Dinky Dino
Member
How much would these cpus even cost? I mean I always thought the i5 6600k wasn't THAT expensive at 230ish bucks
That's my point. Vive and Occulus have an i5 as their minimum/recommended spec for compatibility, meaning the Scorpio will have to have a cpu good enough to support PC performance VR. Not at the highest end but definitely quite capable. Your first couple of sentences are irrelevant really as PSVR is a custom solution. MS does not and is not developing their own VR solution so they will work with one or more VR solution providers.
Anyway, one thing is for sure. Scorpio is going to come with a significantly more powerful cpu in order to do VR. And looking at the choice on hand and what's to come in 2017, its not not a stretch to assume that it will be Zen based.
Just something regarding the clock speeds: they're largely irrelevant with wider busses, so more data can be processed per clock cycle. Is there some innovation that AMD isn't talking about? Perhaps.
Interestingly enough, the chips Keller helped designed for AMD (K8 IIRC) had the same advantage over Intel.
I'm hoping this is because Apple snapped them up... Apple using Zen would be a nice win for them.
I have been banging on about this in all the various threads to no real avail. The first thing is that any Zen CPU in consoles will be a mobile variant not desktop class like the first to market ones will be.
An 8 core that likely won't be desktop/server class cores, but instead an APU with cores designed for a lower TDP. They are likely to just clock the cores down.
edit - To summarize, these aren't the mainstream, mobile focused chips that will makeup AMD's Summit Ridge Zen APUs. That's the chip likely to be involved in any possible scorpio design.
How much would these cpus even cost? I mean I always thought the i5 6600k wasn't THAT expensive at 230ish bucks
Well I don't think any of the FX quad-cores were more than $140. A quad-core Zen CPU with the performance of a ~Skylake quadcore at that kind of price would be great.
zen isn't matching skylake performance at the same core counts and clockspeeds
zen isn't matching skylake performance at the same core counts and clockspeeds
Link?zen isn't matching skylake performance at the same core counts and clockspeeds
How do you know that?
How do you know that?
Is the Zen 8 core a 16 threaded CPU?
I think AMD's target performance puts them close to Haswell in terms single threaded performance. Which isn't terrible by any means, especially if the price is right. And these could definitely end up being fairly cheap since they aren't going to have an IGP which takes up most of the die space these days. That greatly reduces cost.
In theory, an unlocked 4C/8T Zen with ~Haswell single threaded performance for $150 sounds pretty nice and would probably be pretty frequently recommended.
There is no "mobile Zen" versus "desktop Zen". AMD will use exactly the same core, and likely the same dies across both desktop and mobile, just like Intel does. The reason mobile CPUs consume so much less power is that (a) they're clocked lower, with lower voltages and are able to sustain maximum clock speeds for shorter periods of time and (b) they're binned dies, which means that only a small proportion of chips coming off the production line have to meet their power/thermal thresholds, with the rest going into desktop chips. In a console environment you'd get the benefit of lower clock speeds (although they may end up so low that you defeat the purpose of using high-performance cores), but you're at very much the opposite end of the spectrum when it come to binning.
Intel can run out a production line of dual-core Skylake dies where the best 5-10% become U-class Core i7 or Core m7 chips that sell for $400 a piece, and the rest sell for $100 a piece as desktop-class Core i3 chips. You can't design a semi-custom console chip on the assumption that every die coming off the production line is going to have that Core m7 class power efficiency. Instead, because margins are so slim and you don't have the opportunity to bin, you have to set your TDP thresholds such that 95+% of chips pass, which means you end up with desktop-class thermals.
Even aside from all of this, there's the question of the die size (i.e. cost) of using a octo-core Zen CPU in a console. While we don't have confirmed die sizes for Zen yet, if they're attempting to compete with Intel on performance then they can't be a whole lot smaller than Broadwell/Skylake cores, which would put an 8-core Zen CPU somewhere around the 200mm² range of 14nm. Attach a 6 Tflop GPU on there and you have an absolutely monstrous die, probably dwarfing even the GP102 used in the $1200 Pascal Titan X. There's just no way you can squeeze that into a console without taking massive, crippling losses on each unit sold.
So.. Scorpio/Neo 8 core Jag+ for sure at this point?
Could you elaborate on "wider buses"?
K7 & K8's IPC advantage was mostly due to Intel making a misplaced bet on deep pipelines in NetBurst. Things reversed when Intel switched the the Core architecture, and have been that way for the last 10 years.
AMD has previewed the IPC improvement they are expecting with Zen, and unless they are sandbagging, it's not beyond Intel's current offerings.
