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Will Intel’s Kaby Lake Outshine AMD’s ZEN?
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A Wall Street analyst, with no thought to his personal safety, has dared to question what AMD fans have been telling us for ages – Zen will bring about peace on earth, cure cancer and above all give Intel a good kicking.
However, Christopher Danely with Citigroup has bravely claimed that with its “Kaby Lake” family of processors, Intel remains a “step-function ahead of AMD Zen when Zen chips are released in Q416.”
He also doubts the benchmark stats that AMD presented to promote Zen’s capabilities relative to Intel’s microprocessors claiming that the AMD controlled benchmark compared an engineering sample of a Zen processor that has not been released yet against a three-month old Intel processor, with both chips clocked at 3.0 Ghz.
“We note the maximum speed for the Intel chip is 3.2 GHz. The result showed AMD completing the benchmark 2 per cent faster than Intel, implying higher CPU efficiency on a “clock for clock” basis. AMD kept both 8 core chips at the same clock speed of 3.0 Ghz, below the native clock speed of the Intel chip. The benchmark result showed the Zen Summit Ridge processor completing the Blender rendering benchmark in 48.07 seconds, 2 per cent ahead of Intel Broadwell-E chip’s time of 49.06 seconds. We note this is only one benchmark using a custom workload performed at an AMD event under controlled conditions, and therefore cannot be verified by third parties and does not represent expected results under all workloads, Danely said.
Instead he thinks that Chipzilla will benefit from its process technology lead while AMD’s manufacturing partner, Global Foundries, which has a “spotty track record.”
“After several of delays and eventually failing to develop 20nm and 14nm on its own, GlobalFoundries entered into a partnership agreement with Samsung in April 2014 to adopt Samsung’s 14nm FinFET process. Despite using the same tools, recipes, and materials as Samsung’s 14nm process, products built on GlobalFoundries’ 14nm did not appear until earlier this year, roughly a year after Samsung released its Exynos 7420 SoC built on its 14nm process,” Danely pointed out.
Since the partnership agreement with Samsung does not include 10nm or lower nodes, we think the technology gap between AMD and Intel will widen again once Intel migrates to 10nm next year.
Meanwhile Intel released its new Kaby Lake chips on an improved 14+nm process this month, featuring a 15 per cent performance improvement over its Skylake chips. Kaby Lake chips deliver up to 12 per cent faster productivity performance and 19 per cent faster web performance over comparable Skylake chips
“We expect independent benchmarks to show Intel’ performance is a step function ahead of AMD Zen when Zen chips are released in 4Q16,” he said.
Below you will find lots of rantings from Intel and AMD fanboys and we expect the language to be colourful. Those of a sensitive disposition might want to look away now.
Courtesy-Fud
AMD’s Bet On ARM Does Is Not Working
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Buried in the AMD results was a note which seemed to hint that AMD’s plan to flog ARM based server chips was not going very well.
Chief executive Lisa Su admitted that ARM-based server chips have experienced slower-than-expected reception from the owners of data centres and server farms.
AMD delayed its own ARM-based Opteron microprocessor, code-named Seattle, until the fourth quarter of this year. ARM was having a harder time proving itself to the multibillion-dollar market for high-end server chips.
An engineering sample of AMD’s long awaited 8 core server SOC code named “Hierofalcon” has been spotted and tested and according to WCCTech it looked pretty good. Itis based around 8 ARM-64bit A57 cores running at 2.0Ghz. And although Hierofalcon maxes out at frugal TDP of 30W.
So even the promising reviews aren’t enough for AMD to be optimistic about the ARM based gear.
Su said in an analyst conference call that the company expects to see “modest production shipments” of Seattle in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, AMD’s Intel-compatible “x86″ server chips will be the company’s mainstay product offering for data centres.
