AMD to launch 12nm Ryzen in February 2018

[jrwagh333]

The newer chips won't require a new Mobo. Just look at AMD's history with AM2/AM2+ and AM3/AM3+

 

[Martini1991]

The newer chips won't require a new Mobo. Just look at AMD's history with AM2/AM2+ and AM3/AM3+

AM3 had no exclusive chips, AM3+ rebranded the AM3 chipsets and was required for the new set of CPU's, which were killed off early for that platform. So, AMD's "positive" history is mainly indulged by ignorance.

I fully expect to be able to put at least one more CPU series in this AM4 motherboard, but after that I expect to need a new one. As long as AMD can give me up to 4.4GHZ in core clock, and some more IPC with 8 cores I'll be happy.

 

[jrwagh333]

...AM3+ rebranded the AM3 chipsets and was required for the new set of CPU's, which were killed off early for that platform.

Which are you refering to please?

 

[Martini1991]

Which are you refering to please?

Well am3 was meant to be for bulldozer, that never happened, am3+ came along with a rebrand of the 890fx etc. Am3+ had a course correction after bulldozer launched and the 10 core was scrapped. Piledriver was the second and last iteration on am3+ with steamroller and Excavator being scrapped too and released on APU format on another socket.

 

[jaffveyda]

If they would be priced around £220 i would replace the existing one with new revision.

 

[GAC]

They don't require a different chipset, they want to force you to buy a new motherboard with one of their chipsets on it.

At least now i know what GAC is worried about, don't be, AMD could never get away with that sort of shenanigans so it ain't happening.

not really worried would have been nice so i could plan for future updates a bit further in advance, for example if amd came out and said the refresh would work fine in current 370's id grab a 1500 for now to put me on then get a top of the line come next feb but due to the lack of an official word on it il just grab a 1700 now if coffee lake is too much money for what it is.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Ryzen is an SOC - it physically does not need a chipset to function. The chipset only adds some extra functions,so I see no reason why the Ryzen refresh next year won't work in the existing motherboards.

 

[d_brennen]

Ryzen is an SOC - it physically does not need a chipset to function. The chipset only adds some extra functions,so I see no reason why the Ryzen refresh next year won't work in the existing motherboards.

Aside from the business case of selling a new chipset

I am sure AM4 3xx is here for a while though, AMD can't afford the bad press as well as Intel at the moment.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Aside from the business case of selling a new chipset

I am sure AM4 3xx is here for a while though, AMD can't afford the bad press as well as Intel at the moment.

The new chipset will probably add more PCI-E,etc and more features and maybe the newer motherboards will overclock better?

But I would be surprised if the 300 series is locked out,unless AMD did an Intel.

 

[jigger]

Don't worry, not expecting anything. Been to hype land and back. I am expecting pedestrian increases, but hopeful that they can pull out more at least on the top binned chips.

But people like to become fully hyped. Waits for 6Ghz Ryzen plus screen shots and impending posts of Intels downfall.

 

[humbug]

Ryzen is an SOC - it physically does not need a chipset to function. The chipset only adds some extra functions,so I see no reason why the Ryzen refresh next year won't work in the existing motherboards.

Good point.

 

[jigger]

The X300 boards only use the connections from the CPU. Maybe the 450/470 boards add support for 6 and 8 core APU's.

 

[smilingcrow]

Ryzen is a SOC - it physically does not need a chipset to function. The chipset only adds some extra functions,so I see no reason why the Ryzen refresh next year won't work in the existing motherboards.

Ryzen needs a chipset to be able to offer even a typical entry level of I/O which is why boards come with one. Even a budget mITX board would seem barren without a chipset.
As for compatibility in general you need to also look at other things such as VRM specs as well as things such as PCIe spec support, power delivery etc.
So even though a lot is baked into the CPU the board still needs to support any electrical changes.
It’s not just about chipset and socket compatibility but all the things behind that which are often not obvious.
A good example is when Intel moved the VRMs from the board to the CPU and then back again.
That alone would require 3 separate platforms.
There’s a lot going on behind the scenes that many are ignorant of.

