Regular EPYC CPUs have too high a TDP for smaller server installations, such as so-called edge servers. EPYC Embedded is still stuck on Zen 1. Intel hasn't upgraded their comparable line of mid-range server CPUs (e.g. Xeon D line), either, but AMD won't win on performance alone. Intel has a huge SKU lineup, much more volume, and a much richer vendor and platform ecosystem. If the vendor demand isn't there to push AMD on EPYC Embedded, Ryzen Emedded, and other market segments, AMD should build demand, otherwise they'll just recapitulate their rise & fall during the 2000s.

It's not a given at all, even if that's common. As a fresh counter-example, Nvidia released Ampere on TSMC 7nm for the enterprise many months before they released chips of the same architecture for consumer devices on Samsung's cheaper and significantly less dense 8nm node.

> There's no time pressure on AMD, they're comfortably in the lead.

Intel thought this way, and that's why AMD are where they are now.

And Microsoft to a lesser extent.

Sitting on huge piles of cash helps though.

AMD lacks AVX512 instruction set, which is a show stopper for many applications.

I just upgraded an Athlon64 x2 to a Phenom II x4 because I could get the chip for $20 and a cooler for $30. Heck of a speed boost on that box, which was looking a little long in the tooth otherwise.

It's now beefy enough to run a modern OS and GUI and even do some light gaming on, but the mobo has serial and parallel and PATA and floppy ports so it serves as my media archiving mule too.

I ran a Phenom II x4 DDR2 until this summer when I bought a Ryzen 3700X. It could not play Battlefield, Rainbow Six Siege, Squad, Far Cry, Pubg ( could almost play, loading stream time was the killer), Mordhau and the likes, but it could play a lot of games, so many that I didn't need to upgrade, it was the computer as a whole that was giving up.

I could play Wargame Red Dragon, Dark Souls 3, Dota2, Dishonored 2, Remnant from the ashes, Warhammer 1 total war, Disco Elysium, Dragon Age Inquisition, Fallout 3 New Vegas.

I'm using a AMD Athlon II X2 260, released in 2010.

I'm still running an Ath 64 x2 6000+ for a web server, I think it's from about 2006. That with an old hard drive are running 120W, which would be nice to hack down.

I don't remember if I jumped straight to this from my Pentium Pro 200, but the role of this box started with that one.

Athlon 64 was the bomb at that time

Yeah I had one of those. It was great but so noisy.

Then Core2, then i5. I built my son a computer last year on Ryzen and it's great, but I don't see myself upgrading my i5 for a couple of years. My money will go on GPU upgrades (currently a 1070) instead I think.

My Athlon is in a case next to my left knee. I was almost scared off by the Intel hyper but not too sure of AMD spin. We're all casualties of marketing departments. In the end I bought AMD because it was cheaper than Intel.

I ran one of those until a couple years ago when I got the 2400G APU. What a nice upgrade. Even better parts available now.

The difference they talked about is it is now uniform latency instead of split into two blocks of 16MB accessible at different latencies depending on which group of four cores you are on.

3990X has 256mb of L3.

General rule of thumb is that bigger caches are slower to access.

If AMD have traded a bit of access latency for their larger cache, then theoretically there will be a memory heavy application with a working set that fits in 16MB that will see a preformance hit.

Though, we don't know Zen 2 was running into area based speed limitations for it's L3 cache. It's entirely possible Zen 3's cache runs at the same speed.

Having more cache can potentially lower the speed of the cache, as the access time is limited by the time the longest path takes, the propagation delay.

So there's a tradeoff between cache size and cache speed, which is why there are separate L1, L2, and L3 caches of various sizes. So potentially the L3 cache in this architecture could be slower than the L3 cache in the 3000 series. It could also be the same speed if the size was limited for other reasons, such as yield.

No? Other than the next best use of that silicon/heat budget, to whatever degree the latter is relevant for cache. But not afaik from an architectural point of view.

Not as such, but larger caches are slower (due to the speed of light) which can reduce performance. A few apps have seen performance regressions on Tiger Lake.

There probably are in which more cache is useless.

Intel current platform does not support PCI4 though, if that is important to you, you will need a new mobo anyways.

Also I don't think many people are going to upgrade from intel 10th gen to intel 11th gen, assuming gen 12 will have DDR5 (worth skipping a gen)

Is Rocket Lake expected to scale up to 16 cores?

The fact that they made of point of supporting threadripper in their announcement gives me a certain level of confidence there will be Zen 3 thread rippers. I mainly say this because people were curious if the 3950X would mean the end of the threadripper line, which was of course later proven wrong when the 24, 32, and 64 core TR parts came out.