She said that AMD was continuing its ARM efforts and is seeing them as a longer term bet.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/amds-bet-on-arm-does-not-appear-to-be-helping.html
More Details Uncovered On AMD’s ZEN Cores
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Our well informed industry sources have shared a few more details about the AMD’s 2016 Zen cores and now it appears that the architecture won’t use the shared FPU like Bulldozer.
The new Zen uses a SMT Hyperthreading just like Intel. They can process two threads at once with a Hyperthreaded core. AMD has told a special few that they are dropping the “core pair” approach that was a foundation of Bulldozer. This means that there will not be a shared FPU anymore.
Zen will use a scheduling model that is similar to Intel’s and it will use competitive hardware and simulation to define any needed scheduling or NUMA changes.
Two cores will still share the L3 cache but not the FPU. This because in 14nm there is enough space for the FPU inside of the Zen core and this approach might be faster.
We mentioned this in late April where we released a few details about the 16 core, 32 thread Zen based processor with Greenland based graphics stream processor.
Zen will apparently be ISA compatible with Haswell/Broadwell style of compute and the existing software will be compatible without requiring any programming changes.
Zen also focuses on a various compiler optimisation including GCC with target of SPECint v6 based score at common compiler settings and Microsoft Visual studio with target of parity of supported ISA features with Intel.
Benchmarking and performance compiler LLVM targets SPECint v6 rate score at performance compiler settings.
We cannot predict any instruction per clock (IPC improvement) over Intel Skylake, but it helps that Intel replaced Skylake with another 14nm processor in later part of 2016. If Zen makes to the market in 2016 AMD might have a fighting chance to narrow the performance gap between Intel greatest offerings.
Courtesy-Fud
AMD Coherent Data Reaches 100 GBs
After a lot of asking around, we can give you some actual numbers about the AMD’s coherent fabric.
The inter-connecting technology already sounded very promising, but now we have the actual number. The HSA, Heterogeneous System Architecture MCM (Multi Chip Module) that AMD is working on can give you almost seven times faster score than the traditional PCIe interface.
Our industry sources have confirmed that with 4 GMI (Global Memory Interconnect) links AMD’s CPU and GPU can talk at 100GB/s. the traditional PCIe 16X provides 15GB/s at about 500 ns latency. Data Fabric eliminates PCIe latency too.
AMD will be using this technology with the next gen Multi Chip module that packs a Zeppelin CPU (most likely packed with a bunch of ZEN cores) and a Greenland GPU that of course comes with super fast HBM (High Bandwidth Memory). The Greenland and HBM can communicate at 500 GB/s and can provide highest performance GPU with 4+ teraflops.
This new MCM package based chip will also talk with DDR4 3200 memory at 100GB/s speed making it quite attractive for the HSA computation oriented customers.
AMD Misses Again
Fabless chipmaker AMD has come up with a mixed set of results for the second quarter. The company managed to make as much cash as the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street expected, but missed revenue expectations.
In fact its revenues were below the psychologically important billion figure at $942 million.
We knew it was going to be bad. Last week we were warned that the results would be flat. The actual figure was $942m, an 8.5 per cent sequential decline and a 34.6 per cent drop from the same period a year ago.
As you might expect, there are some measures of this not being AMD’s fault. The company is almost entirely dependent on PC sales. Not only have these fallen but don’t look like they are going to pick up for a while.
AMD’s Computing and Graphics division reported revenue of $379m, which was down 54.2 per cent, year-on-year. Its operating loss was $147m, compared to a $6m operating loss for last year’s quarter.
Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO, in a statement said that strong sequential revenue growth in AMD’s enterprise, embedded, and semi-custom segment and channel business was not enough to offset near-term problems in its PC processor business. This was due to lower than expected consumer demand that impacted sales to OEMs, she said.
“We continue to execute our long-term strategy while we navigate the current market environment. Our focus is on developing leadership computing and graphics products capable of driving profitable share growth across our target markets,” she added.
