Why doesn't AMD create a better CPU architecture to compete with Intel again?

[Fourstaff]

People have been saying this for years, but I don't see ARM being a big threat for a few years to come. I think I even saw a sort of "review" which compared the x86 to ARM (I think it was some Atom vs Krait and A15) and the x86 delivered equal performance. The reason IMO is that Intel or AMD never really focused on ultra low power segments - only recently they showed signs of interest.
Another thing is that once you start implementing features into ARM processors for "desktop" use you won't see it as a low power part anymore - x86 have so many things integrated into these days and let's not even start with the instruction sets which ARM lacks.

I see people doing their work through Googledocs off their tablets, its definitely possible to build an office ecosystem around ARM (phone+tablet+laptop). Its much more mobile and seamless as compared with x86 + ARM ecosystem, and we all know putting x86 into phone will not happen anytime soon given what Intel has done and what Microsoft didn't do. Your average office worker will not need a lot of processing power, but will greatly benefit from a seamless work environment.

 

[Blue-Knight]

You seem to be on a more shoe string budget than me lol

It is not because I do not have more money to spend. It is because there's no reason for me to buy a $200 or $300 CPU as I do not need all of the power they have to offer.

But of course, I will buy the CPU which have higher performance per core and more power efficient for $50 or less as my money doesn't grow on trees and I want it to worth every cent.

Happy New Year!

 

[FordGT90Concept]

The thing is Europe Lincoln virtually doesn't exist. Lincoln Blackwood might be more prestigious than a a Mercedes only in the USA, but travel anywhere outside of USA and Canada they will say "what is a Lincoln? ". I actually only know what is because we watch American TV. Never seen one on the road before.

The fact Lincoln Blackwoods are not heard of in Europe makes them more prestigious than Mercedes-Benz which are readily available. Only 3,356 Blackwoods were built in 15 months of production. Again, you're talking about brand awareness and that has nothing to do with how prestigious a product is. Case in point: you've probably never heard of the Tucker 48 but only 51 of those were made. A Tucker 48 in pristine condition will fetch more than $1 million USD which is more than most Mercedes-Benz vehicles.

 

[Bones]

Here is an interesting post over at OCF on the subject of Kaveri.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7614615&postcount=10

 

[Dent1]

FordGT90Concept, you know more about cars than me so you probably right. But try and explain that to the average joe here and they will say Lincoln what?

Thanks Bones,

There was a cool Mantle promo video within:

 

[Enterprise24]

I really hope amd will create cpu that can threaten intel again.
When no competition then almost no improvement ipc 6% increase each gen since sandy bridge is ....

Some game can't be easily parallel like total war rome 2 my old 3770k @ 5ghz and ram 2400mhz is heavily bottleneck with many ten thousand units on the battlefield.

Just order 4770k and hope it can oc to at least 4.7ghz to match my old 3770k.

I will see if strong imc in haswell will push ram to 2933mhz. And maybe i can run rome 2 better.

 

[EpicShweetness]

We've reached an odd end with computing power, and user demand. It's the "Good Enough" era.

I can remember between 1998-2006 updating my computer (literally $1000's) every 2 years, sometimes less. Software was keeping up with the potential of hardware, and everything was bigger better faster. Now I don't need a 4960X to play video games were all other options will impact the playablity of it. I threw $600 at my a media computer and 1080p without a hitch. That's amazing! I remember getting top end video cards, (or close to it) shinning example was my GX2, that thing was $600! I used that thing for all of 2 years, before bigger better faster came out. Now I have 7870, and that has been far surpassed, but it was never top end, and I never needed faster. My CPU went form 4 cores and 8 threads to just 4 cores and 4 threads. I didn't use my I7 920 to 100% all the time, and I don't even use my 3570k to 100%.

It is a good question as to why AMD can no longer compete in level fields with Intel. However, I don't think they have to, there is something else out there, and they have the vision to see it.

 

[Dent1]

We've reached an odd end with computing power, and user demand. It's the "Good Enough" era.

