Gunning for Broadwell-E
AMD gave us our first glance at performance of Zen relative to Intel’s Broadwell-E platform.
As I walked away from the St. Regis in downtown San Francisco tonight, I found myself wandering through the streets towards my hotel with something unique in tow. It was a smile. I was smiling, thinking about what AMD had just demonstrated and showed at its latest Zen processor reveal. The importance of this product launch can literally not be overstated for a company struggling to find a foothold to hang on to in a market that it once had a definitive lead. It’s been many years since I left a conference call, or a meeting, or a press conference feeling genuinely hopefully and enthusiastic about what AMD has shown me. Tonight I had that.
AMD’s CEO Lisa Su, and CTO Mark Papermaster, took stage down the street from the Intel Developer Forum to roll out a handful of new architectural details about the Zen architecture while also showing the first performance results comparing it to competing parts from Intel. The crowd in attendance, a mix of media and analysts, were impressed. The feeling was palpable in the room.
It’s late as I write this, and while there are some interesting architecture details to discuss, I think it is in everyone’s best interest that we touch on them lightly for now, and instead refocus on the deep-dive once the Hot Chips information comes out early next week. What you really want to know is clear: can Zen make Intel work again? Can Zen make that $1700 price tag on the Broadwell-E 6950X seem even more ludicrous? Yes.
The Zen Architecture
Much of what was discussed from the Zen architecture is a re-release of what has been out in recent months. This is a completely new, from the ground up, microarchitecture and not a revamp of the aging Bulldozer design. It integrated SMT (simultaneous multi-threading), a first for an AMD CPU, to better take efficient advantage of a longer pipeline. Intel has had HyperThreading for a long time now and AMD is finally joining the fold. A high bandwidth and low latency caching system is used to “feed the beast” as Papermaster put it and utilizing 14nm process technology (starting at Global Foundries) gives efficiency, and scaling a significant bump while enabling AMD to scale from notebooks to desktops to servers with the same architecture.
By far the most impressive claim from AMD thus far was that of a 40% increase in IPC over previous AMD designs. That’s a HUGE claim and is key to the success or failure of Zen. AMD proved to me today that the claims are real and that we will see the immediate impact of that architecture bump from day one.
Press was told of a handful of high level changes to the new architecture as well. Branch prediction gets a complete overhaul. This marks the first AMD processor to have a micro-op cache. Wider execution width with broader instruction schedulers are integrated, all of which adds up to much higher instruction level parallelism to improve single threaded performance.
Performance improvements aside, throughput and efficiency go up with Zen as well. AMD has integrated an 8MB L3 cache and improved prefetching for up 5x the cache bandwidth available per core on the CPU. SMT makes sure the pipeline stays full to prevent “bubbles” that introduce latency and lower efficiency while region-specific power gating means that we’ll see Zen in notebooks as well as enterprise servers in 2017. It truly is an impressive design from AMD.
Summit Ridge, the enthusiast platform that will be the first product available with Zen, is based on the AM4 platform and processors will go up to 8-cores and 16-threads. DDR4 memory support is included, PCI Express 3.0 and what AMD calls “next-gen” IO – I would expect a quick leap forward for AMD to catch up on things like NVMe and Thunderbolt.
The Real Deal – Zen Performance
As part of today’s reveal, AMD is showing the first true comparison between Zen and Intel processors. Sure, AMD showed a Zen-powered system running the upcoming Deus Ex running at 4K with a system powered by the Fury X, but the really impressive results where shown when comparing Zen to a Broadwell-E platform.
Using Blender to measure the performance of a rendering workload (a Zen CPU mockup of course), AMD ran an 8-core / 16-thread Zen processor at 3.0 GHz against an 8-core / 16-thread Broadwell-E processor at 3.0 GHz (likely a fixed clocked Core i7-6900K). The point of the demonstration was to showcase the IPC improvements of Zen and it worked: the render completed on the Zen platform a second or two faster than it did on the Intel Broadwell-E system.
Not much to look at, but Zen on the left, Broadwell-E on the right…
Of course there are lots of caveats: we didn’t setup the systems, I don’t know for sure that GPUs weren’t involved, we don’t know the final clocks of the Zen processors releasing in early 2017, etc. But I took two things away from the demonstration that are very important.
- The IPC of Zen is on-par or better than Broadwell.
- Zen will scale higher than 3.0 GHz in 8-core configurations.
AMD obviously didn’t state what specific SKUs were going to launch with the Zen architecture, what clock speeds they would run at, or even what TDPs they were targeting. Instead we were left with a vague but understandable remark of “comparable TDPs to Broadwell-E”.
Pricing? Overclocking? We’ll just have to wait a bit longer for that kind of information.
Closing Thoughts
There is clearly a lot more for AMD to share about Zen but the announcement and showcase made this week with the early prototype products have solidified for me the capability and promise of this new microarchitecture. We have asked for, and needed, as an industry, a competitor to Intel in the enthusiast CPU space – something we haven’t legitimately had since the Athlon X2 days. Zen is what we have been pining over, what gamers and consumers have needed.
