• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

FEATURED AMD ZEN Discussion (Previous Rumor Thread)

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

Johan45

Benching Team Leader Super Moderator
Joined
Dec 19, 2012
I know it's a bit early but man you have to see this monster. Looks like has their rumour mill is in high gear. http://www.fudzilla.com/news/processors/37494-amd-x86-16-core-zen-apu-detailed

bdff5e4df5710735d8a1ecdc5dd9efcf_L.jpg

Has integrated Greenland HBM GPU

We have mentioned both AMD's Zen core processors, as well as Greenland HBM memory powered graphics in the past, but now we have a few more details.

The highest end compute HSA part has up to 16 Zen x86 cores and supports 32 threads, or two threads per core. This is something we saw on Intel architectures for a while, and it seems to be working just fine. This will be the first exciting processor from the house of AMD in the server / HSA market in years, and in case AMD delivers it on time it might be a big break for the company.

Each Zen core gets 512 KB of L2 cache and each cluster or four Zen cores is sharing 8MB L3 cache. In case we are talking about a 16-core, 32-thread next generation Zen based x86 processor, the total amount of L2 cache gets to a whopping 8MB, backed by 32MB of L3 cache.

A theoretical quad-core would have four times 512KB cache and 8MB L3 cache. The platform supports secure boot and AMD's crypto coprocessor, which is important for corporate and business customers, and there is a very good chance that this processor will end up in the HSA compute market.

This new APU also comes with the Greenland Graphics and Multimedia Engine that comes with HBM memory on the side. The specs we saw indicate that there can be up to 16GB of HBM memory with 512GB/s speed packed on the interposer. This is definitely a lot of memory for an APU GPU, and it also comes with 1/2 rate double precision compute, enhanced ECC and RAS and HSA support.
DDR4 Coherent fabric Zen X86 die and Greenland HBM GPU

The next generation Zen based APU also comes with PCIe Gen3 support and SATA express or SATA, 1GbE support and DDR4 memory controllers in 4x72 configuration. The 4-channel DDR4 supports ECC memory and speeds up to 3200 MHz, SODIMM, UDIMM, RDIMM, LRDIMM 2DIMMs/channel, with total capacity of 256GB per channel. That is a lot of memory.

The APU has 64 PCI express Gen 3 lanes, where 16 lanes are switchable with 2 lanes or SATA Express and 14 lanes of SATA. AMD is using coherent fabrics to interconnect the Zen CPU die and Greenland graphics die, and it also uses coherent fabric for inter communication between Zen die CPUs and caches, PSP, Times, counters, ACPI or Legacy interface, GMI Physics, Combo Physics, Host Controllers like USB, SATA or GbE and memory controllers.

GMI stands for Global Memory interconnect and this is the interface between Zen die and Greenland die, or between two chips on the same multi-chip module package.


Last modified on 10 April 2015
 
16 cores and 32 threads? Interesting, I wonder if this would be released for home users or if this is the top server chip.
 
Hard to say, it could be pixie dust and fairy tales
 
wonder if it will have the heat output of a 50,000 btu diesel heater. lol.

really though depending on the price point could be a worthy upgrade for me. also depending on single core performance. likely they will sell a metric poop ton just on it being a 16 core desktop cpu long as it isnt $500. hell people spend that on those fx-9xxx cpu's. so who knows.
 
That L2 cache is half smaller than the current line (but still twice as much per-core as Intel has)... I'd rather pay more for a full MB per core. Lots of tasks where that larger L2 cache will make a "slower" AMD CPU significantly outperform the Intel equivalent.
 
Advanced Micro Devices has begun to add support of its upcoming microprocessors powered by “Zen” micro-architecture to Linux operating systems. The enablement of future chips in Linux confirms AMD’s plans to release such central processing units and even reveals some facts about their functionality. Unfortunately, addition of support does not indicate launch schedules anyhow.


Theres a whole lot more in the linked article below ...... looks promising at least.


http://www.kitguru.net/components/c...-zen-processor-architecture-support-in-linux/
 
Looks a lot more like the old arch by the block diagram. Excited to see the performance!
 
Yeah, might just be something to write home about. If they can actually get 8c16t to work could be some real competition for the blue team. It must be hard though for AMD, Intel spends more in one quarter on R&D than AMD is even worth.
 
Yeah, might just be something to write home about. If they can actually get 8c16t to work could be some real competition for the blue team. It must be hard though for AMD, Intel spends more in one quarter on R&D than AMD is even worth.

All it takes is one brilliant engineer to swing that balance though.
 
How many breakthroughs in various fields have been done by one gifted individual? Look at the Woz for example. He designed both the software and hardware behind the early Apple computers pre-Mac.

And I'll add one to that. The Stilt. He (on he personal time) changed the game for FX SuperPi.
 
Back