AMD Officially Talks Zen 2 CPU Architecture: Significant Performance Uplift With 2X Throughput, Doubled Core Density With Up To 64 Cores, PCIe Gen 4.0 Support, Aiming Server EPYC Rome 7nm CPUs First

With EPYC Rome, AMD skipped 10nm and went straight for 7nm. They have tapped in TSMC to produce the chips for them which gives them an edge over the previous partner, GloFo (Global Foundries).

AMD has made significant changes to their CPU architecture which help deliver twice the throughput of their first generation Zen architecture. The major points include an entirely redesigned execution pipeline, major floating point advances with doubled the floating point to 256-bit and double bandwidth for load/store units. One of the key upgrades for Zen 2 is the doubling of the core density which means we are now looking at 2x the core count for each core complex (CCX).

AMD confirmed that the EPYC Rome series server processors would make use of eight 7nm CPU chiplets which will be connected to a large I/O die. The CPU chiplets will be able to house up to 64 cores and 128 threads.

Additionally, the company shared that its follow-on 7nm+-based “Zen 3” and “Zen 4” x86 core architectures are on-track.

AMD Unveils World’s First 7nm Datacenter GPUs — Powering the Next Era of Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing and High Performance Computing (HPC)

AMD(NASDAQ: AMD) today announced the AMD Radeon Instinct™ MI60 and MI50 accelerators, the world’s first 7nm datacenter GPUs, designed to deliver the compute performance required for next-generation deep learning, HPC, cloud computing and rendering applications. Researchers, scientists and developers will use AMD Radeon Instinct™ accelerators to solve tough and interesting challenges, including large-scale simulations, climate change, computational biology, disease prevention and more.

AMD Stock Soars After Amazon Announced As Major Partner Using EPYC Chips

AMD is showing proof it can command real market share with current first generation 14nm EPYC products

This is a major win for AMD and is a legitimate milestone as the company continues to take enterprise and data center market share away from Intel, who has enjoyed a >99 percent position in the market as recently as a year or so ago. Amazon cites a 10 percent cost reduction by switching to EPYC servers versus their Intel (NASDAQ:INTC 47.25 -0.01%) Xeon counterparts.

SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 590 NITRO+ Special Edition smiles for camera

It appears that board partners are opting for the best cooling solution they have. While PowerColor decided to use their RX 580 Red Devil Golden Sample cooler design (the beefy one), ASUS is planning to equip triple-fan STRIX cooler for the ‘new’ Radeon RX 590.

The Radeon RX 590 is currently expected to launch on November 15th.

New Windows Activation Bug Is Downgrading Some Windows 10 Pro Licenses to Windows 10 Home

[Update]: Microsoft says only a limited number of Windows 10 users are affected

One thing that connects most of these users is the fact that almost all of them had upgraded to Windows 10 Pro using their Windows 7 or Windows 8 Professional keys. The Windows 10 Pro deactivation issue appears to be widespread, affecting users in several countries, including the US, UK, Korea and Japan. Even Insider community has reported the same issue.

In a statement to Wccftech, Jeff Jones, Senior Director at Microsoft, confirmed the activation issue and assured that the problem will be resolved soon.

Exclusive: First AMD Navi GPU Will Have 40 CUs And Is Codenamed Navi 12

Navi 12 will be the first Navi part to arrive and will be landing sometime in 1H 2019...The performance level of this part will be equivalent to Vega and it will be a small GPU based on 7nm.

Navi 20 is going to be the true high-end GPU built on the 7nm node and as things stand right now, you are tentatively looking at it landing sometime around late 2020 – 2021.

AMD’s David Wang: We Won’t Implement DirectX RayTracing (DXR) Until Its Offered In All Product Ranges

[According to AMD] ..the company does not have plans to support DXR at the point in time until it becomes available across their entire product line – from the low end to the high end.

AMD EPYC Milan With 7nm+ Zen 3 Cores and NVIDIA Volta-Next GPU With Greater Than 7 TFLOPs FP64 Compute To Power Perlmutter Supercomputer

The new supercomputer was discussed in a presentation by the US Department of Energy where it was stated that both next-generation AMD and NVIDIA hardware would be powering it.

Perlmutter, a pre-exascale system coming in 2020 to the DOE’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)

AMD Radeon RX 590 Review Roundup

AMD Radeon RX 590: New but not quite

AMD’s new mid-range card is aiming at the ‘sweet spot’ between RX 580 and RX Vega 56. The price is bit surprising, as it stands at 280 USD mark. That is more than RX 480 and RX 580 at launch. However, the card comes with three games for free.

Is that enough to convince Radeon fans? Is RX 590 the last stop before Navi? Should you buy it? Read the reviews we gathered below to find out!

AMD Polaris 30 GPU made at both GlobalFoundries and Samsung

The 12nm FinFET manufacturing process from GlobalFoundries, also known as 12LP, is quite similar to Samsung's 11LPP, as both are derived from the original 14nm FinFET process, there shouldn't be any difference between these chips, at least not on paper.

