But that's not been the focus of software. Phones are very different but even those have been 4+4 on/off high perf low power designs.
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Canard mentions second gen' EPYC, if true, nice!
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But that's not been the focus of software. Phones are very different but even those have been 4+4 on/off high perf low power designs.
Yeah my phone can run all 8 cores. What I'm saying is the last thing the mobile market want is CPU cores going unused and burning power.
And yet you have the lower core count Apple chips significantly outperform all of the many core ARM SoCs used in Android handsets.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/10685/the-iphone-7-and-iphone-7-plus-review/3
A9 & A8 with 2 big cores vs 8/4 core SoCs.
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Associate
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They would sell a heck of a lot into the relatively small market for £300 - £400 CPUs but would they optimise profits overall in doing that and having to sell all the 4 to 8 cores at a reduced margin?
It's a gamble as they are supply constrained to a degree due to their financial position so if they bet large on gaining market share and it didn't pay off they could put the company back into reverse.
If you are supply constrained then you have to optimise profits per chip as you can't chase market share beyond a certain point.
With TR 16C debuting at £1k and being seen as a bargain they can easily release the AM4 16C at £500 - 600 and be onto a winner.
But this is a long way away and if AMD's financials continue to improve maybe they will bet big on 16C and aim for a lower price and higher volume.
Imagine being able to run a 16C happily in a £100 board.
The savings there alone make it look compelling.
So at £500 for 16C including Board they may get a lot of takers.
People pay a large premium for top end PCIe SSDs without having workloads that really benefit so they will probably do the same here.
That plays a part, but their SoCs are still very impressive. Their cores are significantly more powerful than anything you'll find in a Snapdragon/Exynos/etc. SoC.
On PC too, single core performance is still going to be very relevant for years to come.
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Most of those excluding AVX don’t require much if any real estate which is why extra cores make a lot of sense.
There will be a point where AMD might have to decide between using full fat AVX-512 which does take up a lot of real estate or adding even more cores.
Based on their current attitude and the fact that the Server market is possibly the best market to focus on as opposed to HPC adding extra cores seems the best choice.
So it might come down to an 8 core CCX with reduced AVX support or a 6 core with full fat AVX.
Which would you prefer?
Aren’t the APUs separate dies anyway and with the modular design approach of modern CPUs if AMD needed to I can see them using different CCX designs in terms of core numbers for APUs and discrete CPUs.
Regardless of mobile there is a clear distinction with desktop APUs as they require a lot of power for the GPU so it’s much more likely that jumping to 6C and giving the extra TDP and die space to the GPU would be a better balance.
8C for laptops will be premium when they first emerge and a niche maybe too far for AMD to focus on right now.
Intel have had 8C/16T Xeon D at 35W on 14nm for 18 months although admittedly with low clock speeds and no IGP.
So shrink to 10nm, remove the 10Gbit NIC and add a basic IGP and release it as a Xeon or i9 laptop chip for workstations or prosumers and it makes sense.
I just don’t see AMD need to worry about that market soon unless they start obsessing about core counts.
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Its not what I prefer,but Intel being Intel and apparently they are try to push it into their 10NM CPUs. If they start throwing money away to push AVX even more,it can be an issue as they will look better in reviews,so AMD needs to be careful - they do need to support it in some way. Personally I think AVX is a waste of resources especially for my purposes,but also adding more cores,will mean within a certain TDP and power consumption bracket you will need to lower clockspeeds. I also have a feeling why AMD kept inter-CCX bandwidth at half the system bandwidth might have been due to power requirements(the link runs at half the clockspeed of the RAM),so I can see a few of the additions probably being held back due to technical reasons(the process node) or power consumption reasons. Remember,AMD can use a pair of CCX modules anyway for their CPUs so it will be 12C/24T against 8C/16T for Intel. At the performance end of the market,especially if AMD can get decent AVX throughput with a good bump in single core performance in games,that would put Intel in a bind.