In the semi-custom segment, AMD makes chips for video game consoles such as the Nintendo Wii U, Microsoft Xbox One, and Sony PlayStation 4 consoles. That segment did reasonably well, up 13 percent from the previous quarter but down 8 percent from a year ago.
But AMD’s core business of processors and graphics chips fell 29 percent from the previous quarter and 54 percent from a year ago. AMD said it had decreased sales to manufacturers of laptop computers.
Figures like this strap a large target on AMD’s back with a sign saying “take me over” but AMD is not predicting total doom yet.
For the third quarter, AMD expects revenue to increase 6 percent, plus or minus 3 percent, sequentially, which is a fairly conservative outlook given the fact that Windows 10 is expected to push a few sales its way.
AMD supplies chips to the Nintendo Wii U, Microsoft Xbox One, and Sony PlayStation 4 consoles and these seem to be going rather well.
Did AMD Commit Fraud?
AMD must face claims that it committed securities fraud by hiding problems with the bungled 2011 launch of Llano that eventually led to a $100 million write-down, a US court has decided.
According to Techeye US District Judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers said plaintiffs had a case that AMD officials misled them by stating in the spring of 2011 and will have to face a full trial.
The lawsuit was over the Llano chip, which AMD had claimed was “the most impressive processor in history.”
AMD originally said that the product launch would happen in the fourth quarter of 2010, sales of the Llano were delayed because of problems at the company’s chip manufacturing plant.
The then Chief Financial Officer Thomas Seifert told analysts on an April 2011 conference call that problems with chip production for the Llano were in the past, and that the company would have ample product for a launch in the second quarter.
Press officers for AMD continued to insist that there were no problems with supply, concealing the fact that it was only shipping Llanos to top-tier computer manufacturers because it did not have enough chips.
By the time AMD ramped up Llano shipments in late 2011, no one wanted them any more, leading to an inventory glut.
AMD disclosed in October 2012 that it was writing down $100 million of Llano inventory as not shiftable.
Shares fell nearly 74 percent from a peak of $8.35 in March 2012 to a low of $2.18 in October 2012 when the market learned the extent of the problems with the Llano launch.
Intel Gives Exascale A Boost
Intel’s exascale computing efforts have received a boost with the extension of the company’s research collaboration with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.
Begun in 2011 and now extended to September 2017, the Intel-BSC work is currently looking at scalability issues with parallel applications.
Karl Solchenbach, Intel’s director, Innovation Pathfinding Architecture Group in Europe said it was important to improve scalability of threaded applications on many core nodes through the OmpSs programming model.
The collaboration has developed a methodology to measure these effects separately. “An automatic tool not only provides a detailed analysis of performance inhibitors, but also it allows a projection to a higher number of nodes,” says Solchenbach.
BSC has been making HPC tools and given Intel an instrumentation package (Extrae), a performance data browser (Paraver), and a simulator (Dimemas) to play with.
Charlie Wuischpard, VP & GM High Performance Computing at Intel said that the Barcelona work is pretty big scale for Chipzilla.
“A major part of what we’re proposing going forward is work on many core architecture. Our roadmap is to continue to add more and more cores all the time.”
“Our Knights Landing product that is coming out will have 60 or more cores running at a slightly slower clock speed but give you vastly better performance,” he said.
Intel Discusses SoFIA
Intel has shed more light on its upcoming SoFIA SoC, which stands for Smart of Feature Phone with Intel Architecture. For SEO purposes we’ll just call it Sophie.
The SoFIA project is being spearheaded by Intel’s Singapore office and CNET had a chance to catch up with recent developments. The chip was announced back in December, but details were sketchy and to some extent they still are.
SoFIA is going after MediaTek and Qualcomm in the mainstream and entry level segments. It features a dual-core Silvermont processor on a 28nm die. This is where it gets interesting, as Intel simply doesn’t do 28nm. SoFIA will be manufactured by TSMC instead, but Intel is planning to build SoFIA chips in-house in the future. The company has already made it clear that it is moving to 14nm, so there is a good chance the next generation chip will be a 14nm design churned out by Intel fabs.