AMD’s processor stars might finally be aligning for a product that combines performance, efficiency and scalability at the right time. I’m ready for it –are you?
For years now we have been
For years now we have been told 4/8 thread is all we need. It would be nice for amd to drop 6/12 thread monster at sub $300 with more than 30 Pcie express lanes and reasonably priced Motherboards.
For years now we have been operating in an environment with zero competition, Zen is great news for us all blue and red.
The web big news is “AMD
The web big news is “AMD delay Zen to 2017”
But none of the dozen of article quote AMD. They seem to quote each other.
Since Zen is the architecture, my understanding is that most of Zen based product where 2017 releases (as outline in past quarterly reports).. but that summit ridge (desktop platform), was going to start availability in late 2016.
So. where did AMD refuting its statement from last month?
Something really bad must have happen because we are already in H2 2016.. and AMD just a few weeks ago told the world Zen was going to be available in late 2016 as a limited desktop product.
What is going on… is the press making things up , or AMD is facing some serious issues ?
The number one issue is
The number one issue is probably clockspeed. AMD needs more time to tweak more clockspeed out of that Global Foundries 14nm LPP which was never originally optimized or designed for high performance CPUs.
Amd zen will beat their
Amd zen will beat their current CPU’s, but not expect it to beat Intel. My reasoning they first still have to master the utilization of six or eight core cpu’s, two it took roughly two years probably sooner for Amd to master their current CPU’s on the market, three new motherboards.
I wonder if AMD’s new chips
I wonder if AMD’s new chips are conflict free. I think that is very important.
You definitely work for
You definitely work for Intel’s marketing, so let’s force everybody to eat Intel’s dog food graphics and support a Monopolistic Trust like Intel. Really over some minerals that can not be readily traced from their point of origin! You want to stop the exploitation of minerals for profit at the costs of conflicts then rein in Crony Capitalism and go back to subsistence farming and give up all consumer electronic goods, just watch out where the iron oxide for that plow comes from and the fuel to smelt it into steel. Intel is a threat to the free markets, along with M$, and the other Trusts. Hell food is a conflict producing commodity, along with water and every other element for that matter.
I’m not sure why you are so
I’m not sure why you are so against conflict free minerals. Food is not a conflict producing commodity. There are four minerals that are suspect of being conflict minerals in the US: tantulum, tin, tungsten, and gold. Any of these that come from countries where it is well established they blatantly abuse human rights to mine them is a conflict mineral. Many companies already have traced their smelters (like mine for example) and can disclose every smelter they use.
Some people actually care.
Some people actually care. Your bullshit rationalizations are just that and nothing more.
I owned the FX 8120, 8320 and
I owned the FX 8120, 8320 and 8350, all running above 4.8ghz and now rock 4790k@4.8ghz. I am looking forward to going back to team red with this release.
Maybe Vega + Zen will be the new dragon platform or whatever they want to call it. I think if amd was competitive over the last few years Intel would have given us a 6/12 thread CPU to replace the 4/8 thread K Chip years ago.
A little competition has never been a bad thing for consumers, just ask the guy who just plunked down $1,600 for the 6950X.
I’m a bit late to the party
I’m a bit late to the party but I’ll sum up my thoughts…
This is awesome, and yeah I’m “hyped”.
I really think this is great because if it’s legit 100% and they have a CPU that is on par with the 6900K, that’s sick. That’s not the part that’s repeating in my mind at the moment though, due to the majority of oblivious people’s reactions when I or others bring this news up.
AMD got a bad rep on the FX series, especially due to trying to pull out that last bit with the 9XXX series. That adds to the fire that is spread by both ignorant and aware people on any hope for their future. However, even with the entire world talking shit to their face not even their backs, they kept their R&D under lock for 4 YEARS!
They watched as their competition, the only option, indoctrinated the masses and slowly forced them into a more controlled market (eg; $1800 for the cpu with 40 pci-e lanes now? wtf)… probably killed them inside to sit back and watch if they care as much as I believe they do…
It’s crazy how trying something bold (8150 had 8cores, but cache packages were shared per-2-cores making it the “fake 8 core”, the 8350 and many others in the series did not have this issue however the world was oblivious) and failing (not really a failure but not a dream success) a single thing can make everyone forget what they’re capable of (it’s become apparent the world has no idea of anything that exists because of them).
I’m just going to keep typing forever, TLDR: Congrats AMD! Make sure the socket is compatible with the Hyper 212 Evo, and include more than 32 PCI-E lanes on all CPU Sku’s please! ;P Best if luck guys, the comeback is fuckin real.
Even if this one is going to
Even if this one is going to be a bit of a lemon, I’ll have one to replace my 8370, thank you very much 😀
If the 8C/16T is ~the same
If the 8C/16T is ~the same price as a 4C/8T i7 then this will def be in my next rig. Along with a couple of RX 480 Nitro+ cards probably.
