there probably won't be too many coolers for it. OEMs may utility some server-esque heatsinks with ducted fans etc.
 
Don't think the fact it's an AIO cooler is end of world. It can be sold easy enough, it isn't much different to the CPU's that come with air coolers and as long as the price isn't jacked up by a lot to accommodate then really AMD are providing a solution of plug and play for the majority.
 
Chuk_Chuk said:
I see the point your trying to make, but I don't think there is much Intel could have done with a few months.
Click to expand...

It's not a few months, Zen for desktop and server was known to be coming in this time frame for the past two + years, Intel will absolutely have known about it for the last 2-3 years. These chips have been sampling for over 12 months with some information going to partners before that time so they could plan and optimise software for testing of samples. information gets out, there is even little chance Intel didn't have their hands on a few chips through big partners who had themselves some EPYC samples and shared them.

The problem here is Intel is making a massive chip, it's at the edge of feasible production size, they can't have 128pci-e, because they can't physically make a bigger die while having remotely useful volume. AMD have been building towards a interposer/mcm style interconnect for the past 10 years. They made their first interposer test chip in 2011 with I believe the first test HBM chips.

The sole reason AMD has more pci-e, more bandwidth/memory channels, higher memory capacity and more cores is the multichip design. This wasn't just a gambit, all the work AMD has done in the past decade has been building towards this. Regardless of Bulldozer, their intention was to make a chip akin to Zen, something with a fabric that allows more small dies to work together when the technology became feasible. Intel is seemingly years out from such a design and they've had years of warning that AMD would be able to do this, AMD hasn't been quiet or secretive about their work on a fabric, interposers or their intention for GPUs to go more smaller cores rather than one large die and much of the industry is on the same page(though several years behind on the implementation) as it's seen as the way forward with process node shrinks being harder and further between.

If we say AMD had a 6 core design with 1 memory channel and 20pci-e and it was 150mm^2 and this more closely lined up with intel in terms of a 24 core, 4 memory channel ~80 pci-e lane chip. Lets say Intel's chip is 550mm^2. AMD can easily add the extra memory channel, the extra 2 cores and the extra 12 pci-e per chip because it only becomes a 195mm^2 chip, but for Intel to add the same amount, roughly 180mm^2 in die space their chip becomes 750mm^2. 195mm^2 still increases cost of manufacture for AMD by what, near enough 30%, but yields at 195 vs 155 will be near enough the same while yields of 550 vs 750 are going to change significantly. There is also simply the maximum reticle size of the process, I'm not sure Intel actually list theirs anywhere but Glofo's 14nm is 600mm^2 while Glofo's 7nm will be 700mm^2. Intel is going to be literally butting up against both maximum die size that makes sense due to yields and the maximum they can actually achieve.

This is also with AMD on a less dense process, with Zen 2 vs whatever Intel have next AMD will have a seemingly on par or even better process. Many dies vs one die is winning for AMD with a fairly hefty process disadvantage, when the processes are on par if anything the gap between Zen 2 and the successor to Skylake-SP could be even bigger. If AMD are winning enough business to be financially viable, the extra die space available with 7nm could make AMD add a vastly more lanes to their interconnect link to start going after 4 and 8 way systems, though the volume of them and the requirement of an extra die to tape out might make it not all that worthwhile, those extra links would be a complete waste of die space on every other platform. But that is the good thing about infinity fabric, it's completely scaleable as it was designed to just put in as much as you want or need.

Intel knew what was coming, they simply don't have the ability to make bigger chips than they are right now and they don't have a strategy for making multiple dies work together as seamlessly as AMD. At this point I'd be very surprised if Intel can come up with something matching AMD on i/o, bandwidth and core count till at least Zen 3 time frame and a couple of years from now.
 
drunkenmaster said:
Intel knew what was coming, they simply don't have the ability to make bigger chips than they are right now and they don't have a strategy for making multiple dies work together as seamlessly as AMD. At this point I'd be very surprised if Intel can come up with something matching AMD on i/o, bandwidth and core count till at least Zen 3 time frame and a couple of years from now.
Click to expand...

They could. They'll buy some Threadripper chips as soon as they're discounted (which will be soon after release going on history :) ), analyse them, spend a large amount of $ on more R&D and probably come up better solution in a relatively short amount of time (deeper pockets count).
Joking aside, I'd be surprised if Intel don't have a strategy for it if they think it's worth doing. There's been multiple CPU motherboards for a while, a logical progression is kind of what AMD are doing.
 
DarrenM343 said:
They could. They'll buy some Threadripper chips as soon as they're discounted (which will be soon after release going on history :) ), analyse them, spend a large amount of $ on more R&D and probably come up better solution in a relatively short amount of time (deeper pockets count).
Joking aside, I'd be surprised if Intel don't have a strategy for it if they think it's worth doing. There's been multiple CPU motherboards for a while, a logical progression is kind of what AMD are doing.
Click to expand...

Analysing what AMD do is, not worthless(and they'd have done it long before launch, and the same fabric is available in a normal 8 core Ryzen) but all that tech is patented meaning if Intel straight up copied it AMD would sue the living hell out of them. The thing is the research for these things can take years and the rumours around Intel are that they've been coasting for years, canning research left right and centre as the CEO just sees expense and little payback. Intel are widely thought to have been wasting a lot of their R&D money on dead end projects, lots on mobile where they keep failing. Essentially people are accusing them of doing what Xerox did, what Apple could be said to be doing recently, presuming domination means they cant' be beaten and focusing on marketing and profit increasing rather than putting everything back into pushing hard on the technology to remain unbeatable. It's difficult to know how and when Intel will rework their architecture to take advantage of such a fabric but for me, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't have a designed and baked in from the start fabric similar to infinity fabric till their ground up new architecture which isn't due till 2020-21 timeframe.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom