Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by on Thursday May 18 2017, @08:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the threadripper?-really? dept.

Shares of AMD rose 11.6% on Tuesday as Fudzilla reported that Intel would license graphics technologies from AMD after a similar deal with Nvidia expired two months earlier. The deal has not been confirmed.

On the other hand, AMD's 16-core "Threadripper" enthusiast/HEDT CPUs have been confirmed:

With one of the gnarliest CPU codenames we've ever seen, the Threadripper multicore monsters will go head to head with Intel's Broadwell-E and upcoming Skylake-E High-End Desktop (HEDT) CPUs alongside a new motherboard platform that promises expanded memory support and I/O bandwidth. That's likely to take the form of quad-channel RAM and more PCIe lanes, similar to Intel's X99 platform, but AMD is saving further details for its press conference at Computex at the end of May.

AMD's 32-core "Naples" server chips are now known as... "Epyc".

You have seen the launch of 4, 6, and 8-core AMD Ryzen parts. How do you feel about 10, 12, 14, and 16 cores (prices unknown, likely $1,000 or more for 16 cores)?

Previously: CPU Rumor Mill: Intel Core i9, AMD Ryzen 9, and AMD "Starship"


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday May 18 2017, @12:07PM (3 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday May 18 2017, @12:07PM (#511646) Journal

    Gaming is becoming more multithreaded. Now you have two major consoles with "eight" cores (6-7 usable). A lot of existing computers have quad cores, with HyperThreading in many cases, and now 6+ cores is becoming more common or at least cheap enough to be accessible. Some games could certainly use more cores if they were available. This is apparent for games where many different AI are "thinking" in parallel and adding each additional AI to a map uses more threads. But there must be a baseline and if consoles are raising the bar, that means more core/thread utilization for PC gamers.

    Due to physical limits, you will get more and more cores over time as we continue to shake out the last easy scaling improvements over the next decade. Some customers/applications can already make use of as many cores as can be thrown at the problem. They are the ones who MIGHT pay $1000 or more for a Ryzen 9. And as more cores per node become available, other applications will focus on multithreading (where possible). The CPU manufacturers' only other options (if not making shrinking the die) are to devote more die space to integrated graphics, fixed-function decoders (8K AV1 [wikipedia.org] 12-bit support, anyone?), or perhaps on-chip memory. None of the Ryzen chips announced yet even come with integrated graphics. Maybe that will be addressed in future generations (whatever happened to CrossFire with integrated graphics, or Vulkan/Mantle combining integrated graphics with a discrete GPU?).

    The market will let us know if putting 16 or more cores on a consumer chip was a good idea. Even if some of the users are just throwing money away.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday May 18 2017, @12:31PM (2 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 18 2017, @12:31PM (#511659) Journal

    The CPU manufacturers' only other options (if not making shrinking the die) are to devote more die space to integrated graphics, fixed-function decoders (8K AV1 [wikipedia.org] 12-bit support, anyone?), or perhaps on-chip memory.

    You missed an item on this list: the NSA backdoor.
    This will require a boost in performance and accesibility: NSA budget is plateauing and using contractors to keep the costs down leads to leaks.
    It will need to be supported by hardware, hacking Windows only gets them so far.

    (grin)

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 18 2017, @12:37PM (1 child)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday May 18 2017, @12:37PM (#511663) Journal

      The backdoors are already in there, they don't need more die space. (groan)

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday May 18 2017, @01:52PM

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 18 2017, @01:52PM (#511678) Journal

        The backdoors are already in there, they don't need more die space.

        They may be already, but they are puny and weakly represented.

        We need more of dye space and perhaps more of them backdoors on a single chip - the internationalized version, if you like. At least one for NSA, another one for CIA, one more for GCHQ, perhaps one for Mossad, let's not forget the FSB as well (no, the Chinese don't need one special for them, they'll be consuming their own [wikipedia.org] shit [wikipedia.org] anyway).
        Of course, depending on the market, not all of them need to be active in the same time, but they must be able to be activated in any moment - because most of the computers will eventually reach Africa (that's where Afghanistan is, right? - grin -) as ewaste, and ISIS will surely recycle and use some of them. See terrorists and children, think of them.

        And, err... yes... grin... should'ave gone to sleep earlier.

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford