AMD really, really wants you to know its chips are doing OK without any help from Intel and its supply issues AMD is touting record quarterly numbers as the chip designer closed out a solid fiscal 2019. Both the quarter and the full year brought high water marks in revenue. For the fourth quarter, ended December 28: Revenues of $2.13bn were up 50 per cent from the year-ago quarter and ahead of analyst estimates at $2.11bn. Net …
Ummmm....what?
Current GPUs are not constrained by PCIe3 x8 outside of multicard setups running triple 4K setups and x16 is sufficient to address these. PCIe4 gives twice as much bandwidth again. The real issue is Intel CPU's lack of PCIe lanes rather than PCIe3.
PCIe4's big advantage is the ability to deliver high bandwidth to multiple storage devices AND GPUs concurrently.
The requirements for PCIe5? In servers/blade servers I can see some benefit but I suspect the power requirements will make desktop/laptop users very unhappy.
Upvoted.
The point you are not getting, though, is speed of each individual PCIe lane, as it augments, you theoretically need fewer of them to push the same anount of data down the pipe. Now, you correctly opined that this is good for multi-GPU, I think it is good as well as you use more and more PCIe lanes for other stuff, I have NVMe SSD's, 10G nic, and a high end GPU, all good, but merely 24 PCIe lanes available.
My point was that you lacked lanes, not speed.
The downside of PCIe4 is power usage (i.e. 5W for X470 vs 12-15W for X570 chipsets).
PCIe5 is likely to see that increase significantly again - potentially in the 20W-35W space depending on number of lanes supported. The high power usage is caused by needing to use powered extenders to increase the distance the PCIe4 signals can travel from the CPU and will have greater demands in PCIe5.
Reducing the number of lanes AND speed to conserve power puts you back in the PCIe3 era of insufficient bandwidth.... I would even speculate that low power chips will retain PCIe3 with more lanes to address performance issues rather than going to PCIe5.
Between Intel's on-going security issues, the high core-count of AMD parts and their superior single core performance I had already decided to make my next upgrade an AMD one, despite having opted for Intel for the last couple of decades. There is no question which is the better CPU at present.
>I had already decided to make my next upgrade an AMD one, despite having opted for Intel for the last couple of decades.
Make that another one, need AMD to release some MB chipsets though that are cheaper than X570 before I jump onboard, where are the B550s & A520s ?
The new Ryzen 3 CPUs will still work in the older boards, but you might need a BIOS upgrade first.
Of course, you'll probably need an older generation CPU to boot the board to upgrade the BIOS in the first place.
Theoretically one could buy a CPU from a big retailer named after a South American river, use it to flash the BIOS, and then return it for a full refund, but that would probably be against their terms of service, so you shouldn't do that...
I disagree somewhat there as most Intel CPU single core performance is still better than AMD. Also Intel have matched core count. However what AMD have done well is match very well on price. Often 20-30% cheaper on comparable chips is really good for the competition in the market and with better more power efficient chips coming from AMD they will continue to improve and match Intel which means cheaper pricing and better choices for us customers.
You are a bit out of date - clock for clock the latest AMD chips beat Intel on IPC. Only because Intel can take advantage of the mature 14nm process by overclocking to 5 and above GHz is this deficit reversed. Hence the inherent problems with the 10nm process - better IPC for intel than 14 nm (add some + here) but can't clock as high.
[disclaimer] I own a Skylake X processor based machine so not shilling for AMD [/disclaimer]
Erm, nope. If you’re looking at a single core then Intel parts can clock higher, but guzzle power when they are doing so. AMD IPC is higher, but their lower clock speed makes it about a wash for most benchmarks (some higher for Intel, some for AMD, but not much in it either way). The EPYC line is however much more power efficient and offers the option of many more cores (64 core, 128 threads in the top-of-the-range 3990X), which Intel can’t get close to, and what they do have has crazy power and cooling requirements (400W for a 56 core Xeon Platinum 9200 vs 280W for the 64 core AMD part). The Xeon part is also so expensive that Intel will only tell OEMs the price (rumoured to be circa $25k each, vs $4k for the AMD).
At end of call Su confirmed wafer supply tight which explains limited growth forecast.