I can remember between 1998-2006 updating my computer (literally $1000's) every 2 years, sometimes less. Software was keeping up with the potential of hardware, and everything was bigger better faster. Now I don't need a 4960X to play video games were all other options will impact the playablity of it. I threw $600 at my a media computer and 1080p without a hitch. That's amazing! I remember getting top end video cards, (or close to it) shinning example was my GX2, that thing was $600! I used that thing for all of 2 years, before bigger better faster came out. Now I have 7870, and that has been far surpassed, but it was never top end, and I never needed faster. My CPU went form 4 cores and 8 threads to just 4 cores and 4 threads. I didn't use my I7 920 to 100% all the time, and I don't even use my 3570k to 100%.

It is a good question as to why AMD can no longer compete in level fields with Intel. However, I don't think they have to, there is something else out there, and they have the vision to see it.

I 100% agree. But there is always going to be somebody that is going to pretend they don't understand.

 

[suraswami]

Ah, no. My CPUs are low-end, $50 or less (no space for extra $50 or $100).

And that's more than enough. And single core performance is crucial for me.

ha ha, last thanksgiving I built a new machine for my friend, FX 8320 + Gigabyte board costs only $100. He is happy.

Thanks to AMD and MC!

 

[Deleted member 24505]

I remember in 2006, all of my mates had AMD machines, including me. I was very clued up and used to read a lot of hardware sites, i saw the conroe was coming out so read up on it. I realised it was a pretty ground breaking chip( at the time it was imho ) so i sold my AMD rig and bought a Intel setup with a P4 (iirc) which really shocked all my mates. When the conroe came out and i got my first one, (the monster OC in my sig) the performance imo was shockingly better than the AMD Athlons my mates had, within 6mths, all my mates had Intel rigs.

Imo, the conroe shocked AMD and the performance was so good, they just could not match it, and have never been able to do so since it came out.

 

[qubit]

I've updated my OP to clarify my point about AMD losing the performance war. Thanks tigger for the memory jogger.

 

[Blue-Knight]

FX 8320 + Gigabyte board costs only $100.

How? The processor alone costs more than $100 ($200 in my country). New, used or special scenario?

 

[suraswami]

How? The processor alone costs more than $100 ($200 in my country). New, used or special scenario?

We have something called Black Friday sale and you can catch some crazy deals like these. Both proc and board are brand new.

 

[Blue-Knight]

We have something called Black Friday sale and you can catch some crazy deals like these. Both proc and board are brand new.

This explains it all. We don't have so much luck here.

If we can buy for the same price you can find in US then it's considered extreme luck! Which I had when I bought my new processor.

 

[natr0n]

AMD just needs better CPU architects.

 

[mastrdrver]

As in GPU designs, its not like AMD can make a huge change in a year. CPU designs take a long time to come to fruition (I think they're even longer then GPUs). Intel has not really make a huge change since Nehalem. It's just been subtle changes here and there but mostly in power.

They've also come a long way since the initial Bulldozer. With the great improvement we're seen with Steamroller, I think things look good for next year when they release Excavator as it's the one where the big changes are going to happen. If they got 20% increase in Piledriver to Steamroller, I think there could be large increases in single thread performance with Excavator.

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/t...ache-and-memory-benchmark-here.186338/page-10

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branch_predictor



AMD
L2 10ns = 10 billionths of a second = 10 CPU cycles of stall for any instruction not found in the L1 cache minimum. If this was a 1Ghz processor and you had 100% cache miss it would be as effective as a 100Mhz processor that was 100% effective. ** Not exact math, and since the instruction may be found in the L3 cache even a 100% failure of the L2 will not result in a failure to process data, it will occur at a very slow rate, like one in 33 CPU cycles give or take a few.**
L3 33ns = 33 billionths of a second = 33 CPU cycles of stall.


VS

Intel

L2 3ns
L3 10ns

Intel HT uses pipeline stalls to feed the "core" instructions waiting in the cache while the transfer from the first thread occurs. So instead of an actual 10ns penalty, the core still may use 6 of those cycles on another thread to improve total instruction per clock.

In short, AMD processors spend most of the time waiting for instructions when they don't meet the IPC that Intel does. However the longer pipeline sometimes (server applications with large data sets and small common requests) is better, as the when the data is found in the cache or there is no possible way to have all the data in the cache, they perform on par with Intel.

