Intel’s surprise Ryzen killer

[Vince]

AMD has a 64-core Ryzen Threadripper. The only problem is if they wish to sell it for $1000, for instance. Shrinks are solutions, too.





Intel has so serious influence over the entire industry, that fixing the compilers and Microsoft's things straight away will be the single smallest problem.

For Intel, it's more difficult to get the actual hardware done right on the manufacturing lines.

You actually believe that? how many software projects have you been involved in? Furthermore how many software projects have you been involved in that have potential affected user base in the billions? There is a reason it took so long to fix the windows scheduler for Zen and that wasn't because of AMD its because changes in software stacks that have billions of users takes time and testing. Regardless they still fall over at the fabric/interconnect level. When Intel have a scalable low power draw interconnect you let me know

For what it is worth have a look at Intel Xeon Soma-B3 and you can see for yourself that intel have tried and failed to emulate ryzen, the reason they fail? Interconnect...

 

[4K8KW10]

You actually believe that? how many software projects have you been involved in? Furthermore how many software projects have you been involved in that have potential affected user base in the billions? There is a reason it took so long to fix the windows scheduler for Zen and that wasn't because of AMD its because changes in software stacks that have billions of users takes time and testing. Regardless they still fall over at the fabric/interconnect level. When Intel have a scalable low power draw interconnect you let me know

I disagree and yeah, I believe my words.
AMD has very weak drivers writing software engineers and the only problem is in AMD, not in Microsoft.

 

[Vince]

I disagree and yeah, I believe my words.
AMD has very weak drivers writing software engineers and the only problem is in AMD, not in Microsoft.

You are also aware then that AMD stepped in to fix the windows scheduler? Again how many software project have you been involved in because seemingly you believe that it's an overnight fix when the rest of us know it's a scheduling nightmare. This will be further compounded 'if' they distribute instruction sets which you would assume they would.

 

[Wulfster]

https://www.techpowerup.com/273384/intel-alder-lake-s-cpu-has-been-pictured

 

[Troezar]

I did specifically say that I was referring only to gaming as the power comparison at full load is known to be massive.
If you look at a Techpowerup graph, the product highlighted in colour is the one being reviewed.
It is just one game which is why I wondered if it was representative of gaming in general. I suspect not, but the difference should be less significant than for a full load. I suppose if gaming at 4K where the CPU isn't pushed so hard the difference will be smaller than for 1080P gaming!

It is starting to smell a bit fishy. I'd be interested to see if it's a low CPU use game deliberately designed to compress the results. I don't trust big corporations It's odd how massive the difference is in other core heavy apps.

 

[Vince]

https://www.techpowerup.com/273384/intel-alder-lake-s-cpu-has-been-pictured

Consumer mainstream chips with 1700 pins, it looks expensive! Considering what amd are doing with just 1331 pins on the mainstream im asking myself if this design choice is smart. It appears to me that it's basically a hedt size chip to compete in the mainstream where traditionally you would have chips around that 1200 to 1400 pins. I really want them to be making compelling stuff but im not sure this is the way to go for mainstream sockets. It's interesting and im looking forward to seeing and getting my hands on it to play with but one thing it isn't looking right now is that compelling.

 

[smilingcrow]

Link?

As previously stated:

'If you look at a Techpowerup graph, the product highlighted in colour is the one being reviewed.'

 

[Wulfster]

Consumer mainstream chips with 1700 pins, it looks expensive! Considering what amd are doing with just 1331 pins on the mainstream im asking myself if this design choice is smart. It appears to me that it's basically a hedt size chip to compete in the mainstream where traditionally you would have chips around that 1200 to 1400 pins. I really want them to be making compelling stuff but im not sure this is the way to go for mainstream sockets. It's interesting and im looking forward to seeing and getting my hands on it to play with but one thing it isn't looking right now is that compelling.

Very true, it does also say that PCI-e5.0 and DDR5 are ‘rumoured’ to be featured aswell.

Wulf

 

[Vince]

Very true, it does also say that PCI-e5.0 and DDR5 are ‘rumoured’ to be featured aswell.

Wulf

DDR5 like every other DDR since forever will start life slower than the fastest available outgoing DDR4 at the time, we would also generally expect to see it in server first as well so i'm not yet convinced we see DDR5 in the mainstream before 2022. PCI-E 5 is interesting though because right now we aren't even seeing Intel deliver chips capable of PCI-E 4 in the mainstream or server market given I'm still not aware of any Ice Lake Servers being delivered to market yet, it's comical failures in delivery of tech like this which is causing them massive issues, for example they have made a pci-e 4 compliant optane drive but they don't have any compatible servers to use it in. If you want to use it to its potential you need an AMD server. Honestly it seems odd given where they are now to have this as a rumoured feature set when they still havent delivered the previous tech entering into 2021. What they need right now is at least parity feature set wise with the competition, it's actually important for the industry that that is delivered.