AMD will use a single CCX for their higher end APUs,so that means 8C/16T APUs going from the rumour. Intel already has 6C/12T APUs(with crap graphics) which they can push into laptops,and apparently 10NM will be 8C/16T. If anything I do consider this a reason why AMD might be considering a 8C/16T CCX,so they don't fall behind Intel consumer level core counts once they move to 7NM. Personally I would prefer they have 6C/12T and focus on a better GPU,since the latter is where Intel cannot compete.
This is impressive stuff from AMD !!!
I wonder what intel would do to try to counter it ?
They're frantically searching for superior "glue". I hear some suggested "duct-tape"....
Single core performance has become less and less relevant over the last decade. That trend will keep accelerating and the PC is at the tip of that drive. The argument for faster lower core count chips was settled some time ago and unless both Intel amd AMD start to pump money into building more performamce focussed chips and the software/middleware to take advantage of them the march of multi core will continue.
I've made arguments for single core performance in the past but unless we see some radical changes in design briefs and funding then it's nothing is going to happen and we'll stay of the fine grain path.
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Yeah but that boat sailed long ago. It's just the few people trying to hold back a flood now. Actually in that type of analogy it would be a few people neck deep in water.
The same way that everyone is a streamer/content creator now ryzen is here
Arguments for both sides.
The same way that everyone is a streamer/content creator now ryzen is here
Arguments for both sides.
The argument for focussing on single core performance over scaling across cores is done. Sure a few people will still make points for increased performance per core but I wouldn't call them arguments or valid points to discuss past it would be nice to see improvements in some metrics along with core count. Performance per core simply can't offer more than a few percent of what core count offers.
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If single core performance isn't as relevant anymore, why not go back to an FX CPU? They're really cheap nowadays and multithreaded performance wise they're on par with the 4C/4T Intels, sounds like a "great" deal...
Back to reality, most of what you do on your PC still benefits from stronger single core performance, but I guess now that everyone's a content creator, streamer and 3D artist, multicore performance is a lot more relevant?
It's hilarious that we're back to the old Bulldozer era lines, "multi core matters", "single core isn't important", "it's future proof", etc...
Back to reality, most of what you do on your PC still benefits from stronger single core performance, but I guess now that everyone's a content creator, streamer and 3D artist, multicore performance is a lot more relevant?
It's hilarious that we're back to the old Bulldozer era lines, "multi core matters", "single core isn't important", "it's future proof", etc...
If single core performance isn't as relevant anymore, why not go back to an FX CPU? They're really cheap nowadays and multithreaded performance wise they're on par with the 4C/4T Intels, sounds like a "great" deal...
Most of what you do on your PC benefits from stronger single core performance, but I guess now that everyone's a content creator, streamer and 3D artist, multicore performance is a lot more relevant?
It's hilarious that we're back to the old Bulldozer era lines, "multi core matters", "single core isn't important", "it's future proof", etc...
The FX makes or rather made a good argument but it's power use shut it out of too many markets. It also could scale past mush past 8 cores and with the 8 + 4 configuration some would argue 8 cores was pushing the design. The 8 core AM3 chips are a prime example of why trying to push performance per core is taking a pee into the wind.
Instead of making comments like that why not argue the merits of single core performance.
Soldato
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If single core performance isn't as relevant anymore, why not go back to an FX CPU? They're really cheap nowadays and multithreaded performance wise they're on par with the 4C/4T Intels, sounds like a "great" deal...
Back to reality, most of what you do on your PC still benefits from stronger single core performance, but I guess now that everyone's a content creator, streamer and 3D artist, multicore performance is a lot more relevant?
It's hilarious that we're back to the old Bulldozer era lines, "multi core matters", "single core isn't important", "it's future proof", etc...
Not read entire thread but multi core is more relevant today than it was during the FX days. And put to the right use, an 8 core processor can be nearly twice as fast as a four core. You're not going to get double the performance by double the frequency, those days are long gone and Intel themselves stated some years ago now that the future is more cores. Small improvements in IPC is all we'll get.
Ideally of course you want the best single core performance AND more cores.
Today we have processors made for different uses (based on core count) which is fabulous.
Except it does, this is why the 8700k is competitive with the 1800x.
In the ideal world you would have something like a 5ghz 8core