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*** AMD "Zen" thread (inc AM4/APU discussion) ***

Dave2150 said:
The problem is that Intel will release Kabylake early 2016, followed by 10nm cannonlake in 2017.

Zen will compete with cannonlake, not Skylake.
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No,Kaby Lake won't be released for desktop and enterprise by early 2016 when Skylake has just been released. Intel has at least a year cadence between designs,and Broadwell was massively delayed anyway and a limited release anyway.

Skylake is NOT a limited release like Broadwell.

It looks like late 2016 and early 2017 for Kaby Lake:

http://wccftech.com/14nm-kaby-lake-intel-launch-delayed-2016/

Moreover,I think the suggestion that notebook versions will be suddenly released early next year is a load of wishful thinking anyway.

That means Skylake will be EOL in under six months and I doubt it since it launched on time,and there will be plenty of Broadwell and Skylake powered laptops still in the channel.

We have not even seen that many Skylake powered laptops yet since the chips were released THIS MONTH!!

FFS,there was noise than IB would replace SB within a year. Never happened. That IB would be replaced by Haswell within a year never happened. Haswell would be replaced by Broadwell in a year. Never happened.

Even Broadwell which was delayed massively by 14NM node problems more or less launched in November 2014 with the Core M,and now nearly a year later Skylake has not even replaced those chips.

Heck,even the later Broadwell chips launched concurrently with Skylake and Intel simply made sure they were not in directly competing markets.

Broadwell E has not even been released yet too.

So a late 2016 and early 2017 release for Zen will see it competing against:
1.)Kaby Lake and Skylake for consumer level chips
2.)Broadwell E and possibly Skylake E for enterprise level

Plus it looks like Cannonlake is at least H2 2017:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/intel-10nm-cannonlake-q4-2017,news-50772.html

Thats assuming 10NM does not have issues too.
 
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If you take my perspective, and simply look at it all from the perspective of nm nodes. Then we see a staggered jump, with Zen being introduced at approximately 1/2 way through the 'new parts' lifetime of intel's 14nm node.

And also considering / realizing that the last node (22nm) was firmly in Intel's favor just from a node perspective (vs 28nm which was effectively equiv. to intels prior 32nm). And that's regardless before factoring in AMD's poor CPUs or not. Wheras at these new 14/16nm the processes are levelling off to being more competitive with each other.

I.e. many Intel customers remaining on Haswell has it' difficult to dissipate heat off 14nm dies (lower surface area, subsystems bang right next to each other). Hence poorer overclocking.

I think an 8-core Zen will be good as an alternative to Z99 *providing* they get their act together with enough PCI-e lanes (e.g. 40 +) for SLI. And also bring in the modern tech to be competitive (m.2 NVMe, & USB Type-C).

As X99 are on older node still, and just a bit too pricy. In other words people remaining eternally fed up with the usual intel CPU features taxes and such.

Single threaded will probably still be behind Intel though. But then of course it will be even with their projected 40% IPC improvement.
 
Beating Intel is not really that important, even if AMD do beat Intel the would have to do it by a wide margin to get noticed and that's not going to happen, Intel will always have the brand power.

AMD just need to make a viable alternative to Intel at a lower price, they will regain some market share and respect but Intel will always have the Lions share at twice the cost, just because its Intel.
 
craig_kennedy83 said:
Probably good news, at least they can keep up
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Depends on clock speed. Skylake is only, what, 5% faster than Haswell clock-for-clock, but if Zen can't match Haswell clock speeds then it might disappoint. Another factor is how good their version of HyperThreading is compared to Intel's (which, going by the lack of any fanfare over it since Nehalem, hasn't changed in 7 years).
 
cheesyboy said:
If Zen matches Haswell, it's phenomenal news.
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Indeed, it would be the first time in a long time that they'd have something on the market that's an upgrade over an early i5, and it would put them dogging Skylake's heels.

IMHO there's still a worry over the old MOAR COARS chart though... does it match Haswell core-for-core, or does it still suffer in single threaded scenarios?
 
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Well loads of people are still happy with Haswell and continue to buy them these days. The bigger problem will be if it turns out later on the Zen actually doesn't match such a hyped-up Haswell performance.
 
dreamcat4 said:
Well loads of people are still happy with Haswell and continue to buy them these days. The bigger problem will be if it turns out later on the Zen actually doesn't match such a hyped-up Haswell performance.
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Seeing as Intel will of moved on by the time we get Zen I hope it does manage Haswell thread performance, That along with there version of hyper threading and 8 cores will give Intel something too worry about. And me something new to power an ITX build.
 
nashathedog said:
Seeing as Intel will of moved on by the time we get Zen I hope it does manage Haswell thread performance, That along with there version of hyper threading and 8 cores will give Intel something too worry about. And me something new to power an ITX build.
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I think at the moment AMD's problem is that there aren't any OEMs like HP, or DELL using their CPUs in there computers instead of intel. APUs would be perfect for a lot of the applications that my Mum does (for instance) but she uses an intel chip instead that actually an APU would be better suited (if the AMD apu office performance videos are to be trusted)
 
cheesyboy said:
If Zen matches Haswell, it's phenomenal news.

Generally, people have been hoping for somewhere between Sandy and Ivy, which would be great when you consider the likely high core count of Zen. Haswell performance would be a serious result
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It will be phenomenal news for us consumers for sure.

Here's what I think would happen IF Zen magically has Haswell performance (something I doubt, I think it will be Sandybridge level):

Zen 8 core launches and is equal to a 5960X
Intel launches a 8 core I7 mainstream CPU (£280 price Skylake-E 8 Core)
Intel launches the new enthusiast -E CPU's with 10-12 cores
Everything goes back to normal with Intel being the only choice

Would still be amazing for us consumers, since we'd get a absolutely massive upgrade, though for AMD it would be back to square one, with Intel massively in the lead once again.
 
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Dave2150 said:
Everything goes back to normal with Intel being the only choice
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HSA being the wildcard. And possibly whatever secret sauce they got from VISC/Jim Keller's new ideas. But within known parameters if they get some key software speedups from HSA it would be a boon to server and workstation. Possibly mobile too as that is where all the HSA Foundation members are from so there has to be something going on there.
 
dreamcat4 said:
Well loads of people are still happy with Haswell and continue to buy them these days. The bigger problem will be if it turns out later on the Zen actually doesn't match such a hyped-up Haswell performance.
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Or if it ends up following the GPU department and almost matches but at double the price.
 
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