 

[4K8KW10]

Leaked Intel Server Roadmap Shows DDR5, PCIe 5.0 in 2021, Granite Rapids in 2022
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/i...-5.0-roadmap-leaked-granite-rapids,39403.html

 

[Vince]

Leaked Intel Server Roadmap Shows DDR5, PCIe 5.0 in 2021, Granite Rapids in 2022
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/i...-5.0-roadmap-leaked-granite-rapids,39403.html

It also shows Ice Lake SP in Q1 2020.... Just saying. Where is Ice Lake again? Initially Ice Lake SP was promised in 2019 and as yet no Ice Lake. Ice lake is expected to be further pushed back on Oct 22nd Q3 earnings into 2021. They haven't had feature parity since July 2019. At this point forget the roadmap, just hope they deliver pci-e 4 in 2021 even if it is still on 14nm.

Also going back to the problem being in AMD not microsoft, the problem actually ended up being in pretty much every software stack, there were issues in VMWare ESXi (where the software was hard coded for a maximum of 15 cores on a single chip), linux and plenty of other places. The windows scheduler didn't know what to do with all the cores. So much software had to be re-written, you know why, the rules changed.

 

[4K8KW10]

It also shows Ice Lake SP in Q1 2020.... Just saying. Where is Ice Lake again? Initially Ice Lake SP was promised in 2019 and as yet no Ice Lake. Ice lake is expected to be further pushed back on Oct 22nd Q3 earnings into 2021. They haven't had feature parity since July 2019. At this point forget the roadmap, just hope they deliver pci-e 4 in 2021 even if it is still on 14nm.

Intel should have skipped PCIe 4.0 altogether and for competitive purposes to release DDR5/PCIe 5 as soon as possible.
It doesn't make sense to release PCIe 4 which will be absolete several months later with the release of proper next-gen server platform.

It also shows Ice Lake SP in Q1 2020.... Just saying. Where is Ice Lake again? Initially Ice Lake SP was promised in 2019 and as yet no Ice Lake. Ice lake is expected to be further pushed back on Oct 22nd Q3 earnings into 2021. They haven't had feature parity since July 2019. At this point forget the roadmap, just hope they deliver pci-e 4 in 2021 even if it is still on 14nm.

Also going back to the problem being in AMD not microsoft, the problem actually ended up being in pretty much every software stack, there were issues in VMWare ESXi (where the software was hard coded for a maximum of 15 cores on a single chip), linux and plenty of other places. The windows scheduler didn't know what to do with all the cores. So much software had to be re-written, you know why, the rules changed.

Yes, this is a result from a decade long stagnation with quad-core domination by Intel Core Quad, Core i7-900 to Core i7-7000 and AMD's mediocre attempts with the 4-module FX series.

I don't know why they still insist on the number 4.
Only with Zen 3, even AMD moved up from that 4-core CCX.

 

[Journey]

Ice lake is expected to be further pushed back on Oct 22nd Q3 earnings into 2021.

It's pretty much already confirmed that they are looking at potentially H1 '21 not even Q1 '21. You have to ask how many product cycles refreshes can they afford to miss, when the companies buying these can't delay for ever, and aren't going to replace the same kit with the same kit which is where we are approaching now.

 

[Vince]

Intel should have skipped PCIe 4.0 altogether and for competitive purposes to release DDR5/PCIe 5 as soon as possible.
It doesn't make sense to release PCIe 4 which will be absolete several months later with the release of proper next-gen server platform.

You see the problem with that is that you don't learn from what came before or from issues already shown by the competition, it was also on the roadmap for 2019 and the investors/shareholders absolutely expect it, so it has to be delivered. Also in tech the OEM's absolutely expect at the minimum yearly refreshes so that they can refresh server estates. It's simple, they are a massive company who made promises to other massive companies. They committed to a roadmap and have been repeatedly failing to deliver kit that their customers expect based on previous roadmaps, this is exactly how AMD stumbled down to zero existence in a server market they had a very good share of. People will have set budgets around these things being available. For example I was sitting on 180k budget for 2 years knowing that I wanted to roll out AMD Rome, what does somebody who was sitting on budget buy from Intel right now if you have to buy intel? It's not compelling over even older intel kit so you wait, but do you wait forever when the rest of the industry is still moving?

 

[4K8KW10]

You see the problem with that is that you don't learn from what came before or from issues already shown by the competition, it was also on the roadmap for 2019 and the investors/shareholders absolutely expect it, so it has to be delivered. Also in tech the OEM's absolutely expect at the minimum yearly refreshes so that they can refresh server estates. It's simple, they are a massive company who made promises to other massive companies. They committed to a roadmap and have been repeatedly failing to deliver kit that their customers expect based on previous roadmaps, this is exactly how AMD stumbled down to zero existence in a server market they had a very good share of. People will have set budgets around these things being available. For example I was sitting on 180k budget for 2 years knowing that I wanted to roll out AMD Rome, what does somebody who was sitting on budget buy from Intel right now if you have to buy intel? It's not compelling over even older intel kit so you wait, but do you wait forever when the rest of the industry is still moving?

