- Jun 17, 2017
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I just finished watching the livestream of AMD's Next Horizon event. It was all pretty much server oriented stuff, but there's a couple of tidbits to consider if you aren't looking to upgrade right at this moment.
The 'Zen 2' architecture is built around 8 core chiplets. EPYC Rome has up to 8 of these, for 64 cores.
All 8 chiplets in a 64 core EPYC 2 will communicate via a central IO chip, and may now share the memory resources a bit more evenly. We won't know how this plays out until the benchmarks drop, but this might help that '2990WX Threadripper' issue where two of the cores don't have memory directly connected to them. So the next gen Threadripper may avoid this issue, although for rendering it actually isn't a big problem (just for certain other apps and gaming).
We won't hear a lot about the new Ryzens until CES in January of 2019, when AMD has stated it will have a number of announcements to make.
So, I'm going to do a bit of speculation here r.e. what these 7nm 'chiplets' could mean for the next Ryzen and Threadripper chips...
Currently, the Ryzen chips without integrated graphics have two 4 core elements connected via a CCX. The APU versions of these only have a single 4 core element, and of course the integrated graphics, which seems to be 'replacing' the other 4 cores.
So, for 7 NM Ryzen, I'm guessing we will be seeing an 8 core chiplet paired with integrated graphics as 'standard fare' as part of their upcoming offerings. The big question will be, will AMD 'throw down' and pair two chiplets for a 16 core monster, with the other 8 cores being used instead of the integrated graphics chip? I tend to think yes, but that's just because it's what I'd to to give Intel extra headaches. The 2 channels of memory would constrain those 16 cores on the AM4 socket of course, but it'd still be a monster baby chip...
As for Threadripper, I would NOT be at all surprised to see a 32 Core Threadripper WITH integrated graphics. But I don't really know if the TR4 socket is set up for integrated graphics, so this is just another guess on my part. We CERTAINLY should see four 7 nm chiplets (32 cores) at the high end, seeing we have 32 cores now with the Threadripper 2990 WX.
the question is, will AMD do a 64 core Threadripper just because? I think 32 cores is the sweet spot, and I think that going north of $2000 for an HEDT processor is asking a lot, but this could go either way... Plus Intel has that '48 core monster' chip in the wings, which could make a 64 core Threadipper a bit more likely...
As for performance numbers, AMD is confident that EPYC Rome will have twice the performance of EPYC Naples. Yeah, you lose a bit of efficiency when doubling the cores (i.e. 32 cores isn't twice as fast as 16, nearly so maybe), plus there's the 'averaging out the clocks' issue for that many cores that tends to drop overall frequency a bit, but the other improvements mentioned today look set to make up for all that lost ground and even maybe gain a little more ground...
They also doubled the width of the floating point thingie, so they expect 4x performance for programs that take advantage of this. I'm thinking that this could affect rendering, since it involves a lot of number crunching, but I don't really know. If so, though....
We didn't hear any 'hard numbers' r.e. CPU frequencies and such today, and they only ran a couple of benchmarks that tend to favor AMD (C-Ray as an example), so I guess we wait for a bit for more leaks or CES in January to get 'hard' numbers here.
The EPYC Rome chips used in the benchmarks were still prototype chips, but AMD says they are on track for full EPYC Rome deployment in 2019, and do not anticipate any delays here as testing has been going well so far.
On the GPU front, yeah the GPU is geared to machine learning, etc. not towards gamers. Plus, us Daz users are often shackled to Nvidia anyways, so AMD graphics isn't a big deal currently to us. For Blender, etc. users, maybe...
AMD WILL get a 7nm GPU out the door by the end of this year though, so they can claim that as a 'first'.
The EPYC 7601 currently retails for a bit over $4000 (so pretty much outside of most people's budgets here), but the 7551P (the P means single socket only) is just over $2000, which might be enticing to some people here that are doing pretty well with their Patreons, etc. One tech blogger is guessing that the 64 Core EPYC Rome (dual socket capable version) will come in at around $5500, but of course the question then becomes, where will the 'P' version land? Probably out of the reach of most mortals, but I'm curious anyways...
So, yeah, if you are considering the next gen Ryzens for your next upgrade, the wait for hard numbers continues... but in the meantime, yeah the 2xxx series Ryzen chips are looking rather affordable at the moment if you need to upgrade before say May of next year... or (if AMD holds true to form) late summer for the 7nm Threadrippers, assuming the next version is in the pipeline.
In the meantime, it'll be interesting to see this 48 core Intel monster that was announced yesterday when it actually reaches the hands of the tech press, to see how it fares in the real world. Most people won't be able to afford that one, and I hear it'll be a heat monster due to the amount of energy required to run it...
Most of this won't matter to a lot of Iray users, though, since the 2080 Ti is king for that at the moment. I do hear that a small but significant number of those are failing, though, so hopefully Nvidia gets a handle on that. Also, I've seen at least one report in the last couple of days that the supply of 1080 Ti's is beginning to dry up...