Even aside from all of this, there's the question of the die size (i.e. cost) of using a octo-core Zen CPU in a console. While we don't have confirmed die sizes for Zen yet, if they're attempting to compete with Intel on performance then they can't be a whole lot smaller than Broadwell/Skylake cores, which would put an 8-core Zen CPU somewhere around the 200mm² range of 14nm. Attach a 6 Tflop GPU on there and you have an absolutely monstrous die, probably dwarfing even the GP102 used in the $1200 Pascal Titan X. There's just no way you can squeeze that into a console without taking massive, crippling losses on each unit sold.
That reminds me of a question I had on my mind the other day: Is there any confirmation that AMD will be bringing APUs to Zen? I suppose they can duct-tape a GPU and a Zen CPU together using some interposer magic but interposers between complex chips are super expensive.
Then again, with their roadmaps in mind, is AMD researching viable interposer technologies?
Yes, they did state that they will be making Zen APUs, they will be using Zen for all their CPU products, eventually.
I can't think of them using interposers in that manner in the near future. IIRC there was a video floating about speculating on the use of a multiple GPU die architecture but there is no real evidence to support that theory. However if such a thing were to be true, I could see them making interposers for that. Of course this is assuming also a lot of other factors, such as being able to increase IC production reticules such that massive areas of silicon are able to be patterned. I'm sure there a ton of other issues I haven't considered.
That's my point. Vive and Occulus have an i5 as their minimum/recommended spec for compatibility, meaning the Scorpio will have to have a cpu good enough to support PC performance VR. Not at the highest end but definitely quite capable. Your first couple of sentences are irrelevant really as PSVR is a custom solution. MS does not and is not developing their own VR solution so they will work with one or more VR solution providers.
Anyway, one thing is for sure. Scorpio is going to come with a significantly more powerful cpu in order to do VR. And looking at the choice on hand and what's to come in 2017, its not not a stretch to assume that it will be Zen based.
AMD will definitely price Zen aggressively, but nowhere near that aggressively. You're basically talking about them undercutting their competition (i7 K chips) by almost 60%. Even if their performance does lag behind Kaby Lake by 10-15% there's no reason for them to go crazy on price. My guess is $200-$250 for the 4C/8T chip (i.e. Core i5 price point) if they're competitive with Haswell/Broadwell and can clock reasonably well.
I didn't know Zen would be one chip fits all. Is that not different to how AMD have done things so far? Of course when I say desktop vs mobile I did mean in terms of TDP.
That reminds me of a question I had on my mind the other day: Is there any confirmation that AMD will be bringing APUs to Zen? I suppose they can duct-tape a GPU and a Zen CPU together using some interposer magic but interposers between complex chips are super expensive.
Then again, with their roadmaps in mind, is AMD researching viable interposer technologies?
AMD have confirmed that Zen based APUs will be releasing next year, although they haven't given any more info than that. I would highly suspect, though, that these will use fewer cores (likely 2 or 4) and incorporate much more modest GPUs than will be used in Scorpio. My guess would be that we'll see a 2C/4T die with relatively basic IGP for ultra-light laptops and cheap desktops, and then a 4C/8T die with RX 460 level IGP for more performance-focussed market segments.
It's funny you mention interposers, though, as there are two ways they could come into play with Zen-based chips. The first is the rumour that AMD's 32 core Zen is actually an MCM with four 8 core dies (i.e. the same die used in their consumer chips). This makes a lot of sense to me, as a 32 core single die solution would be an absolutely monstrously large die to try to make this early on on an immature node. (For reference it's taken Intel about 18 months to get >4C dies out on their 14nm process) I would imagine their experience with Fiji has also been helpful in learning how to overcome the hurdles of these kinds of monolithic MCMs, and the fact that they'll be charging thousands of dollars a piece should make the expense and manufacturing complexity worthwhile.
The second is the persistent speculation (I wouldn't even call it a rumour) that AMD will use HBM with their Zen-based APUs. This does make some degree of sense, in that the limited bandwidth of DDR3/4 is a big bottleneck for IGP, but I can't really see the economics working out. Even if you only use a single 4GB stack of HBM2, you still have to pay for the interposer and the package assembly, and I can't see that being financially viable for a price sensitive entry-level chip. In the longer run as costs some down it's sure to happen, but with even the new Titan X using GDDR5X it would definitely seem than HBM is still going to be very expensive for the foreseeable future.
Crystal Well chips from intel, some of IBM's power, and nintendo's wiiU are all MCMs.MCM, that's something I haven't heard of in a very long time... I mean, it makes sense if they're willing to tie multiple cores together, but I would gather that the communication to and from each chip would be the main bottleneck.
Personally, I don't think that HBM will be used with APUs since APUs have historically used system memory. I mean, that's the whole point of an APU, right? To reduce overall system cost while maintaining (reasonable) performance?