SoFIA has an integrated 3G modem, but a 4G version is coming later. Bluetooth and WiFi are on other chips. Lack of 4G connectivity might not be a big deal for potential SoFIA customers, as the chip is supposed to go after entry level smartphone designs. Intel told CNET that SoFIA could pave the way to $50 smartphones in Asian markets and realistically nobody expects a $50 phone to feature 4G connectivity.
It is hard to say anything about SoFIA’s real-world performance. Quad-core tablet processors based on the Silvermont architecture can still hold their ground against many high-end ARM SoCs, so a dual-core version optimised for smartphones should have no trouble keeping up with lesser ARM parts.
Intel Releases 16GB Xeon Phi
Intel has announced five Xeon Phi accelerators including a high density add-in card while upping memory capacity to 16GB.
Intel has managed to get its Xeon Phi accelerator cards to power the Tianhe-2 cluster to the summit of the Top 500 list, however the firm isn’t waiting around to bring out new products. At the International Supercomputing show, Intel extended its Xeon Phi range with five new products, all of which have more than one TFLOPS double precision floating point performance, and the Xeon Phi 7120P and 7120X cards, which have 16GB of GDDR5 memory.
Intel’s Xeon Phi 7120P and 7120X cards have peak double precision floating point performance of over 1.2 TFLOPS, with 352GB/s bandwidth to the 16GB of GDDR5 memory. The firm also updated its more modest Xeon Phi 3100 series with the 3120P and 3120A cards, both with more than one TFLOPS of double precision floating point performance and 6GB of GDDR5 memory with bandwidth of 240GB/s.
Intel has also brought out the Xeon Phi 5120D, a high density card that uses mini PCI-Express slots. The firm said that the Xeon Phi 5120D card offers double precision floating point performance of more than one TFLOPS and 8GB of GDDR5 memory with bandwidth greater than 300GB/s.
That Intel is concentrating on double precision floating point performance with its Xeon Phi accelerators highlights the firm’s focus on research rather than graphics rendering or workstation tasks. However the firm’s ability to pack 16GB into its Xeon Phi 7100 series cards is arguably the most important development, as larger locally addressable memory means higher resolution simulations.
Intel clearly seems to believe that there is significant money to be made in the high performance PC market, and despite early reservations from industry observers the firm seems to be ramping up its Xeon Phi range at a rate that will start to give rival GPGPU accelerator designer Nvidia cause for concern.
Haswell Refresh Coming Next Year
Intel has been executing its tick tock strategy flawlessly since January 2006 and now there is some indication that we might see the first slip in 8 years come 2014. Intel’s latest roadmap claims that in 12 months from now, in Q2 2014 Haswell will be replaced by a “Haswell refresh”.
Haswell is a tock, a 22nm new architecture and Broadwell is supposed to be based on Haswell fundamentals, but shrunk to 14nm like a proper “tock”. In case that the Haswell refresh is a tweaked 22nm core, this would mean that after 7 years of execution and billions of investments in cutting edge fabrication processes, Intel would have to slow things down.
It is not certain what would happen to 2015 Skylake, a new 14nm architecture, or the 10nm Skymont that is supposed to be the shrink, but in case Broadwell gets pushed back by a year there is a big possibility that the whole roadmap would slip a year.
When it gets ready the Haswell refresh (possibly a disguise name for Broadwell ed.) is replacing Core i7, Core i5, Core i3, Pentium and Celeron based Haswell chips, some sooner rather than later.
The chipset responsible for Haswell refresh is already branded as Z97 and H97 in desktop versions replacing the Z87 and H87 boards proving that the socket are likely to continue existing at least through 2014. It will be interesting to see the developments and if Broadwell is really delayed or this is just game of words on Intel’s part.