And, Discuss!!!
The 'Zen 2' architecture is built around 8 core chiplets. EPYC Rome has up to 8 of these, for 64 cores.
All 8 chiplets in a 64 core EPYC 2 will communicate via a central IO chip, and may now share the memory resources a bit more evenly. We won't know how this plays out until the benchmarks drop, but this might help that '2990WX Threadripper' issue where two of the cores don't have memory directly connected to them. So the next gen Threadripper may avoid this issue, although for rendering it actually isn't a big problem (just for certain other apps and gaming).
We won't hear a lot about the new Ryzens until CES in January of 2019, when AMD has stated it will have a number of announcements to make.
So, I'm going to do a bit of speculation here r.e. what these 7nm 'chiplets' could mean for the next Ryzen and Threadripper chips...
Currently, the Ryzen chips without integrated graphics have two 4 core elements connected via a CCX. The APU versions of these only have a single 4 core element, and of course the integrated graphics, which seems to be 'replacing' the other 4 cores.
So, for 7 NM Ryzen, I'm guessing we will be seeing an 8 core chiplet paired with integrated graphics as 'standard fare' as part of their upcoming offerings. The big question will be, will AMD 'throw down' and pair two chiplets for a 16 core monster, with the other 8 cores being used instead of the integrated graphics chip? I tend to think yes, but that's just because it's what I'd to to give Intel extra headaches. The 2 channels of memory would constrain those 16 cores on the AM4 socket of course, but it'd still be a monster baby chip...
As for Threadripper, I would NOT be at all surprised to see a 32 Core Threadripper WITH integrated graphics. But I don't really know if the TR4 socket is set up for integrated graphics, so this is just another guess on my part. We CERTAINLY should see four 7 nm chiplets (32 cores) at the high end, seeing we have 32 cores now with the Threadripper 2990 WX.
the question is, will AMD do a 64 core Threadripper just because? I think 32 cores is the sweet spot, and I think that going north of $2000 for an HEDT processor is asking a lot, but this could go either way... Plus Intel has that '48 core monster' chip in the wings, which could make a 64 core Threadipper a bit more likely...
As for performance numbers, AMD is confident that EPYC Rome will have twice the performance of EPYC Naples. Yeah, you lose a bit of efficiency when doubling the cores (i.e. 32 cores isn't twice as fast as 16, nearly so maybe), plus there's the 'averaging out the clocks' issue for that many cores that tends to drop overall frequency a bit, but the other improvements mentioned today look set to make up for all that lost ground and even maybe gain a little more ground...
They also doubled the width of the floating point thingie, so they expect 4x performance for programs that take advantage of this. I'm thinking that this could affect rendering, since it involves a lot of number crunching, but I don't really know. If so, though....
We didn't hear any 'hard numbers' r.e. CPU frequencies and such today, and they only ran a couple of benchmarks that tend to favor AMD (C-Ray as an example), so I guess we wait for a bit for more leaks or CES in January to get 'hard' numbers here.
The EPYC Rome chips used in the benchmarks were still prototype chips, but AMD says they are on track for full EPYC Rome deployment in 2019, and do not anticipate any delays here as testing has been going well so far.
On the GPU front, yeah the GPU is geared to machine learning, etc. not towards gamers. Plus, us Daz users are often shackled to Nvidia anyways, so AMD graphics isn't a big deal currently to us. For Blender, etc. users, maybe...
AMD WILL get a 7nm GPU out the door by the end of this year though, so they can claim that as a 'first'.
The EPYC 7601 currently retails for a bit over $4000 (so pretty much outside of most people's budgets here), but the 7551P (the P means single socket only) is just over $2000, which might be enticing to some people here that are doing pretty well with their Patreons, etc. One tech blogger is guessing that the 64 Core EPYC Rome (dual socket capable version) will come in at around $5500, but of course the question then becomes, where will the 'P' version land? Probably out of the reach of most mortals, but I'm curious anyways...
So, yeah, if you are considering the next gen Ryzens for your next upgrade, the wait for hard numbers continues... but in the meantime, yeah the 2xxx series Ryzen chips are looking rather affordable at the moment if you need to upgrade before say May of next year... or (if AMD holds true to form) late summer for the 7nm Threadrippers, assuming the next version is in the pipeline.
In the meantime, it'll be interesting to see this 48 core Intel monster that was announced yesterday when it actually reaches the hands of the tech press, to see how it fares in the real world. Most people won't be able to afford that one, and I hear it'll be a heat monster due to the amount of energy required to run it...
Most of this won't matter to a lot of Iray users, though, since the 2080 Ti is king for that at the moment. I do hear that a small but significant number of those are failing, though, so hopefully Nvidia gets a handle on that. Also, I've seen at least one report in the last couple of days that the supply of 1080 Ti's is beginning to dry up...
And, Discuss!!!