AMD is clearly moving TR into the "Pro" / Workstation market. As such, "soon" means "the next Workstation trade event/show".

With CES 2021 cancelled/postponed for Jack knows how long, "soon" might mean Q2 2021.

5960X was also an Intel processor in 2014 (Intel Core i7-5960X @ 3.00GHz).

But this is an architectural tweak on the same node. Zen2 was 7nm TSMC, while Zen3 is 7+nm TSMC.

TSMC must have optimized the heck out of their transistors to deliver such a large benefit. Or the AMD Zen 3 architecture really found some low-hanging fruit or something to grossly improve performance.

It's much harder to do now

Maybe so, but could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

If you compare MSRP at launch to retail a year later, you're going to notice a big difference.

In the US, the Ryzen 9 3900X MSRP was $499 but is $70 less now. (Initially, supply was low, and it was selling over MSRP as high as ~$570.)

But they came with coolers... I have a Ryzen 2700X that I got for $230, and I still use the stock cooler. To jump to a Ryzen 5800X plus a cooler would be a huge expense. I will definitely be on the sidelines for the next six months, but then I'll revisit the pricing situation (once motherboard manufacturers release updated 400-series firmware.)

What would be the 2 good die release? They've already announced the line-topping AM4 part that uses all the cores from the two dies. Isn't the next step up a four die part in a Threadripper packaging on a different socket with some cores disabled?

TDP is about as meaningful on CPUs now as nm is in fab tech.

In practice the 3950x pulled up to ~225w running maxxed out avx2 workloads, ~300w if you overclocked it. The 3900x pulls up to ~190 watts at stock boosts. Both are called "105w TDP" parts.

I second this reaction. Historically, clock speeds scaled inversely with the # of cores. Seems like the efficiency is overtaking other constraints at this point.

Maybe not the voodoo you are thinking about but on the GPU side, the 3Dfx Voodoo was indeed a groundbreaking 3D accelerator card.

At the time, 3Dfx main competitors were Nvidia and ATI, Nvidia finally bought 3Dfx and AMD bought ATI. So technically, voodoo is on the side of AMD's competition.

Thanks. Wasn't shown on the slides.

I ordered from a small notebook dealer in my area (notebook.de) that offer to upgrade the devices if you ask for it. I was looking for weeks for this special model as it was the first 13" model with the right ports that offered 2 so-dimm slots, so I emailed them about it before it was listed to be among the first to receive it.

Funnily enough HP in their own specsheet made the mistake of declaring it as only supporting 32GB which then lead to me having to very forcefully demand them to just order the memory at my risk and install it anyway. Of course it works beautifully.

Something that fits that description as well is the Lenovo X13/T14/T14s

https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_X...

https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_T...

https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_T...

What I've yet to find is anything similar that also has a more than a 1080p screen. Frustratingly the Lenovo T14/T14s in Intel spec does have a 4K screen.

If can settle for 14" check out system76 (NA) or tuxedo computers (EU)

Same. The best I could find were models with 16GB soldered on the MB. Settled for a System 76 Lemur Pro (10th gen i7).

This must be a software issue in Linux, I don't have anything close to these problems in Windows. Perfectly fluid with 2 external 2160p60 screens connected.

WSL2 is amazing btw.

My T14 running Ubuntu 20.04 with the mainline kernel is connected via USB-C to a 3840x1600 screen and there is no lag at all.

Got a bottom end T495s here that quite happily handles an external 4K screen with Ubuntu.

It's such a good feeling when something gains enough for you to be able to sell back your initial investment entirely and still have a decent amount.

Same for me, not 3dfx but stock losses affecting me much more than wins. So I do mostly just index funds now to remove the buy/sell stress.

Had the same exact thought and problem. Only that I bought AMD "fake" demo stock in my bank account on that same day just for fun. So know I can see exactly how much I could have made if I only would have bothered to get my real account to work that day..

No. Putting $500 for stocks of a company that you believe in and have a good product is absolutely not called getting lucky. Putting that $500 into penny stocks is.

$500 is a lot to many people, and people have different tolerances to risk.

You may choose to put more in, of course.

I know. It was my first stock purchase so I only put in what I was willing to lose.

The difference is that AMD doesn't disable ECC support in any model line, while Intel disables it, sometimes without rhyme.

Extra funny when you notice that certain Xeon lines are actually i7 with different branding and ECC left enabled.