That cache comparison is not correct. The L2 cache on AMD processors has more similarity to the L3 on Intel then their L2. This is why you do not see the APUs with L3 because it is not needed. I can't think of it right now so maybe someone smarter then me can fill in the details, but the L3 on AMD is more of memory buffer then for buffering the cores like on Intel CPUs.

 

[ViperXTR]

ah, the days o the first athlon and pentium III

 

[trickson]

So now it is AMD lagging behind? What wait what happened? I am still on a really OLD ass Intel Q9650 and see no real need for any upgrade thing is still running just fine.

 

[Steevo]

As in GPU designs, its not like AMD can make a huge change in a year. CPU designs take a long time to come to fruition (I think they're even longer then GPUs). Intel has not really make a huge change since Nehalem. It's just been subtle changes here and there but mostly in power.

They've also come a long way since the initial Bulldozer. With the great improvement we're seen with Steamroller, I think things look good for next year when they release Excavator as it's the one where the big changes are going to happen. If they got 20% increase in Piledriver to Steamroller, I think there could be large increases in single thread performance with Excavator.



That cache comparison is not correct. The L2 cache on AMD processors has more similarity to the L3 on Intel then their L2. This is why you do not see the APUs with L3 because it is not needed. I can't think of it right now so maybe someone smarter then me can fill in the details, but the L3 on AMD is more of memory buffer then for buffering the cores like on Intel CPUs.

So a second level cache is like a third level cache even though its still the second level cache so it makes the AMD faster somehow even though its still slower but its only because of the cache is different and it doesn't work as well is what your are saying like totally since its like the second cache not the third on the AMD and the third is like the Intel second level cache right?


I have no idea what you are drinking, but perhaps if you continue to drink it, everything will make sense.


Cache is temporary storage the prefetch pipeline uses, irregardless of who makes the chip there are always multiple levels, adding more cache is a easy way to increase the pipelined throughput of a architecture, however it can backfire and cause other issues with the schedulers and flushing issues. AMD has poor latency caused by their CPU/cache design. Considering it takes years to engineer a CPU core/cache design and to implement the hardware logic to perform the functions you require they have been forced to stick with this design, and improve on it to the best of their ability.

 

[Peter1986C]

So now it is AMD lagging behind? What wait what happened? I am still on a really OLD ass Intel Q9650 and see no real need for any upgrade thing is still running just fine.

The Ivy Bridge CPUs by Intel have a lower power draw at load than AMD's Trinity CPUs/APUs, while generally being faster.

 

[Tatty_Two]

What we should be asking ourselves is do they actually want to beat Intel? The R&D that is needed to continously push forward is immense, if AMD are happy with their margins with a portfolio of more budget based solutions why bother? At the end of the day it's about making money not being faster. Having said that I appreciate that profitability has been a struggle at times with AMD, though it also has for Intel to a certain degree too.

 

[alucasa]

AMD is shining in data centers right now. Data centers want great multi-threading at reasonable prices, and that is what AMD delivers. It is a lot cheaper to throw together a 32-Core machine, capable of supporting 30 Single-core or 15 Dual-Core virtual machines using AMD parts than Intel. Basically for the cost of a single 10-Core Intel Xeon data centers can buy two 16-Core AMD Opterons. Data centers are where the multi-core strategy pays off.

Hard to find AMD servers at data centers though.

 

[TRWOV]

Hard to find AMD servers at data centers though.

AMD doesn't have the manufacturing capabilities that Intel has. Even if AMD sold every CPU they made on the server market that would amount to what? 15% or so?

 

[alucasa]

I would be very happy if 15% was true. But I think it's around 5% max. There are customers who look for AMD specifically but they are very rare. I see one ( if lucky) AMD server out of 1000.

 

[TRWOV]

And don't forget that a lot of that capability is going towards game consoles now.

Plenty of people seem to forget that the market share cap for AMD is pretty low so when news come saying that they are doing well in this or that market you can't help but to run into skeptics saying: "I've never seen an AMD server/laptop/all-in-one". Of course you haven´t. When AMD's maximum possible market share sits at <15% it's no wonder you haven seen them.