TPU Interviews AMD Vice President: Ryzen AI, X3D, Zen 4 Future Strategy and More

[W1zzard]

In this exclusive interview, we talk to the AMD Vice President who's responsible for AMD processors, both on desktop and mobile. Of course we had to ask about AI, but we also learned more about AM5 APUs, core counts, chiplets, Hybrid Architectures, Zen 5 and Intel's x86s proposal.

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[HBSound]

Thank you - I will read this later. I am interested to read others' feedback.

 

[wheresmycar]

thank you W1z, great interview!! Glad you raised some of the concerns or short-lived technicalities AM5 buyers have faced.

I know that Mark has talked in the past about how Zen 5 is on-track, it's in-design, it's taped-out etc so we are working very hard on it and I think you're going to be very excited when you see that product come to market.

that sounds promising! Its certainly got me excited.

One is the notion that P-Cores and E-Cores that the competition uses is not the approach that we plan on taking at all.

Good to hear this in an official capacity. Im not so big on e-cores

Although i think its great Intel offers something different (BIG.little) and advantageously for specific workloads. Even for gaming + software-encode streaming simultaneously.

The CPU market is looking good!

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And thank you David McAfee. (Is he related to Mrs Antivirus McAfee?)

 

[atomek]

Was ChatGPT involved in this interview? Zero specifics, I've lost 7 minutes of life reading it.

 

[wheresmycar]

Was ChatGPT involved in this interview? Zero specifics, I've lost 7 minutes of life reading it.

do 10 star jumps, fast for 8 hours and eat an apple and you'll get 7 minutes of your life back

- TPU's in-house Dr. Wheresmycar

 

[Kapone33]

A very interesting interview with some nice inflections for Consumers.

 

[bonehead123]

A nice read for most folks, but I gotta know....

Is VP man just not into leather, or does he perhaps favor some other type of fancy/more flamboyant outerwear ?

 

[KellyNyanbinary]

So they are aware of the somewhat impacted memory tightening/overclocking their AGESA 1.0.0.7A caused and hope to fix it. Good to see.

It also looks like they’re dead set on the AI hype train. Only time will tell if this is a good move or a mistake.

 

[qlum]

Was ChatGPT involved in this interview? Zero specifics, I've lost 7 minutes of life reading it.

Understand that as a publicly traded company AMD really can't do any reveals in an interview like this, so there is that at least.

 

[HD64G]

Core count question and response resolves the topic for many people that are uneasy with Zen being stucked at 16core CPUs on Desktop. Maybe Zen4c-core CPUs with faster DDR5 will increase the core count to 24c48t.

 

[ikjadoon]

Great to see Zen5 moving rapidly. Tired of Intel refreshing the same old uArch twice already.

I still think DDR5-only was a good choice: RAM prices fell like a rock. $100 gets you 32 GB of low-latency DDR5. Another $20 for RGB.

Sad to see basically no solution, just excuses, from AMD why Phoenix has taken the better part of a year to roll out. That’s really disappointing for consumer laptops and a major miss.

 

[Kapone33]

Great to see Zen5 moving rapidly. Tired of Intel refreshing the same old uArch twice already.

I still think DDR5-only was a good choice: RAM prices fell like a rock. $100 gets you 32 GB of low-latency DDR5. Another $20 for RGB.

Sad to see basically no solution, just excuses, from AMD why Phoenix has taken the better part of a year to roll out. That’s really disappointing for consumer laptops and a major miss.

Well if you look at the Handheld market that is where all the processors are going. I think even AMD was surprised by the success of the Steam Deck and Mini PCs. There was a time when every Mini PC was Intel now you are hard pressed to see any Youtube videos with Intel Minis vs AMD.

 

[InVasMani]

Thinking about Intel's X86-S Proposal I'd say that's something they could consider doing as way to differentiate between P cores and E cores and the scheduling complications of either. Just making 32-bit run on E cores and 64-bit run on P cores exclusively might be a path forward. I wonder if that's something Intel has had in mind with that proposal.

It seemed like desktop APU's and desktop Zen4c is lower on AMD's current future plans priority list relative to targeted adoption of those within other markets. That seems to make sense. I think hearing about AMD speaking about AM5 and improved memory support was perhaps the most exciting part of the interview. That could certainly help close the gap a bit for people more on the fence about AMD, but concerned about the memory support, but not necessarily a need for more extensive heavier multi-thread. It would especially help with X3D even though it's already quick because there are certainly instances for the system memory bandwidth is a bigger factor where SRAM cache falls short on capacity and ultimately constrained to a higher degree by system memory.