Assuming Servers get priority due to profitability I expect limited marketing of consumer GPU and few price cuts across all products this year.
Good news for Intel they can keep prices high at the cost of losing maybe 5% market share, which they would probably have lost even if they had cut prices. I expect they will lose more server share especially in Cloud.
USA keen for TSMC to build fabs in USA so opportunity for Intel to sell couple of plants to TSMC in return for short term supply contract until (if) Intel gets back on track. Bad news for AMD if happens.
Pure speculation...
AMD likely reduced GPU production and delayed server CPU launch to ensure it could meet demand and avoid a paper launch. There were also suggestions that AMD struggled to produce fully operational CCX's in early batches which delayed the launch of "all core" parts.
I would also suggest that the Global Foundries lawsuit aimed at TSMC may have been to help free up capacity for more AMD CPU's...
My understanding is that TSMC are currently NOT capacity constrained at 7nm HP but that it is a recent change (i.e. December/January) and that is likely caused by other manufacturers moving to smaller nodes in preparation for upcoming launches.
"USA keen for TSMC to build fabs in USA so opportunity for Intel to sell couple of plants to TSMC in return for short term supply contract until (if) Intel gets back on track. Bad news for AMD if happens."
High-end fabs support very customised processes - it's unlikely that TSMC would wish to use an Intel fab OR that Intel would let them. At best, TSMC would get land with the appropriate permits and the shell of a building.
It's likely that TSMC would be able to get that in the time it takes for new fab equipment to be delivered (i.e. 12-18 months).
The USA is keen for TSMC to build in the USA in case Hong Kong accepts Chinese rule and China moves onto Taiwan....
Microsoft's lust for user data and contempt for user feedback, and Intel's decades of complacancy must be punished. I'm really hoping AMD will leverage into desktop market dominance by partnering with an alternative open source OS, killing the unholy Microsoft/Intel hegemony because they both deserve to burn
Analysis Supermicro launched a wave of edge appliances using Intel's newly refreshed Xeon-D processors last week. The launch itself was nothing to write home about, but a thought occurred: with all the hype surrounding the outer reaches of computing that we call the edge, you'd think there would be more competition from chipmakers in this arena.
So where are all the AMD and Arm-based edge appliances?
A glance through the catalogs of the major OEMs – Dell, HPE, Lenovo, Inspur, Supermicro – returned plenty of results for AMD servers, but few, if any, validated for edge deployments. In fact, Supermicro was the only one of the five vendors that even offered an AMD-based edge appliance – which used an ageing Epyc processor. Hardly a great showing from AMD. Meanwhile, just one appliance from Inspur used an Arm-based chip from Nvidia.
Memory maker Micron has announced availability of DDR5 server DRAM components in preparation for server and workstation platforms from Intel and AMD that are due to support the faster memory standard.
Micron said its DDR5 server memory parts are now available through commercial and industrial channel partners in support of qualification for next-generation server and workstation systems based on Intel and AMD CPUs.
In other words, the memory chips are here, but the servers are not yet ready for them. Intel's Sapphire Rapids Xeon Scalable processor family will support the new memory standard, but Intel has repeatedly delayed this platform and volume production is not expected until later this year. AMD's Genoa, the first of its fourth-gen of Epyc server chips, is also expected to arrive in the fourth quarter of this year with support for DDR5.
AMD's processors have come out on top in terms of cloud CPU performance across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, according to a recently published study.
The multi-core x86-64 microprocessors Milan and Rome and beat Intel Cascade Lake and Ice Lake instances in tests of performance in the three most popular cloud providers, research from database company CockroachDB found.
Using the CoreMark version 1.0 benchmark – which can be limited to run on a single vCPU or execute workloads on multiple vCPUs – the researchers showed AMD's Milan processors outperformed those of Intel in many cases, and at worst statistically tied with Intel's latest-gen Ice Lake processors across both the OLTP and CPU benchmarks.
A drought of AMD's latest Threadripper workstation processors is finally coming to an end for PC makers who faced shortages earlier this year all while Hong Kong giant Lenovo enjoyed an exclusive supply of the chips.