 

[Beren]

Could the new chipset be about PCIE 4?

It is on the AMD graphics roadmap for next year it could be Vega 20 on PCIE 4.0 or it could be their next gen, do we know if Volta is going to have a PCIE 4.0 variant?

 

[smilingcrow]

Could the new chipset be about PCIE 4?

Considering that the most important PCIe controller(s) is on the CPU it's not an issue to use a chipset which only supports PCIe 3.0 with a CPU that supports 4.0.
Especially so with Zeppelin based CPUs as they have so many PCIe controllers/lanes on the chip.
The advantage of having PCIe 4.0 on the chipset is if using PCIe as the interconnect with the CPU as it potentially increases that interconnect bandwidth.
Of course to take advantage of PCIe 4.0 even if the chipset and socket stay the same you'd still need a new motherboard.
If you stick a PCIe 4.0 CPU in a PCIe 3.0 motherboard I presume it can run at the lower speed!
If not you'd break compatibility.

 

[Beren]

Of course to take advantage of PCIe 4.0 even if the chipset and socket stay the same you'd still need a new motherboard.
If you stick a PCIe 4.0 CPU in a PCIe 3.0 motherboard I presume it can run at the lower speed!
If not you'd break compatibility.

Sure, so if Ryzen+ or Ryzen 2 is PCIe 4.0 then it will still work on current boards as it is on the same socket at PCIe 3.0 speeds. If you want to get the very best out of it and next gen graphics you upgrade to PCIe 4.0 hence the new boards and chipset.

If the whole Ryzen ecosystem goes to PCIe 4.0 alongside NVME compatibility and all of those PCIe lanes then you wouldn't storage potentially make Intel's optane technology irrelevant?

If AMD then go to PCIe 4.0 before Nvidia and Intel it gives them a massive media win.

 

[smilingcrow]

Sure, so if Ryzen+ or Ryzen 2 is PCIe 4.0 then it will still work on current boards as it is on the same socket at PCIe 3.0 speeds. If you want to get the very best out of it and next gen graphics you upgrade to PCIe 4.0 hence the new boards and chipset.

As I stated earlier you wouldn’t need a new chipset to support PCIe 4.0, just a new board with PCIe 4.0 support directly from the CPU only.
That keeps costs down and saves development time and for a consumer platform I think it’s fine. Not sure that PCIe 4.0 is that necessary for consumer platforms anyway in real terms.

If the whole Ryzen ecosystem goes to PCIe 4.0 alongside NVME compatibility and all of those PCIe lanes then you wouldn't storage potentially make Intel's optane technology irrelevant?

No because the benefit of Optane is massively lower latency and high performance at low queue depths neither of which will be addressed by using current regular SSDs with a interface that’s twice as fast.
Having a PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe SSD will offer potentially amazing throughput but in most cases the Optane will be the faster drive.

 

[voidshatter]

Personally I am underwhelmed by the 5GHz must have comments. 5GHz is just a number and I would far rather see improvements in the instructions per clock than raw clock frequency anyday. This is based on a lengthy experience of the 'overclocking to the max and backing off a notch' method on many processor families.

Yes definitely overclock to improve the stock frequency which 99.999 recurring % of processors can achieve, by all means spend a bit of money on good components and thermal performance, but my personal aim is a combination of overclocked, undervolted, cool running, low noise, efficient but capable system

I hope that AMD will continue to target processor efficiency and IPC before competing for the highest clock frequency with Intel. Apart from benching epeen, most current higher end CPU lines are more than capable of providing an adequate performance. Better IPC at a lower frequency does not mean poorer performance except possibly in poorly coded software.

