A bit of intel on AMD's embedded Epyc and Ryzen processors

The "other" X86 mill-maker, AMD, has unveiled its efforts to position its Zen architecture kit as an embedded solution for networking, storage, edge and industrial devices: a brace of Epyc and Ryzen processors. The semiconductor firm is aiming Epyc 3000 at networking, storage and edge computing devices and the Ryzen V1000 at …

[Anonymous Coward]

Still waiting for my ThreadRipper

to support PCIe-v3 on Windows 7 on an ASUS motherboard without BSODs.

[Aitor 1]

Re: Still waiting for my ThreadRipper

w7 is unsupported. You know it.. so dont insist...

[Dave K]

Re: Still waiting for my ThreadRipper

Zen is not supported on Windows 7. Saying that, I've managed to get my Ryzen 7 to work fine with Windows 7, but I appreciate that it's not an officially supported configuration, so it's always going to be a case of YMMV.

AMD do a bit better than Intel here at least. Windows 7 drivers are available for most bits, whereas with my Kaby Lake NUC, I had to resort to editing driver INI files in order to get the IRIS graphics working under Windows 7.

[sharkando]

Re: Still waiting for my ThreadRipper

Well you'll be waiting forever because Microsoft will not support it for you. You should be on Windows 10, or better yet Linux. Get with the times.

[robidy]

Re: Still waiting for my ThreadRipper

If by get with the times, you mean catchup with the latest commercial decisions to stop Wintel sales continuing to tank then fair comment.

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't be buying a new processor until meltdown is well and truly designed out of the hardware without speed penalty.

[Chewi]

These processors have never been affected by Meltdown.

[Captain Scarlet]

Ssh, lets recommend them getting a Pentium MMX

[Anonymous Coward]

>These processors have never been affected by Meltdown.

Oops, I meant spectre. It's me having a meltdown.

[sharkando]

Dear Anonymous Coward, AMD is not afflicted with meltdown. But if you're trying to tell us that you're waiting for the next intel CPU not afflicted by meltdown, then you are posting in the wrong board, and it's about a year from now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Spectre & Meltdown

Have these CPU's no Spectre or Meltdown issues?

[alain williams]

Re: Spectre & Meltdown

Who pays your bills ? Intel ?

If you were a half awake typical technical reader of El Reg you would well know that Meltdown is almost entirely an Intel problem - and that Intel is trying to blur the distinction.

Spectre does affect most chip vendors.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Spectre & Meltdown

AMD were able to patch their microcode to protect their chips to Spectre vulnerabilities which they were effected (only two of the three) while Intel was effected by all the Spectre vulnerabilities and Meltdown and have not yet produced a successful patch for Spectre.

As the problems are so fundamental to the Intel design existing in chips from twenty years ago, is it possible to re-engineer the manufacturing of the chip or is a complete redesign required?

[x 7]

Any good for Bitcoin mining? (Is that Bitmining or Minecoining?)

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Of course not

[Voland's right hand]

The ryzen parts look like a fantastic desktop CPU :)

What embedded? Can I have that in a small form desktop or (hackable) thin client instead? Please? Pretty please?

[Will Godfrey]

Re: The ryzen parts look like a fantastic desktop CPU :)

Interesting. I was thinking exactly the same - you weren't reading my mind I hope.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The ryzen parts look like a fantastic desktop CPU :)

@Voland's right hand & Will Godfrey

Just setting up the same speculative branches I suspect. I am certainly adding AMD to my list of places to look for demo boards for embedded developers. Sometimes you can find something radical to play with.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The ryzen parts look like a fantastic desktop CPU :)

He was using a side-channel attack on your Intel brain. Did you feel like melting down? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The ryzen parts look like a fantastic desktop CPU :)

No it was completely unex-spectred.

[AndersBreiner]

I'm not keen on this

The nightmare scenario goes something like this

1) AMD run out of cash. They decide they'll concentrate on the embedded market.

2) LIke everyone else who has done this they don't make money selling embedded chips either and end up selling their IP to someone else. So AMD

3) Intel, having a monopoly on the desktop/server market gradually increase the time between new processors.

So in fifteen years' time we've got x64 chips which have are eight years old.

You can kind something like this back before Ryzen. AMD wasn't competitive and Intel had slow development cycles. When Ryzen came out Intel started to compete again - e.g. upping the core count on the i5 from 4 to 6. Now if AMD were 'concentrating on the embedded market' would they have bothered? It's not like people buying x64 PCs would have an alternative vendor if AMD left the market.

[msroadkill]

not noted afaik, is that the embedded version of the zen/vega apu, is officially rated for 3200 ram. afaik the desktop apu is only rated for 2933 ram.

This could indicate the situation has improved generally for apuS, and that more ambitious mainstream ram clocks are doable.

[DenTheMan]

Not just Intel but ARM, Qualcomm and Apple

Of most note is the Snapdragon 845, Meltdown negating reasons to buy and making those recently released benchmarks pointless.

And Apples Socs went high power hybrid Intel like when designing their own CPU thus adding to the Throttlegate story.

[Phat-wan Kerr]

Since we're on the general subject

Would it be too much to ask to get an El Reg story on the HBM2 aquabolt(superhero?) memory samsung has started production on. I read up on it but always appreciate the Reg's take on where it's going to fit in, Say with one of these SoC's. Just throwing it out there.