AMD's mindshare is non-existent in the CPU market, they have to shake things up. If their 4C parts are the same price as an i5 with better single threaded performance they are not going sell at the rate they would like. 4C needs to undercut i5s, 8C needs to undercut i7s. The bigger the disparity in single threaded performance, the more they need to undercut them by.
I agree $150 is definitely really low (it's why I said in theory) but I don't think they can go much over $200 with 4C parts and see success. Especially since Intel can take the hit and reduce their profit margins to go head to head with them.
MCM, that's something I haven't heard of in a very long time... I mean, it makes sense if they're willing to tie multiple cores together, but I would gather that the communication to and from each chip would be the main bottleneck.
Personally, I don't think that HBM will be used with APUs since APUs have historically used system memory. I mean, that's the whole point of an APU, right? To reduce overall system cost while maintaining (reasonable) performance?
Give me a MBP with an 8-core Zen CPU (suitably clocked down to fit within ~45W, of course) and I might finally have a reason to upgrade from my early 2011 model.
There is no "mobile Zen" versus "desktop Zen". AMD will use exactly the same core, and likely the same dies across both desktop and mobile, just like Intel does. The reason mobile CPUs consume so much less power is that (a) they're clocked lower, with lower voltages and are able to sustain maximum clock speeds for shorter periods of time and (b) they're binned dies, which means that only a small proportion of chips coming off the production line have to meet their power/thermal thresholds, with the rest going into desktop chips. In a console environment you'd get the benefit of lower clock speeds (although they may end up so low that you defeat the purpose of using high-performance cores), but you're at very much the opposite end of the spectrum when it come to binning.
Intel can run out a production line of dual-core Skylake dies where the best 5-10% become U-class Core i7 or Core m7 chips that sell for $400 a piece, and the rest sell for $100 a piece as desktop-class Core i3 chips. You can't design a semi-custom console chip on the assumption that every die coming off the production line is going to have that Core m7 class power efficiency. Instead, because margins are so slim and you don't have the opportunity to bin, you have to set your TDP thresholds such that 95+% of chips pass, which means you end up with desktop-class thermals.
Even aside from all of this, there's the question of the die size (i.e. cost) of using a octo-core Zen CPU in a console. While we don't have confirmed die sizes for Zen yet, if they're attempting to compete with Intel on performance then they can't be a whole lot smaller than Broadwell/Skylake cores, which would put an 8-core Zen CPU somewhere around the 200mm² range of 14nm. Attach a 6 Tflop GPU on there and you have an absolutely monstrous die, probably dwarfing even the GP102 used in the $1200 Pascal Titan X. There's just no way you can squeeze that into a console without taking massive, crippling losses on each unit sold.
Well, they used to have Bulldozer family cores for desktop and higher-end laptop and Bobcat family cores for cheap laptops/tablets, but they're dropping the low-end x86 cores in favour of ARM, so Zen is their only x86 core for late-2016 onwards (until the next-gen version of Zen).
In terms of physical chips, it looks like there's only a single 8 core die being manufactured for Summit Ridge, available either in the full 8C/16T configuration or a cut-down 4C/8T configuration. There's no indication that this die will be used in any mobile chips, but that's more down to the fact that there's zero interest for mobile CPUs without IGP. There are also Zen based APUs due next year code-named Raven Ridge, which will probably consist of a couple of dies which will be binned to cover everything from ultra-thin laptops to desktops and media PCs. The cores shouldn't be any different from the ones used in Summit Ridge, though.
I have been banging on about this in all the various threads to no real avail. The first thing is that any Zen CPU in consoles will be a mobile variant not desktop class like the first to market ones will be. The second thing is that even if I assume a Zen mobile core is 100% better in performance over Jaguar, it would still be a net worse situation we have in consoles now given Neo and Scorpio are bumping the GPUs 130% and 400% respectively.
If Scorpio is to have a lower clock Vega (>110W?), desktop class 8-core Zen (40-50W?) and 12GB of GDDR5X (30W?) then I could see that being well north of 200W and I'm not sure if Microsoft would/could go that high?
I would love nothing more than these consoles to have monster performing CPUs in them but logic and common sense screams otherwise.
Crystal Well chips from intel, some of IBM's power, and nintendo's wiiU are all MCMs.
Yes, but system memory isn't designed to accommodate the bandwidth requirements of modern video games. Even AMD's cheapest dedicated GPU, the RX 460, has over 100GB/s of bandwidth available to it, while an APU on DDR4 at 2133MT/s has to make do with sharing just 34GB/s with the CPU. Even moving to 3200MT/s RAM gives it just 51GB/s of shared bandwidth.