The problems with ECC on AMD comes from consumer vendors not putting the time into testing, and possibly not even connecting the ECC lines (remember, ECC requires putting additional traces between memory controller and memory slots). Then you have to deal with whatever customisation the vendor of the motherboard did to firmware - their changes might have resulted in effective disabling of ECC.

With Intel, you either have the same game as above (with the non-Xeon ECC-capable parts), or pay through the nose for comparable performance "workstation/enterprise" gear, as ECC support being used for market segmentation by intel is pretty much an open secret.

ECC support is iffy at the consumer brands. Its a "we won't disable it, but we won't guarantee that it works" sort of deal.

If you want verified ECC support, you need to buy the workstation chips and motherboards: Threadripper Pro or EPYCs.

What Xeon and Xeon motherboard with ECC support are "cheap?"

In that price range, AMD markets Threadripper and Epyc, both with proper ECC support.

ECC support in Ryzen systems is up to the motherboard manufacturer, and some manufacturers advertise support very clearly. E.g., at least a couple years ago, ASRock explicitly supported ECC in all their Ryzen motherboards.

You are right, but if you buy a motherboard that claims to support ECC, you will usually not have any problems.

For example I am using an ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE, which is a reasonably priced workstation board ($300) with a Ryzen 7 3700X and ECC memory.

ECC worked OK, without any problems. I have also used a couple of ASRock MB's and ECC also worked OK on them.

I would much prefer more guarantees from AMD, but rather than buying a slow Intel CPU I prefer a little risk with AMD.

AMD guarantees ECC works with their workstation focused Threadripper line. On Ryzen, it only works if you do your homework picking hardware.

It's a shame they made the TR platform much more expensive in the last generation.

Dumb question. Why would one want ECC in something that isn't a server? How often do bits in memory actually flip by themselves for it to be warranted?

A very good way to undercut low end Xeons which were bought solely for their insurance against an out of the blue crash.

You do have to pick a motherboard that supports it, but when you do, it should work without issues as long as your CPU supports it. Not all ryzen CPUs support ECC.

Here is an example: ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE

Video encoders/decoders are parts of GPUs, not CPUs. Only CPUs with integrated GPU have these pieces of hardware.

AMD is pretty comparable in that regard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Core_Next but I don’t have computers with AMD APUs or GPUs, and don’t have a hands-on experience with these features.

QuickSync is GPU accelerated encode/decode right? This processor announcement is for their CPUs without GPUs, so you'd need a GPU add on board, and both AMD and NVidia support that. AMDs processors with GPUs (they call them APUs) support that too. AMD tends to release desktop CPU, then high end desktop/server, then laptop APU and finally desktop APU. They only released Zen2 desktop APUs a couple months ago, and they're currently OEM only and very hard to find in the US (grey market imports only, AFAIK, but send me an email if I'm wrong, address in profile)

When you have 24 "HT" cores I'm not sure why you would need QuickSync.

> is still preferred because of better AVX support

AVX1 and AVX2 performance is on par.

For instance, vmulpd AVX1 instruction is faster on AMD, 3 versus 4 cycles. vpaddd AVX2 instruction is same at 1 cycle latency. vfmadd132pd FMA instruction is slightly faster on Intel, 4 versus 5 cycles. Throughput is the same across these two. I was looking at AMD Zen2 versus Intel Ice Lake.

Some Intel chips have AVX512. Still, many practical applications don’t need that amount of SIMD wideness, and these who do are often a good fit for GPGPUs.

> There are also things like Intel MKL

There’re vendor-agnostic equivalents like Eigen.

The new Zen 3 cores are expected to have a higher AVX throughput per cycle than all Intel CPUs, except the most expensive models of Xeon Gold, Platinum or W and the HEDT i9 models that have dual AVX-512 FMA units.

The cheaper models with only one AVX-512 FMA unit have a lower throughput, which will be exceeded by Zen 3, even at the same clock frequency.

For multi-threaded tasks, Zen 3 CPUs will have a higher clock-frequency than any Intel CPU, so it is expected that any older Intel CPU will be beaten easily.

It remains to be seen which will be the performances of the Ice Lake Server CPUs, to be launched before the end of the year. However, miracles are not expected, because these are using the older Intel 10 nm technology, not the improved one used by Tiger Lake.

> There are also things like Intel MKL

There are also things like OpenBLAS, and BLIS (which AMD support).

Stock market does not always follow marketing narratives. Single thread speed is important for gamers and high end desktop. Intel doesn't care that much about those segments, it is a small part of their business. Their money is in server CPUs and laptops, where they have and will maintain majority of the market.