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AMD Zen APU Featuring HBM Spotted

nashathedog said:
I can't see an apu with 290 performance coming anytime soon. That'll still be years away, As always they talk a good game. They just need to play it.
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Given the improved performance of the upcoming AMD Greenland GPUs and 14nm process, I wouldn't be surprised to see R9 290X performance, let alone R9 290. Adding HBM on the top...
Worst case something between 7970 and 290. With added Freesync and DX12, nothing ignore imho
 
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FoxEye said:
Wouldn't they still be limited to 4GB if they used HBM1?

In terms of marketing, that would look very bad. Average consumer is going to see 8GB PS4/XOne, or 4GB Nintendo NX, and think the Nx is worse.
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Depends on how they work the HBM, it could be used as a level 4 near-cache while GDDR5 is used as a far-cache, kind of like the eDRAM in the new intels and the XO.

So the HBM gives a very high bandwith and fast framebuffer. Considering the Wii and Wii U already have eDRAM level 4 caches it would not be a big jump in programing ability, just the capacity and bandwith will be the biggest improvement.
 
Panos said:
Given the improved performance of the upcoming AMD Greenland GPUs and 14nm process, I wouldn't be surprised to see R9 290X performance, let alone R9 290. Adding HBM on the top...
Worst case something between 7970 and 290. With added Freesync and DX12, nothing ignore imho
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Sure they'll get there in the end (eventually they'll have APU's outperfoming TX's and FuryX's) but not any time soon which was my point. Certainly not this year.
 
Mauller said:
Depends on how they work the HBM, it could be used as a level 4 near-cache while GDDR5 is used as a far-cache, kind of like the eDRAM in the new intels and the XO.

So the HBM gives a very high bandwidth and fast framebuffer. Considering the Wii and Wii U already have eDRAM level 4 caches it would not be a big jump in programming ability, just the capacity and bandwith will be the biggest improvement.
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I doubt they'll even bother with GDDR5. Give it enough eDRAM to fill a 1080p HDR scene (128MB?) and 4+GB of HBM, that'll be enough for the next 5 years.

I reckon the next lot of consoles will be geared towards delivering VR experiences; I don't really know what that might require hardware wise because even on existing desktops you're talking about seriously beefy hardware to get them working properly.
 
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One point is that the article mentions 128GB/s which is a single stack of 4 high HBM1, that make it only 1GB of HBM not 4GB and if it was HBM2, then why only 128GB/s bandwidth when a single stack of HBM2 would be capable of 256GB/s.
 
I've been saying for ages that this is where PC's need to go, people complain about bad console ports/Gameworks etc. but even the current generation of consoles (PS4/Xbone) with their rubbish CPU's and low-mid range GPU's have a memory subsystem that makes cutting edge PC's look like something from the 1990's (PC's are still pretty much based on a multiple decades old architecture). It's just not worth doing at the high end until HBM is available in 8-16GB configurations though.
 
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mmj_uk said:
I've been saying for ages that this is where PC's need to go, people complain about bad console ports/Gameworks etc. but even the current generation of consoles (PS4/Xbone) with their rubbish CPU's and low-mid range GPU's have a memory subsystem that makes cutting edge PC's look like something from the 1990's (PC's are still pretty much based on a multiple decades old architecture). It's just not worth doing at the high end until HBM is available in 8-16GB configurations though.
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It is more to do with power density, cooling and manufacturing which are holding back the creation of huge monolithic APU's. Also allowing modularisation of computers and ability to upgrade with ease.

It will be interesting to see if AMD release their NvLink equivalent with Zen and Greenland. considering it would allow a X1 PCI link to run at 25GB's

The PS4's GPU could be as powerful as a desktop HD7870 if it was not so horribly under clocked. I think 800 - 850mhz instead of the 1GHZ the desktop part runs at. On the CPU side it is a different matter. But if they fitted decent cooling to the consoles then they could have given it far better performance.
 
Pretty much, i wouldn't say that power delivery was the issue. The XboxOne's cooler looks like a stock intel. And the cooler on the PS4 is horribly small and just a chunk of metal.
 
Panos said:
Looks like it. Especially considering that the Zen IPC CPU is more powerful by 40%+ than the current ones, and the GPU going to be probably in par with the 7970 if not 290. Adding HBM on top, going to be pretty damn powerful.

And I used a A10 7870 when on my holidays, pretty nice setup for playing games at 1080p TV, like SWTOR and 4+ year old games. Good one
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You mean current AMD FX series or Intel as well ?
 
Dave2150 said:
Hopefully Zen tapes out soon, or all hope for it to be a 2017 product will be lost.
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We've not had a proper answer on if it has, or hasn't yet have we? Plenty sites said it already had, a few say it hasn't.
I take everything from any of these sites with several buckets of salt.
 
shankly1985 said:
Think its safe to say form factor, and heat is holding back console?
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More likely cost and availability given the specific timescales the console manufacturers were sticking with.

The Xbone is so "over-cooled" it is quite comical. They REALLY didn't want another RROD fiasco. The PS4 is similar in cooling terms to a high end gaming laptop (radial blower through dense fin array).
 
oweneades said:
More likely cost and availability given the specific timescales the console manufacturers were sticking with.

The Xbone is so "over-cooled" it is quite comical. They REALLY didn't want another RROD fiasco. The PS4 is similar in cooling terms to a high end gaming laptop (radial blower through dense fin array).
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That is the thing though, the cooling is not adequate for the capabilities of the chips being used. The gpu parts could easily run at 1ghz and the cpu cores running higher than the 1.8ghz i think they run at.

There was a lot of issues on launch with PS4's and xbox ones overheating, they also tun very warm. Just like previous consoles, it's also a matter of them doing a **** job on the thermal paste.

Considering the Cooler on my sapphire 7870 is not that big, they could have used far better coolers and run the chips at higher clocks.
 
Zen is likely to get its first outing (behind closed doors) at CES and I expect them to show Carrizo desktop and AM4 publicly.

I don't think Zen APU drops until '17 as there won't be enough HBM supply before then.
 
pmc25 said:
Zen is likely to get its first outing (behind closed doors) at CES and I expect them to show Carrizo desktop and AM4 publicly.

I don't think Zen APU drops until '17 as there won't be enough HBM supply before then.
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With samsung also manufacturing for them, we could also see Zen APU's coming out in the Nintendo NX first.
 
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