PC Perspective Podcast #527 – 1/2/2019
Our podcast this week looks at the analog optical Wooting One keyboard, new entry-level AMD APUs with Vega graphics, the latest RTX 2060 rumors, and a discussion of how we all found ourselves here at PCPer.
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Check out previous podcast episodes: https://pcper.com/podcast
Today's Podcast Hosts
Sebastian Peak
Josh Walrath
Jeremy Hellstrom
Jim Tanous
Show Topics
00:03:27 – Intro: Extra Life Update
00:05:31 – Review: Wooting One Analog Optical Keyboard
00:11:31 – News: AMD Athlon Vega APUs
00:14:09 – News: MSI B450/B350 Athlon 200GE Overclocking
00:17:45 – News: Dell Goes Public (Again)
00:22:17 – News: ARM Cortex-A65AE with SMT
00:26:52 – News: NVIDIA OC Scanner for Pascal
00:29:19 – News: NVIDIA RTX 2060 Leaks
00:35:38 – Discussion: Gaming & Poor Parenting
00:40:19 – Discussion: PC Perspective History
00:56:55 – Picks of the Week
01:12:10 – Outro
Picks of the Week
Jim – FlexiSpot SanoDesk Pro
Jeremy – Not the Logitech Harmony Hub
Josh – eero Home WiFi System
Sebastian – Gotek Floppy Drive Emulator
You mentioned this was one of
You mentioned this was one of the first times ARM processors have SMT. Is this not SMT or is this something entirely different? (4 threads per core)
https://level1techs.com/video/checking-out-gigabyte-r281-t91-arm-server
It’s the Cavium(Now owned by
It’s the Cavium(Now owned by Marvell) ThunderX2 that’s not really based off of the ThunderX DNA! ThunderX2’s actual design is based off of the Broadcom Vulcan SMT4(4 thread’s per core design) and that Vulkan Design was acquired by Cavium(Marvell) after Broadcom was acguired by Avago Technologies with Avago selling of the Vulcan IP to Cavium.
Wikichip has a detailed writeup on the Vulkan/ThunderX2 and wikichip is a great resource for reporters and consumers alike that desire detailed information in a condensed but very detailed manner. Wikichip States:
“History[edit]
Vulcan can trace its roots all the way back to Raza Microelectronics XLR family of MIPS processors from 2006. With the introduction of their XLR family in 2009, Raza (and later NetLogic) moved to a high-performance superscalar design with fine-grained 4-way multithreading support. In 2011, Broadcom acquired NetLogic Microsystems and integrated them Broadcom’s Embedded Processor Group.
In 2013, Broadcom announced that they have licensed the ARMv7 and ARMv8 architectures, allowing them to develop their own microarchitectures based on the ISA. Vulcan is the outcome of this effort which involved adopting the ARM ISA instead of MIPS and enhancing the cores in various ways. Vulcan development started in early 2012 and has was expected to enter mass production in mid-2015.
In 2016 Cavium acquired Vulcan from Broadcom which was introduced the following year. In early 2018, Vulcan-based microprocessor entered general availability under the ThunderX2 brand.” (1)
So Broadcom took a SMT4 capable MIPS ISA design and reengineered it for the ARMv7/v8 ISA instead of the MIPS ISA and created its Vulkan custom ARM core design that was also SMT4 capable.
It was also rumored that AMD’s K12 custom ARM core design(Mothballed by AMD) was also to be SMT capable but since AMD is no longer at the moment expecting to introduce any K12 based products that’s still unknown.
CPU IP sure makes the rounds via mergers and acquisitions and even outright selling of the specific CPU IP.
(1)
“Vulcan – Microarchitectures – Cavium ”
https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/cavium/microarchitectures/vulcan
Congratulations on surviving
Congratulations on surviving 2018! (Perhaps I should say Hurray for the B-Ark?) So who got custody of Joshtekk?
Yes, definitely need more 4K monitor coverage to expose those who try to pass off 300 nits as HDR. I want Enterprise technology where the main screen can give you a sunburn — or at least be closer to Rec. 2100 compliant than the current sub-$1K crop.
What happened to Alex?
What happened to Alex?
Oh shit, I think we forgot
Oh shit, I think we forgot him in the church. Hope they left food.