Intel has a plan to replace the PCIe 4 with PCIe 5 in that one-year refresh of the available platform.
We don't know the grand picture - I could speculate that PCIe 4 was put in the roadmap against their will and they will find the easiest way to escape from it ASAP.

 

[Vince]

Intel has a plan to replace the PCIe 4 with PCIe 5 in that one-year refresh of the available platform.
We don't know the grand picture - I could speculate that PCIe 4 was put in the roadmap against their will and they will find the easiest way to escape from it ASAP.

Id speculate they are a fair way off and actually will begin to lose faith with business if they don't start delivering on their road map. Besides that, according to many of the apologists pci-e 4 bandwidth is pointless anyway. Again it's not about what you think they will do it's about what they have committed to do and that is deliver pci-e gen 4 as well as Ice Lake SP to server. They won't skip it I promise you that, they may and try to compete in the desktop space with a cut down server/hedt chip, that is possible but really they just need to get their back away from the wall and get things cracking along and products out the door in volume.

 

[Vince]

It's pretty much already confirmed that they are looking at potentially H1 '21 not even Q1 '21. You have to ask how many product cycles refreshes can they afford to miss, when the companies buying these can't delay for ever, and aren't going to replace the same kit with the same kit which is where we are approaching now.

This is why im really failing to get excited at the moment. Keller left Intel quickly and seemingly under slightly odd circumstances which is also slightly concerning, you hope we see some of his best work but I wouldn't be surprised if the premature exit could have been around him not being given the flexibility within his position to do his best work. I hope I am wrong on everything I say but genuinely how it looks right now id be surprised if we see anything special out of intel before 2023/2024 unless of course they find some momentum and start executing.

 

[4K8KW10]

Id speculate they are a fair way off and actually will begin to lose faith with business if they don't start delivering on their road map. Besides that, according to many of the apologists pci-e 4 bandwidth is pointless anyway. Again it's not about what you think they will do it's about what they have committed to do and that is deliver pci-e gen 4 as well as Ice Lake SP to server. They won't skip it I promise you that, they may and try to compete in the desktop space with a cut down server/hedt chip, that is possible but really they just need to get their back away from the wall and get things cracking along and products out the door in volume.

We can very easily check the claim about PCIe 4:

The three PCIe 4.0 drives were close in most tests with the Sabrent Rocket 4 winning by a slim margin. The Samsung 970 Pro still performs very well and even won in our game launch tests. This makes it clear that there isn't much of an advantage to getting a Gen 4 SSD if you already have a fast Gen 3 SSD. Compared to more of the mainstream, commodity Gen 3 drives, the Gen 4 drives will give you a performance boost in very select workloads.

If you are building a new high end PC and have the budget, we definitely recommend going for a fast NVMe PCIe drive. Samsung's Evo line used to get our top recommendation, but Sabrent's Rocket Gen 4 SSD is definitely worthy of your consideration. If you don't do content creation or other data-intensive work, there won't be much benefit, though down the road there may be some scenarios that can take advantage of the full 5GB/s speed. Much of the Gen 4 SSD launch is marketing hype, but it's true that the drives are objectively faster, so it's always great to see technology progress.

https://www.techspot.com/review/1893-pcie-4-vs-pcie-3-ssd/

Let's go back to Microsoft - here they have to update Windows in a similar way as to how the PS5 will deliver its outstanding performance.
It's all about the SSD subsystem.

The PS5's hard drive is proving key to how Sony is delivering its next-generation vision.

At the core is an SSD (solid state drive, which where game downloads will be installed) in every console, and this combined with custom hardware which makes the most of this proprietary drive will deliver loading times and access to game data many, many times quicker than what's possible on PS4 and other platforms.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ps5-ssd-hard-drive-size-expanded-storage-6300

 

[Journey]

This is why im really failing to get excited at the moment. Keller left Intel quickly and seemingly under slightly odd circumstances which is also slightly concerning, you hope we see some of his best work but I wouldn't be surprised if the premature exit could have been around him not being given the flexibility within his position to do his best work. I hope I am wrong on everything I say but genuinely how it looks right now id be surprised if we see anything special out of intel before 2023/2024 unless of course they find some momentum and start executing.

I'm pretty sure Geona will kill any catch up Intel have in 2022, after all it's almost an entirely new architecture, and I agree 23-24 seems to be the point they'll get to 7nm and a competitive product stack, at which point AMD will be all but moving to 3nm.

 

[Vince]

We can very easily check the claim about PCIe 4:


https://www.techspot.com/review/1893-pcie-4-vs-pcie-3-ssd/

Let's go back to Microsoft - here they have to update Windows in a similar way as to how the PS5 will deliver its outstanding performance.
It's all about the SSD subsystem.


https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ps5-ssd-hard-drive-size-expanded-storage-6300

Of course it is and that's down to collaborations between AMD and Microsoft/Sony and the bandwidth made available by pci-e 4. This is why Intel need to deliver, the entire market is expecting it. All NV's new cards are pci-e 4 everything new is pci-e 4 so intel need feature parity. Forget 5 deliver on 4 first which the rest of the market has had since 2019.