AMD Announces Q2 2017 Results: Ryzen Makes An Impact

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• stockolicious - Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - link

  "Back then AMD generally outperformed intel in most workloads across most of the market; now - they're competitive"
  back then AMD didnt destroy Intel's cost structure by gluing small high yielding dies together - this is the biggest longest lasting advantage AMD has ever had. If you throw in the manufacturing gap slowing and its the perfect storm for AMD to be around and do well for many years.

• Cooe - Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - link

  This guy gets it. While on the small, single chip scale, AMD's 8-core Zeppelin die might not be as lustrous compared to Intel's latest & greatest (Kaby-Lake, Skylake-X) for a number of reasons; lower IPC, lower clock-ceiling, increased cache (spec. L3) latency (more so vs KL; SL-X's new mesh topology brings a few of it's own cache latency issues to the table), etc.. This all changes though when you zoom out just a little bit; then the tables turn completely. This table turner isn't Zen's basic CPU layout, and it was never supposed to be; Zen's performance just needed to be competitive because Zen's basic functional CPU blocks (ALU's, FPU's, etc...) weren't the revolutionary part of the design. That otoh, would be it's modularity & scalability with Infinity Fabric; which is where Jim Keller and his team RIGHTLY choose to focus their efforts (IF is Keller's brainchild, just like it's ancestor, Hyper-Transport which he also designed). AMD needed a single, high performance design that could scale from laptops to servers. They simply couldn't afford to design/maintain 2-separate CPU arch's aimed at the consumer and HEDT/server markets like Intel can to deal with this problem (let's Intel's small 4-core chips continue to use a simple/fast ring bus for superior single-threaded perf, vs the game perf & cache latency hitting mesh interconnect required on Skylake-X/SP to be able to scale high enough in core count), and seeing as how it's REALLY hard to climb out of near bankruptcy selling MASSIVE monolithic chips; they set out to blaze a new path for CPU scalability. They succeeded gloriously; probably better than anyone could have predicted honestly. With Infinity Fabric they've managed to near single-handedly conquer Moore's Law, and have absolutely SHATTERED the cost margins on producing, selling, and buying high-core count CPU's. Everyone's going to be going this direction in the future. Intel knows this better than anyone (see their "EMIB" work; the "glued together desktop dies" press-kit comments were practically written in jealousy green). And they pulled this off not just way before anyone else, but on a "edge of bankruptcy" R&D budget.... It boggles the mind that that they managed to get the Zen CPU arch itself up to matching Broadwell-E (aka only 1 gen behind in IPC (SL==KL), though w/ a notably lower clock ceiling) while being almost infinitely scalable (aka "Infinity Fabric", as it can connect a near infinite # of devices over nearly any kind of bus fast enough. I.e. a 256bit bi-directional crossbar connecting the 2 CCX's in a Zeppelin die, or over 64 PCIe 3.0 lanes connecting a 2-socket EPYC), all while upending the entire economics of CPU production (and potentially any kind of large chip like GPU's).

• stockolicious - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link

  @Cooe
  very true,
  "This table turner isn't Zen's basic CPU layout"
  
  I also had heard one of the AMD execs talk about a Basic or Generic layout being helpful when working with the foundry partners. To me it seems that they not only hit a home run with Infinity fabric and and scaling so well but also had to manage coordination with the foundry partners to make a smooth transition to the new node. Making the design more generic made it easier for their partners and that seems to be what is happening at 7nm. (so far anyway)

• Threska - Sunday, July 30, 2017 - link

  Wonder if their interposer tech might make an appearance later?

• DrKlahn - Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - link

  The single threaded advantage is largely overblown. In real world usage I can't tell any difference between the platforms. We have 5820's and Ryzen 1600 systems at work and the biggest difference is the enormous savings with the latter. Responsiveness and overall performance is a wash. Look at the article on this site where the conclusion is stated that office professionals will notice the web and PDF responsiveness and then look at the measured differences. They're usually a measured in milliseconds or in the PDF test a whole second. It's clearly trying to show some reason why you would spend $500+ more on the Intel platform. Sure there are still some applications that show a measurable gain for Intel, but I'm guessing as both companies push more and more cores into the mainstream those applications will see patches that reduce this considerably. We've already seen that happen with games.
  
  The next argument will be that we've had multi-core processors for years and applications still aren't using them. While that's true, we haven't had 6 cores / 12 threads at a $200 price point with an affordable mainboard ecosystem to back it. That is a game changer.

• cryosx - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

  I think this time around Intel's dirty anti competitive tactics of locking in OEMs isn't going to work because of YouTube and the internet.

• WorldWithoutMadness - Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - link

  I doubt it will last too long. Intel is moving fast and we haven't seen Zen APU yet. Intel leak has already pointing 6 cores desktop and quadcore 15W class mobile, pretty sure the price will be competitive. People will realize that Intel has been milking the masses for so long but that number of people realizing that should be smaller than those who don't care at all.

• DrKlahn - Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - link

  Intel has nothing on the foreseeable roadmap that looks to be disruptive to AMD's Zen platform. We're seeing incremental updates in their moved up product lines. AMD is also working on an improved Zen (Zen+) and Zen 2. Which of the two future architectures pull ahead, is hard to say. Consumption wise Intel is not very competitive with Zen in their newest platform (Skylake - X). Since their next process jump is a ways away, it doesn't appear this will change anytime soon.
  
  So unless Intel is holding something back from us and their shareholders, what we're seeing today is likely how the market will be for at least a few quarters.

• CajunArson - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

  OK so with all that RyZen with full availability on the market and a black-swan mining rush that saw AMD literally sell out of every single card it could make at elevated prices they.... still lost money but had a small operating profit when you discount the fact that they are deeply in debt.
  
  When retailers started slashing the prices on RyZen CPUs it was hailed as some sort of miracle in AMD's manufacturing process with "magical" 80% yields (magical to fanboys, not to people who know the industry very well). Not one person stopped to consider that maybe the prices were being lowered because the chips weren't flying off the shelves at full price.
  
  The opposite is true of AMD's old video cards that are just rebrands of last years ho-hum Rx 480. The miners scooped them all up.
  
  So the real moral of the story is: AMD probably made its almost-but-not-really profit this quarter on the backs of miners who ate up the supply and are literally right now dumping the cards back on the secondary market as the coins start to crash. RyZen wasn't the real reason for that profit, and a 2% increase in margin from last year when AMD was literally selling bad retreads of its 2012 product lineup is no miracle.

• austinsguitar - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link

  its slightly more dramatic than that. intel has no counter in the server space in about 4 months due to epic cpu's. this will grow in due time. only question is how low will they go with the pricing. with a 16 core cpu for 1000 dollars, i bet its only time until intel is a little more shaken up. im not an amd guy either, i just know 32 cores + lower pricing + higher lane capacity > 28 cores + intel brand loyalty... i actually feel bad for the guys. it will be interesting.