Guys? Guys? Where’d y’all
Guys? Guys? Where'd y'all go?
In all seriousness, my position was automated out and made redundant in the switch over. Wish the crew the best of luck in carrying the torch forward. Will definietely come crash the party at Jim's if the oppertunity presents itself!
Is that what ‘automated’
Is that what 'automated' means now?
oops, I knew I forgot
oops, I knew I forgot something!
It looks like AMD is working
It looks like AMD is working on ARM to some degree and Michael over at Phoronix states:
“Up to now the AMDKFD kernel driver needed for running the ROCm user-space has only worked on x86_64 CPUs, but with some simple changes, it turns out this Radeon compute kernel driver can work on 64-bit ARM as well.
The motivation for getting the AMDKFD driver working on 64-bit ARM isn’t entirely clear so it could be for a reason as simple as an ARM employee discovering it could work fairly trivially or it could be something more interesting. Posted by one the AMDKFD patch wrangler at AMD on Wednesday was this patch allowing the “Kernel Fusion Driver” to build on ARM64 (AArch64). The changes were just a few lines to include allowing the kernel Kconfig option to display for ARM64 and then also dealing with a few x86_64-specific lines of code. (1)
Maybe AMD is going forward with its K12 custom ARM core design but who Knows! AMD does still have its Seattle(Not Based on K12) Opteron A1100(Based on A57 cores) ARM server core clients to support. I’d like to see AMD’s K12 made use of by some semi-custom Client for maybe even a Portable Gaming solution where AMD’s K12 CPU cores are paired with Vega/Navi Graphics!
(1)
“It Turns Out AMDGPU KFD Compute Support Can Work On 64-bit ARM”
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ARM64-AMDKFD-HSA-Compute
Josh is obviously holding out
Josh is obviously holding out for the Big Bucks – from AMD!
Nah, AMD is small beans
Nah, AMD is small beans compared to the potential of the JoshTekk empire!! Maybe he'll get bored one day swimming in his money and josh bobblehead/merch vault and buy AMD though 😀
It’s 2019 and AMD, the folks
It’s 2019 and AMD, the folks that brought you MOAR Affordable COARS than ever before, looks to be bringing even MOAR COARS to AM4.
The Big Question is will the Zen-2 based Ryzen SKUs also support PCIe 4.0, and Ditto for Threadripper-3. I know that AMD will support Socket AM4 until 2020 but I do hope that AMD brings that PCIe 4.0 support also even if it requires a New AM4 Mothetboard that’s been engineered to handle any PCIe 4.0 signaling.
I hope that it’s true that Zen-2 will see up to 16 core Ryzen/AM4 parts and with the larger L1/l2 and L3 cache sizes of Zen-2 it will also to help with even more latency hiding of any of those latency adding DDR4 DRAM memory accesses. Now AMD please start the process of DDR5 adoption alongside PCIe 4.0! That would really help with the bandwidth needs all around.
Fat L3 cashes equate to better chances of any data/code that’s been evicted from L1 I$/D$ caches, or L2 cache, will still reside in L3 if needed again and that sure cuts down on needng as much DDR4 DRAM memory accesses that really add on the latency for the worse.
DDR5 may not solve any latency issues at first but for sure it will benifit any Integrated Graphics that’s always starving for the bandwidth. So Maybe by 2019’s end there will at least be news of some DDR5 shipping and Motherboards and CPUs/Chipsets that support the JEDEC DDR5 standard.
CES 2019 is near also, does anyone think that AMD’s CPUs/APUs will be included in any OEM’s Mini-Dasktop designs. Last years CES had news of a Zotac Zbox with AMD APU options but the product never materialized. AMD needs to step up with some “NUC” like form-factor products of its own with Zen-2 based Processors inside.
Also what about Discrete Vega Mobile for the non Apple Laptop market. Apple’s latest MacBooks are getting 2 diecrete mobie Vega variants that come with 4GB of HBM2 but what about the non Apple laptop market. Will there be any Vega Discrete Mobile design wins, or even Vega-2/Navi Discrete Mobile GPU products announced at CES 2019.
Where did everything in the
Where did everything in the Church go? Set, A/V gear, review samples.
Looking forward to see where you take the site! I’ve been around since 2007!