Jim Keller back in 2014 discussing X86 Zen Prcoessors and K12 ARM processors.
Jim Keller the Chief Architect of AMD's Processors has decided to leave the company once again. after just coming back 3 years ago in 2012. HOWEVER he has said posterior to leaving that Zen is definitely on track, with testing / sampling in 2016, and revenue numbers in 2017.
For those who don't know Jim Keller. his Architectural skills in developing processors is damn near Legendary. he was the developer of the very first Athlon architecture K7 Processors and K8 Processors, and was the very first to make the X86 / X64 Native Processors. He also developed Apples A4 and A5 chip SoCs in 2012 / 2013 which ended up in iPhones and the first two iPads. to keep the conversation short, he was the reason AMD was kicking Intel's ass back then in the early 2000s.
Thoughts? this is a sad day. Yes Zen is on track and is near completion. but what will be after Zen, and What will be of AMD after Zen. It's sort of like Russian Roulette.. you point the gun to your head and shoot. and then you find out 2 or 4 years later if you killed yourself.
Zen will be an amazing chip. It will bring AMD out of the funk and maybe get them out of the RED. Then the few releases after that will be Zen 2.0 3.0. Once they bleed zen for all its worth and need a new architecture. They will bring someone onboard that has the new Bulldozer idea and AMD will be fighting to keep their head above water.
Warning! I turned complete Fanboy after watching TekTalk 89. The picture I paint is just BLACK AMD looks close to spliting from its Graphics-part. After that, the CPU devision will just die or IBM gets their hands on (IBM does well with their server stuff). Nvidia will keep being Nvidia, some more Gameworks magic and Radeon dies aswell. Intel and Nvidia are now king on the hill and consumer technology stopes dead for the next couple of years. New companys have no chance because of Intel buying them up or just not giving out x86 and their new "baby" x64. In business however, there is some light as IBM works on some more advanced 10nm 24physical-core server CPUs.
This might not happen, but here you have the worst-case. As an AMD user for work and gaming, I really hope they get back up and kick Nvidias a** as they did back in the "good days" of fast development. I do not want to be a fanboy but thats all there is to do. Hope for the best!
That was an awful TechTalk... The chat was crying Jay, talk about Maxwell and DX12, Jay, talk about AMD and DX12, and Jay bashed and bashed on AMD... I really hope Zen delivers, and DX12 and Radeon kicks Nvidia's butt, and then i want to see what Jay and Linus have to say. God i hope we don't stay with only Nvidia... I would go and play games on Intel Integrated Graphics then... As for Jim Keller, what is there to say. The guy left so it's all in AMD's hands now. They still have some advantages over Intel, so all they need to do is catch up to the single core performance. It's unny to talk about single core performance in 2015, almost 2016, but this is where we are. Dual core CPUs and single core performance being important...
I don't really see why everyone is so hyped about Zen. Even the IPC isn't at the level of haswell, the core count must be higher than intel. 25% slower per core compared to haswell at the same frequency, but native 8 core mainstream chips would be really nice.
I do not even expect Zen to be a consumer CPU. After everything I have seen it is made of 4 groups of 4 cores each with a massive GPU part. Let us derail this: Money is in the servers. Nvidias Quadro 6000 has only ~1/4 of AMDs W9100 compute performance. Mix that with the right software and you get yourself the perfect workhorse. I really have hope for Radeon to get back up. The CPU division might get close to death.
Edit: The TekTalk was just a pain to watch! If Jay or Jerry get back on track until end of the year I might subscribe again.
Don't say this shit. We did it with Fury and thats gotten AMD no closer to being a profitable company. We don't know jackshit about the performance we will see out of Zen. All we can do is hope for the best. I really want Zen to be the Nvidia Titan of the Cpu space, but we don't know that it can live up to the hype soooo. Don't get me wrong, I want Zen to be amazing. But lets not start the insanity hype train again like we all did with Fury.
Hypes are dangerous. In case of the Fury and FuryX, AMD wanted to bring HBM to the gamers. What did they deliver? HBM and cards that compete with Nvidias line. Challenge completed, returning to base!
the rest of the line-up competes. The Fury X doesn't compete with the 980ti. it loses damn near across the board. and the Fury non-X ACTUALLY destroys the 980.
AMD buying ATI is what gave them longevity these past 7 years. Zen will either be the rise from the grave or the nail in the coffin for AMD as a Processor company.
I'd argue that the Fury Nano and Fury X didn't live up to the hype. Really every card in the Fury lineup is made redundant by another Fury Card or an Nvidia card. If you can fit the Nano, you can probably get the regular Fury X in there considering they're about the same length when you factor in the power plugs orientation on the Fury Nano. Ghetto rigging a radiator can be a variable solution if there isn't a spot for a single 120mm, although in most cases there is a spot for a 120mm rad. But if you're not in one of the 10 cases that require a graphics card that small, you can also probably fit a 980 ti. Cases are made now with enough room to accommodate a full size card, and thats been a very common trait with the best itx cases. So in that case, (so punny) you go for the faster 980 ti. If your thinking about a Fury non-X, congrats. You're looking at the only semi-sensible card in the lineup IMO. The Fury non-X is faster then the 980, so I can tip my hat to that. Although now that 980's are reaching as low as $480; the fury non-X is now a harder pick. The cheapest I can find a Fury non-X is $545 from newegg, and that's still $65 more then the 980 strix at $480. Price for dollar, the 980 pulls ahead. Although the Fury is by no means a bad option in this space.
I actually really like the Fury (Fiji). Only issue with Fury is the HBM (yes its a issue) because of the horrible latancy. On LN2 someone pushed the HBM to 1ghz, 100% overclock along with 1400mhz on the core. all in all giving a performance increase of 70%.
If Fury ran 1ghz stock on the memory to cut the latency in half, it would smash the 980ti and Titan X with ease.
Fiji seems to be a really good chip, but it semi failed due to the teething problems with HBM.
i kinda set it from the beginning but they should of just got rid of all the "Non-X" cards in the line-up completely. have one card to compete with every single card Nvidia has to offer. just have X-Cards. i never really understood why they felt the need to cut down each core and re-sell it to people.
The Nano is in my opinion what the Fury X SHOULD have been. in my personal opinion. and let the OEM's customize that to their liking.
that and AMD didn't really let OEM's touch the cards. AMD said OEMs could touch the Fury and the Nano (Except all Nano's must use a reference PCB). the Fury has been out for a few months now. and there are STILL only 2 available Fury Non X cards. and they are from Sapphire and ASUS. where the hell is Gigabyte and MSI?
Fury X should indeed have been free game for OEMs, kinda sad that they only got cut down cores "soft cut". Non-x cards are there to help yelds, selling off cores that aren't perfect, but AMD should indeed do the same as Nvidia does, only have 3ish chips on the market, some cut and some uncut.
Pretty sure the other OEMs aren't interested in making those Fury pro cards, AMD is making stuff difficult for them in a lot of ways.
Also anyone here figured out how to control the voltage of a Fiji card yet?
