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Zen news 'Going forward'

Scougar said:
I can't see 16gb being used usefully with an apu though. They just are not powerful enough (it does say up to)
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Who is to say it's all video memory? For all we know Zen could be an entire package in one lump. HSA or whatever it's called?

It would make motherboards smaller, that's for sure.
 
Scougar said:
I can't see 16gb being used usefully with an apu though. They just are not powerful enough (it does say up to)
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As a workstation APU it would.

With HSA its a new concept.
Normally you have serial or parallel compute in separate units (Xeon CPU + Quadro / FirePro GPU) with each component doing its own thing at its own pace.

APU's are serial and parallel engines rolled into one, what that means is work that would have been done as serial can be done in parallel, the result is massively accelerated performance. a single APU of this size and scope will do the work of many many many Xeon's.

If it exists IMO this is what its for.

Smaller 16 Thread 8GB HBM APU may be the top of the line Retail Desktop parts



This even bigger monster if it would ever exist is for supercomputers.



If AMD pull this off they are back on track.
 
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All sounds very interesting. AFAIK AMD have been looking towards this HSA for a long time. Will be nice if and when it all comes off, a win for everyone I would think.
 
Silly me. Didn't think through the dram being on chip would be used system memory as well as graphics. Makes total sense (must have not had enough coffee after new years).
 
Would it be possible to get a APU with lots of Zen cores and GPU of serious performance with HBM all on a interposer and in a small enough package that it could fit on a ATX motherboard let alone a MATX or ITX, it would have to be a socketable platform or it would need to be a APU and motherboard combo. Not really sure just how feasible this is for the consumer in reality.
 
bru said:
Would it be possible to get a APU with lots of Zen cores and GPU of serious performance with HBM all on a interposer and in a small enough package that it could fit on a ATX motherboard let alone a MATX or ITX, it would have to be a socketable platform or it would need to be a APU and motherboard combo. Not really sure just how feasible this is for the consumer in reality.
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Good question.

The FX-8350 is 315mm² @ 32nm
The 390X is 438mm² @ 28nm

The 390X has 5.9 TFlops compute performance.

I don't know what real terms density 16nm has compared with 32/28nm, but 1/3 can't be far wrong.

So, back of the hand calculations: Not to be taken too literally

FX-8350 @ 315mm² Subtract 65% = 110mm² x2 (8 Core vs 16 Core) = 220mm²

390X @ 438mm² Subtract 65% = 153 mm² + the 16 Core Zen CPU = 373mm²

Edit: the Fury-X is 550mm² without the 4 HBM chips round it. at a squeeze the whole 373mm² + HBM thing could fit under one of AMD's large Heat Spreaders.

Yes thats off the wall but i think it shows at 16nm it may in fact be possible to stick a very serious GPU in such an APU. I think Intel's Iris-Pro is nearly that big.
shows how bad it actually is compared with what AMD could do with that size node.
 
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If the GPU and shared memory are on the same die/dies on substrate then the IO pin count would be vastly smaller than today's CPUs, so eminently socketable. Problem, as always, is pulling it off and keeping it cool :p
 
Dicehunter said:
I'm really hoping Zen smashes the current Z170, X99 CPU's or at least matches them :)
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A 40%+ faster IPC over Excavator means that it will bring it in line with Devil's Canyon at least on single core performance.

Also add into the equation that A10 7870 is roughly 48% slower than a 6600K on Cinebench, and gaming LESS than 3440x1440 and 4K
(at 4K GPU is the limit and a 7870/50 performs the same as a damn 6700K)
 
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