Actual benchmarks bear this out, with AMD APUs getting near linear performance increases from faster memory. This shows that the limited bandwidth is the main bottleneck in an APU system, and there's a hard limit on how powerful an integrated GPU they can use if it's not going to be held back by the system memory.
This is why Intel use large eDRAM pools in their Iris Pro range of chips, as it effectively removes the bandwidth bottleneck for the IGP (another example of an MCM, by the way). If Zen performs reasonably in games, I can imagine there would be interest in a 2C/4T APU with ~4TF GPU and 4GB of HBM2, for compact gaming HTPCs, but I don't see AMD being able to do that for a price that would make any kind of sense.
I'm just looking up the Crystalwell stuff with Iris Pro and I find it quite interesting that eDRAM is on a separate die. Yields would certainly be better if the eDRAM isn't on the same die as the CPU, but integrating off-die eDRAM would certainly be an engineering marvel.
The original fat PS3 pulled a couple hundred watts in games. And it was usually pretty quiet. Even with an internal PSU.
Sure but I think a Scorpio with a full fat 8-core Zen and 6TF Vega (or even the mysterious RX490?) would actually be closer to 250W than 200 like PS3. Anyway the bigger issue is that the BOM of OG PS3 was estimated to be ~$900 at launch and that just isn't happening again even at $700. Not even with Microsoft's deep pockets.
You typically don't mix DRAM production processes with standard logic IC production methods. They're fairly different, cell libraries will have different constraints. AFAIK there aren't any that integrate DRAM onto the same die as the CPU,what would be the point anyway, if you're using the same die you might as well use SRAM which is wholly compatible with CPU fabrication processes.
full 8 core zen is almost 100 watts and the rx 480 is already just over 150, system consumption including a higher powered vega chip would be 300 watts minimum
it's not happening
You typically don't mix DRAM production processes with standard logic IC production methods. They're fairly different, cell libraries will have different constraints. AFAIK there aren't any that integrate DRAM onto the same die as the CPU,what would be the point anyway, if you're using the same die you might as well use SRAM which is wholly compatible with CPU fabrication processes.
One possibility for Scorpio could be a underclocked 8-core zen (something similar to Intel's xeon e5-2609v4 but with even a bit lower power consumption) with a polaris gpu (even though rx480 sits a bit below 6tflops). But even then it would be over 200w...
Honestly though i think they will still use a beefed up jaguar/puma variant
One possibility for Scorpio could be a underclocked 8-core zen (something similar to Intel's xeon e5-2609v4 but with even a bit lower power consumption) with a polaris gpu (even though rx480 sits a bit below 6tflops). But even then it would be over 200w...
Honestly though i think they will still use a beefed up jaguar/puma variant
Games need to start making use of them. With Intel saying they are stopping going for speed gains and moving to efficiency, really the only way to get more power out of processors is going to be by going for massive parallelization. I hope dev houses are starting to realize they need to make this shift in the next 3 - 5 years or we are going to see a lot CPU bound performance metrics.
IBM have been using embedded DRAM on-die for a long time, and the Wii U incorporates eDRAM on both CPU and GPU dies. Even aside from the density advantages over SRAM (roughly 3x), latency on large pools of eDRAM is actually typically lower than the same capacity of SRAM, due to the reduced propagation delay.
True, a well-coded console game will be less affected by reduced caches anyway. Ideally there'll be less mispredicted branchesOne comparison point is to look in the Intel Broadwell-DE Xeon D line and something like the Xeon D-1548 which has a TDP of 45W and turbo clock rate of only 2.6GHz. If Microsoft is going to use Zen, they might consider reducing or even removing the L3 cache, and on top of reducing the power consumption it has the added benefit of reducing the size of the chip and therefore price.
Sure but I think a Scorpio with a full fat 8-core Zen and 6TF Vega (or even the mysterious RX490?) would actually be closer to 250W than 200 like PS3. Anyway the bigger issue is that the BOM of OG PS3 was estimated to be ~$900 at launch and that just isn't happening again even at $700. Not even with Microsoft's deep pockets.
I think that's too simplistic. I can have e.g. a branch-heavy tree or graph traversal which I can easily parallelize for 16 or 32 cores, but which will run terribly on a GPU. Or something like a branch-and-bound algorithm which relies on fast shared cache to update the bound condition.The thing is, generally, if you can 32-parallelize a task, you can also n-parallelize it, and then you push it to the GPU.
Huh, you're right. I didn't know about the latency issue, I mistakenly thought that clockspeed advantages of SRAM and simply due to the way DRAM works, it would inherently suffer from more latency regardless of capacity (which also would be bounded by die sizes).
I'll also maintain that due to the different production methods typically employed by DRAM manufacturers having on die DRAM is somewhat of an exotic ask (and somewhat limiting for a fabless design perspective).