AMD announced on Monday it will expand availability of its Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5000 CPUs to "leading" system integrators in July and to DIY builders through retailers later this year. This announcement came nearly two weeks after Dell announced it would release a workstation with Threadripper Pro 5000 in the summer.
The coming wave of Threadripper Pro 5000 workstations will mark an end to the exclusivity window Lenovo had with the high-performance chips since they launched in April.
COMMENT The way Intel has been talking about the status of its $20 billion Ohio fab project, you would be forgiven if you assumed that construction on the Midwest mega-site has been delayed in light of Congress struggling to pass a large subsidies package that would support new American chip factories.
When Intel delayed a groundbreaking ceremony for the Ohio manufacturing site two weeks ago out of frustration over the subsidies inaction, some headlines may have given you the impression the semiconductor giant was putting off construction entirely.
However, an Intel spokesperson made it clear to The Register and others at the time that the start date for construction had not changed.
As Intel tries to enact an ambitious comeback plan, the semiconductor giant has been offloading some divisions that aren't key to its core chipmaking business. The latest to get shunted off is the company's PR-friendly drone-powered light-show business, and the buyer is… Elon Musk's brother.
Yes, that's right: Kimbal Musk has acquired Intel Drone Light Shows through his new company Nova Sky Stories, which he formed after apparently being brought to tears last year by the sight of light drones forming the titular "man" of the Burning Man festival at an unofficial gathering after the official annual event was canceled.
While Musk doesn't mention Intel by name in a June announcement of Nova Sky Stories, the website for Intel's drone light-show business says it has been bought by K. Musk's company.
While Intel has bagged Nvidia as a marquee customer for its next-generation Xeon Scalable processor, the x86 giant has admitted that a broader rollout of the server chip has been delayed to later this year.
Sandra Rivera, Intel's datacenter boss, confirmed the delay of the Xeon processor, code-named Sapphire Rapids, in a Tuesday panel discussion at the BofA Securities 2022 Global Technology Conference. Earlier that day at the same event, Nvidia's CEO disclosed that the GPU giant would use Sapphire Rapids, and not AMD's upcoming Genoa chip, for its flagship DGX H100 system, a reversal from its last-generation machine.
Intel has been hyping up Sapphire Rapids as a next-generation Xeon CPU that will help the chipmaker become more competitive after falling behind AMD in technology over the past few years. In fact, Intel hopes it will beat AMD's next-generation Epyc chip, Genoa, to the market with industry-first support for new technologies such as DDR5, PCIe Gen 5 and Compute Express Link.
RSA Conference Intel has released a reference design for a plug-in security card aimed at delivering improved network and security processing without requiring the additional rackspace a discrete appliance would need.
The NetSec Accelerator Reference Design [PDF] is effectively a fully functional x86 compute node delivered as a PCIe card that can be fitted into an existing server. It combines an Intel Atom processor, Intel Ethernet E810 network interface, and up to 32GB of memory to offload network security functions.
According to Intel, the new reference design is intended to enable a secure access service edge (SASE) model, a combination of software-defined security and wide-area network (WAN) functions implemented as a cloud-native service.
In yet another sign of how fortunes have changed in the semiconductor industry, Taiwanese foundry giant TSMC is expected to surpass Intel in quarterly revenue for the first time.
Wall Street analysts estimate TSMC will grow second-quarter revenue 43 percent quarter-over-quarter to $18.1 billion. Intel, on the other hand, is expected to see sales decline 2 percent sequentially to $17.98 billion in the same period, according to estimates collected by Yahoo Finance.
The potential for TSMC to surpass Intel in quarterly revenue is indicative of how demand has grown for contract chip manufacturing, fueled by companies like Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD, and Apple who design their own chips and outsource manufacturing to foundries like TSMC.
If claims hold true, AMD has been targeted by the extortion group RansomHouse, which says it is sitting on a trove of data stolen from the processor designer following an alleged security breach earlier this year.
RansomHouse says it obtained the files from an intrusion into AMD's network on January 5, 2022, and that this isn't material from a previous leak of its intellectual property.
This relatively new crew also says it doesn't breach the security of systems itself, nor develop or use ransomware. Instead, it acts as a "mediator" between attackers and victims to ensure payment is made for purloined data.
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