5GHz is definitely a great improvement. Ryzen now does not perform as well as Intel does for gaming, just because the frequency is too low. Ryzen 1700 also has a slower clock than Intel's 15 watt laptop CPUs do, resulting in less performance for single-threaded tasks, such as web browser benchmark.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Ryzen needs a chipset to be able to offer even a typical entry level of I/O which is why boards come with one. Even a budget mITX board would seem barren without a chipset.
As for compatibility in general you need to also look at other things such as VRM specs as well as things such as PCIe spec support, power delivery etc.
So even though a lot is baked into the CPU the board still needs to support any electrical changes.
It’s not just about chipset and socket compatibility but all the things behind that which are often not obvious.
A good example is when Intel moved the VRMs from the board to the CPU and then back again.
That alone would require 3 separate platforms.
There’s a lot going on behind the scenes that many are ignorant of.

There is a lot people seem to be unaware off regarding what has been known about Ryzen for years,which can easily been found out about:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1117...review-a-deep-dive-on-1800x-1700x-and-1700/13

What you don't seem to remember is that Ryzen is the third generation of AMD AM socket CPUs to be an SOC after Carrizo/Bristol Ridge and Kabini.

Platform = SoC + Chipset (Optional)


Here is Bristol Ridge, with eight PCIe 3.0 lanes for add-in cards, two SATA 6 Gbps, four USB 3.0 ports, two PCIe x1 lanes, and a PCIe x4 lane for the chipset. The chipset is optional, as those four lanes could be put to use elsewhere (or bifurcated into x1/x1/x2 as required) when extra IO is not needed.

What differs with Ryzen and Summit Ridge is numbers: sixteen lanes for add-in cards and four SATA 6 Gbps ports plus an x2 NVMe (or two SATA plus an x4 NVMe). What AMD is doing with AM4 is a half-way house between a SoC and having a fully external chipset. Some of the connectivity, such as SATA ports, PCIe storage, or PCIe lanes beyond the standard GPU lanes, is built into the processor. These fall under the features of the processor, and for the current launch is a fixed set of features. The CPU also has additional connectivity to an optional chipset which can provide more features, however the use of the chipset is optional.

On the same page they list the 300 series chipsets for OEMs which actually physically have no chipset on the motherboard and rely on the I/O from the SOC ONLY.

https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/01/amd-ryzen-motherboards-hype/

With X300, AMD has ditched all motherboard-based IO, leaving just the USB, SATA, and 24 PCIe lanes that are part of the Ryzen core.

I am surprised you are not aware of this.

Plus,that means any new chipset will be doing the same as the current motherboards - they act as an addition to the existing I/O.

You need to realise AMD has done this on purpose,so they can use one chip in multiple areas - Intel has something similar in Broadwell D which was only used for enterprise,but they can afford to use loads of multiple designs for different markets:
https://images.anandtech.com/doci/9070/Slide 24 - SoC Architecture.png

This is probably one of the reasons Ryzen is not only energy efficient but probably harder to clock very high - there is far more functionality on board the chip than most desktop CPUs.

Lets also look at the Ryzen being launched next year - its still a 14NM CPU. The 12NM process being used was originally branded as an improved 14NM process:

https://www.extremetech.com/computi...ew-globalfoundries-12nm-node-future-cpus-gpus

Its no different than Intel going from Skylake to Kabylake and the latter used a slightly better 14NM process - yet with a BIOS update many 100 series motherboards even down to the H110 ones work fine with Kabylake CPUs.

I honestly don't understand why you think the change from 14NM Ryzen to 12NM/14NM Ryzen+ next year will be a massive change. At most I can only see some slight tweaks to the core and and an improvement in clockspeeds,but still using the same basic CCX,cache and uncore arrangement.

This is why I would be very surprised if Ryzen+ would be suddenly incompatible with current motherboards especially the X370 ones. If it were the case they would be doing an Intel,or at least the motherboard OEMs would be.

 

[DragonQ]

The new chipset will probably add more PCI-E,etc and more features and maybe the newer motherboards will overclock better?

But I would be surprised if the 300 series is locked out,unless AMD did an Intel.

Surely the only way more PCIe lanes on the chipset would be useful is if the new CPUs actually have more PCIe lanes to give to the chipset in the first place....and we don't know if that'll be the case yet. I'm thinking it's not very likely.