 

[Wirko]

Thinking about Intel's X86-S Proposal I'd say that's something they could consider doing as way to differentiate between P cores and E cores and the scheduling complications of either. Just making 32-bit run on E cores and 64-bit run on P cores exclusively might be a path forward. I wonder if that's something Intel has had in mind with that proposal.

The plan is not to remove the 32-bit mode altogether, just things like 32-bit protected mode and the initial part of the boot process, which starts in the pre-prehistoric 16-bit mode, then switches to 32-bit.

The ability to run 32-bit code in user mode remains, however the ability to run a 32-bit OS is going to be killed (except in a VM). There was a lengthy discussion on TPU, here it is.

 

[asdkj1740]

thank you. excellent interview!

 

[Daven]

I love the definitive NO to E-cores on the desktop. I doubt Intel really wanted to go down that path either but had no choice.

I wonder if a quad channel socket platform in between AM5 and Threadripper Pro would be a better way to provide core counts from 16 to 32. Additional sockets are never popular but the market seems to be segmenting itself more than just desktop and workstation.

 

[trsttte]

definitive NO to E-cores on the desktop

I'd take that "definitive" with a large ammount of salt, it's their opinion for now - in part as a way to throw shade as well - but marketing also matters and if Intel continues to prove very competitive in multithreaded benchmarks AMD will eventually buckle and use the same "trick"

I wonder if a quad channel socket platform in between AM5 and Threadripper Pro would be a better way to provide core counts from 16 to 32. Additional sockets are never popular but the market seems to be segmenting itself more than just desktop and workstation.

That would be great, it woulnd't even need to be a different socket, they could use AM5. There's currently a very large gap between regular consumer AM5 and Threadripper Pro, it used to be filled by Threadripper but that was also a bit of a rip off compared to Threadripper Pro.

 

[mama]

Do we have a release date for Zen 5? I hope they do something to upgrade the memory controller.

 

[Wirko]

That would be great, it woulnd't even need to be a different socket, they could use AM5.

When I learned about the greatly increased number of pins in AM5 (and Intel's LGA 1700), I thought there was space reserved for one or two additional memory channels, as other interfaces (PCIe, USB, video) didn't expand by much. But then I never saw any data or even speculations on that, and socket pinouts are confidential. Is that still a possibility?

 

[GreiverBlade]

i was surprised and glad to see that AMD sees hybrid usage scenario as i saw it for long : mobiles and laptop ...

quite a good and interesting read, thanks.

 

[Deleted member 232534]

c-cores are not "e-cores"

just compacted p-cores with lower cache - still same architecture, have hyper-threading and will offer good performance.

c-cores are 1/2 the size of a regular core, where "e-cores" are 1/4 the size.

I wouldn't mind having (8p)3DX+12c chip

I love the definitive NO to E-cores on the desktop. I doubt Intel really wanted to go down that path either but had no choice.

I wonder if a quad channel socket platform in between AM5 and Threadripper Pro would be a better way to provide core counts from 16 to 32. Additional sockets are never popular but the market seems to be segmenting itself more than just desktop and workstation.

 

[Wirko]

i was surprised and glad to see that AMD sees hybrid usage scenario as i saw it for long : mobiles and laptop ...

quite a good and interesting read, thanks.

You can read it as you wish, maybe he was truly hinting at a hybrid combination, or possibly something more boring, by which I mean 4c cores only.

 

[HD64G]

Hybid chiplets for AMD means seperate chiplets of CPU and GPU compute units on the same package (Kudos to @Daven for the correction). As they are doing now with the MI300A.

 

[Daven]

Hybid chiplets for AMD means seperate chiplets of CPU and GPU compute units on the same die. As they are doing now with the MI300A.

I think you mean on the same package? I don’t think the MI300A is one continuous die but I could be wrong.

Either way I would like to see a similar strategy for RDNA4. Two Navi31 chiplets that look like one big GPU to the OS and games.

 

[Nanochip]

They seem to like x86s… hopefully the result is more performant and power efficient chips. Perhaps denser designs, more cores.