This also means that AMD might use Samsung for its future chips, .. the first 7nm parts [are] coming from TSMC, and with GlobalFoundries sticking to 12nm [not making 7nm parts], Samsung might be the logical choice [for some 7nm parts].

AMD’s Limited Edition ‘Ryzen Max’ Bundle Offers sRyzen 7 2700 8 Core and Ryzen 5 2600X 6 Core CPUs With Wraith Max CPU Coolers

Wraith Max 200W CPU Cooler For Your Ryzen 7 or Ryzen 5

AMD states that with the Wraith Max cooler, users will be able to get out-of-box advantages of XFR2 (Extended Frequency Range V2.0) or just plain old manual overclocking. The Wraith Max cooler itself is a really solid design, offering great thermal performance with a mix of RGB LEDs

the Wraith Max alone costs around $60 US but with the bundle you get both the cooler and CPU. The bundle will be available worldwide through AMD partners and as mentioned before, be a limited offering for the holiday season.

AMD’s Zen 2 7nm CPU Core to Feature Double the L3 Cache Size

Zen 2, despite its name, is actually going to power the company’s 3rd generation lineup of Ryzen processors.
key enhancements :
Improved Execution Pipeline
Doubled Floating Point (256-bit) and Load/Store (Doubled Bandwidth)
Doubled Core Density
Half the Energy Per Operation
Improved Branch Prediction
Better Instruction Pre-Fetching
Re-Optimized Instruction Cache
Larger Op Cache
Increased Dispatch / Retire Bandwidth
Maintaining High Throughput for All Modes
double the L3 cache

we will likely see AMD debut 8 core mainstream Ryzen 3000 series processors with 32MB of L3 cache. A larger L3 means that the system would have to fetch data from DDR4 memory less often, which translates to faster work completion at less power.

AMD CTO on Zen 3, 7nm+ CPU Architecture: Will Primarily Leverage Efficiency With Some Modest Performance Opportunities

AMD Zen 3 Will Use 7nm+ EUV Process Node, Primarily Going To Leverage Power Efficiency With Modest Performance Uplift

Zen 2 is currently looking to be one of the biggest CPU performance and CPU efficiency [boosts] since Zen itself back in 2017.

AMD’s latest roadmap now confirms that after Zen 2, we would get Zen 3, Zen 4 and even, Zen 5.

[Per AMD CTO] “Moore’s Law is slowing down, semiconductor nodes are more expensive, and we’re not getting the frequency lift we used to get,” he said in a talk during the launch, calling the 7-nm migration “

Looking ahead, a 7-nm-plus node using extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) will “primarily leverage efficiency with some modest device performance opportunities,”

AMD GPU Shipments Increased 6.5% While NVIDIA Saw 4.3% Increase in Q3 2018, Intel Leads With 13.1% GPU Shipment Increase

The main contributor to the increased sales [by AMD, Nvidia, Intel] was notebooks where GPU shipments increased by 7% while desktop graphics decreased -16%. Total GPU shipments for the year declined by 2.2% versus the previous year.

TSMC could be about to replace Intel

according to Bloomberg TSMC’s threat to Intel is a sea change in chipmaking that’s seen one company after another hire TSMC to manufacture the chips they design.

TSMC has shedloads of customers, including Apple and Qualcomm, AMD, and small players such as Ampere Computing. The explosion of components built this way has given TSMC the technical know-how needed to churn out the smallest, most efficient and powerful chips in the highest volumes.

Intel was the first to use 14-nanometer technology at scale in 2013, according to Goldman Sachs. It won’t have 10-nanometer ready for prime time until the end of 2019 -- by far the longest wait in its history. TSMC has gone from 20-nanometer to 7-nanometer production at the same time.

AMD Chief Executive Officer Lisa Su lets TSMC handle the tricky production and thinks that is one of the best decisions the company made.

“It allows us to manage risk and focus on the things that make the product great.”

Su is now telling investors and customers that its new chip designs will surpass those from Intel.

AMD EPYC Reaches 2% Market Share in 2018, 7nm EPYC Rome Expected To Capture Up To 5% Server Market Share – Intel Remains The Undisputed Champ With 98% Market Share

AMD Expected To Capture 5% Server Market Share With 7nm EPYC Rome Processors, Intel Still Trying Hard To Keep Rival x86 Server Market Share Under 15%

Now AMD is on the verge of introducing their 2nd line of EPYC processors codenamed Rome, based on the 7nm process. These are the first CPUs for the server space which will be using the 7nm process node and we already have details on the specs which includes 64 cores, 128 threads, and a totally revamped chip and architecture design that is unlike anything we have seen before.

AMD could power future Microsoft Surface laptops

With upcoming Picasso APUs

According to the rumor mill, Microsoft's future Surface laptop could use AMD hardware, most likely the upcoming Picasso APUs.

If it happens, and if Intel does not manage to twist Microsoft's arm, this will be a big win for AMD as such a deal will give AMD a much-needed boost in the notebook market.