VR is my goal, and a Nitro 480 per eye, along with 4C/8T to drive each of them, should be nothing short of amazing. Not to mention considerably cheaper than anything Intel/Nvidia can offer…
Personally, I think if AMD get the price right, they are going to completely own VR.
You’re either an ignorant AMD
You’re either an ignorant AMD fanboy or just didn’t do your research. Anyway enjoy your crap VR experience lmfao
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2016/08/01/amd_nvidia_gpu_vive_vr_performance_in_raw_data
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2016/08/09/amd_nvidia_gpu_vr_performance_in_call_starseed
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2016/08/11/amd_nvidia_gpu_vr_performance_in_trials_on_tatooine
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2016/08/15/amd_nvidia_gpu_vr_performance_valves_robot_repair
Any moron that quotes hardocp
Any moron that quotes hardocp to validate anything is solidly entrenched in the green camp. AMD snubbed hardocp due to their biased slant on any and everything regarding AMD vs. NVIDIA.
Since then hardocp has started rumors to paint AMD in a negative light. Such as “rift developing between Su and Kydori” and “Kydori demands AMD sell RTG to Intel or I quit”
As I don’t see AMD reestablishing press credentials to hardocp anytime soon you can take anything they say about AMD with a heavy dose of salt.
Agree with the hardocp
Agree with the hardocp bullshit, they are not trusty. Is not HARDocp alone. Tech power up and anandtech are bullshit too for similar reasons.
I have benchmarks of techpowerup for the RX480 using the same games, same card and showing slightly worst results to the nvidia competition when other sites show better results in the same scenario. Then we know that they were using old drivers for benchmarks and used only the worst games for amd and the best games for nvidia.
But, AMD lied with bulldozer and if they do lie again with ZEN, as an AMD user i tell you, IS FUCKING OVER.
HardOCP is about as bought
HardOCP is about as bought and sold to their sponsors and Nvidia specifically. They have zero credibility.
They were a site I frequented years ago. Now they are the National Enquirer of PC/tech reporting. A shill for sponsors.
I am not disputing any of the
I am not disputing any of the people calling sites out but can you give some specific instances or links so i can actually be entertained?
I actually love reading about that kind of stuff.
He said >dual< 480s. Wich is
He said >dual< 480s. Wich is ~as fast as a 1080. And something the 1060 can't do anyway. Maybe someone else needs to stop being an ignorant fanboi and do some research ? Like learning how to to read for a start...
I remember and i also checked
I remember and i also checked the 2011 rumors and previews of the Bulldozer 8150 and AMD and many sites said “will be better than sandy bridge”.
So….. i think this is all the same but with less power consumption.
ZEN are low power FX cpus. That’s what i think.
I doubt they took 6 years of
I doubt they took 6 years of r&d time, multiple quarters of quite substantial losses to come up with a lower power fx line cpu.
The fact that investors put up with losses amounting to billions of dollars without deviding up and selling off the entire company or letting go by substantial amounts of people, does show that the people funding this entire endevour are very confident this new architecture will not only recoup that money and the lost return of throwing it amd instead of something profitable, but will also bring a worthwhile return on that investment and risk.
They knew they where on the wrong travk with the bulldozer platform so ditched it and started froma clean slate, which fits perfectly with the 6 year silence and the lack of real development of the bulldozer architecture.
I expect something completely new and fresh. The only question that remains is, will it be good enough to compete now and will it have enough room to develop and improve further in the future.
They have done it before and beat intel on their own game, no reason they can’t do it again.
I do know that this is either a new lease of life for amd or the end. If zen fails they will not be able to recover, i’m pretty sure about that.
The diagrams show that Zen is
The diagrams show that Zen is *nothing like* Faildozer. Thank god. If anything it’s more like Intels CPUs. If they are good, and not crazy priced, I’ll be getting one.
I can’t believe AMD has had
I can’t believe AMD has had the same chip since 2012, and is still not able to produce a new chip until 2017! Intel will already have another new chip released, And AMD will be in the dust again right at launch. This is ridiculous!
I’m a Intel fan boy and have
I’m a Intel fan boy and have been since first gen core2, before then i was a poor person and then got a good job and could afford Intel products…
With that said, i don’t care about who is faster i will buy the best bang for the buck and as of now and since the core2 intel has been in the lead…
OK to the point i wish to talk about, I see a new CPU race in the future and that can only benefit all of us. I mean with h.265 encoding about to hit main stream the processors that are currently available lack compute power to process this codec. Hell at 11 fps at 4k is killing me, and for GPU assistance in encoding i’m looking for more compression to a lower bit-rate for movie storage on my Plex server. So i need to CPU for more accurate bit for bit encoding. So the GPU is no help for my needs…
If the Zen proves to be a great processor for this type of computing i will by this product, if Intel can answer with other product i will by that one…
Really doesn’t matter at all which one really wins, because we all win, if there is competition!!