AMD’s Zen 2 Will Reportedly Offer Higher Core Counts, Major IPC Gains

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Information gleaned from Chinese forum Chiphell suggests that AMD could release mainstream desktop CPUs with “up to 16 cores and a 10 to 15 percent IPC (instructions per cycle) uplift when the company moves to 7nm.” While pushing 16 cores in a dual-channel memory configuration would be a serious challenge, some say it could be done by overhauling the CCX design and increasing L3 cache to decrease pressure on the memory bus.

AMD’s modular approach with Ryzen gives it some freedom to experiment with hitting different core counts, but jumping up to 16 cores as a baseline consumer product is quite a leap. It’s possible that AMD won’t change the baseline core count of a Ryzen 2 die, but might offer CPUs with up to 16 cores as part of a lower-cost Threadripper alternative on its conventional desktop socket.
 
I'd much prefer them to focus on IPC improvements and clock speed improvements, they have the opportunity to stick the boot into intel big time if they can get ipc up a decent percentage and more clock speed is always nice. 16 cores is threadripper territory, and for most users that's the route they will go.
 
From ExtremeTech:

AMD’s Zen 2 architecture isn’t expected in-market until 2019, and possibly not until the back half of the year (AMD has said nothing publicly about its launch plan alignment). That hasn’t stopped people from speculating about the new CPUs, and there’s a fresh round of rumors out today.
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I wouldn't put too much weight on what ChipHell has to say - they are another forum like [H]. I suspect [H] gets more info because, well, NDAs :)

Here's what I expect from Zen2 ...
  • 7nm
  • 6 cores/CCX
  • Improved Infinity fabric
  • +10% IPC
 
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Chris_B said:
I'd much prefer them to focus on IPC improvements and clock speed improvements, they have the opportunity to stick the boot into intel big time if they can get ipc up a decent percentage and more clock speed is always nice. 16 cores is threadripper territory, and for most users that's the route they will go.
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You keep your 640k RAM and keep yelling at the clouds...

You know how much it will mean for a small business or regular IT person or tiny startups to finally be able to afford machines that can do useful in a decent amount of time. Intel has been holding back innovation for such a long time.

More cores is very important. AMD IPC is close enough for anyone who actually cares. Its not like they are bad chips, they are not even in 3rd or 4th place, they are a close-ish 2nd place in IPC. On other hand, they do need to get more critical mass to get better software adoption to handle their specific architecture.

More cores, more cores, more cores. Viable cores, and these are already viable cores. For the most part. The useable memory capacity per core to get viable work done remains to be seen.

We can finally have games that have real, interesting, challenging AI. We can finally do our builds of big-ish software, in a reasonable time. The amount of compute power a regular college student in 2019/2020 could have.
 
I don't understand why they would put 16 cores on a non-Threadripper CPU. Doing so would overlap on the high end market. What purpose would Threadripper serve at that point? More PCI lanes?

(I know next to nothing about Threadripper)
 
whatevs said:
You keep your 640k RAM and keep yelling at the clouds...

You know how much it will mean for a small business or regular IT person or tiny startups to finally be able to afford machines that can do useful in a decent amount of time. Intel has been holding back innovation for such a long time.

More cores is very important. AMD IPC is close enough for anyone who actually cares. Its not like they are bad chips, they are not even in 3rd or 4th place, they are a close-ish 2nd place in IPC. On other hand, they do need to get more critical mass to get better software adoption to handle their specific architecture.

More cores, more cores, more cores. Viable cores, and these are already viable cores. For the most part. The useable memory capacity per core to get viable work done remains to be seen.

We can finally have games that have real, interesting, challenging AI. We can finally do our builds of big-ish software, in a reasonable time. The amount of compute power a regular college student in 2019/2020 could have.
Click to expand...


LOL you honestly believe that? Game devs do the bare minimum for cpu usage, most games are lucky if they use 4 cores (and even if they do it's incredibly rare to see all 4 cores at even 50% usage) let alone 6 or 8 despite at least 6 core cpus being around for 8 years now.

Yeah on paper they have the potential to have better ai yadda yadda yadda, but in reality seeing as most games are designed with consoles at the forefront, we have to wait until they're at a comparable level before devs even consider bothering to code for more cores, better ai etc.
 
Chris_B said:
Yeah on paper they have the potential to have better ai yadda yadda yadda, but in reality seeing as most games are designed with consoles at the forefront, we have to wait until they're at a comparable level before devs even consider bothering to code for more cores, better ai etc.
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Both the PS4 and Xbox one are 8 core APU's, so what is this 'comparable level' you're describing?
 
Chris_B said:
LOL you honestly believe that? Game devs do the bare minimum for cpu usage, most games are lucky if they use 4 cores (and even if they do it's incredibly rare to see all 4 cores at even 50% usage) let alone 6 or 8 despite at least 6 core cpus being around for 8 years now.

Yeah on paper they have the potential to have better ai yadda yadda yadda, but in reality seeing as most games are designed with consoles at the forefront, we have to wait until they're at a comparable level before devs even consider bothering to code for more cores, better ai etc.
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I agree. For the SOHO segment, single thread and higher clock speeds will be better for AMD in terms of performance. The segment that "whatevs" is talking about is the server environment where lots of threads and multithreading really come into play; the server segment. Although I would like to see AMD do more in the server market, because that is where the large $$$ is at, and they could certainly use a bump in that area.
 
No no no.

It's 2018, almost 2019.

Tired of the shitty crappy games from 1995. The last real improvement in game AI happened in Half-Life 1 when the marines picked up your grenades and tossed them back and used cover.

NOOOOOTHING has changed. It's because of you 640K-ers.

Get off my lawn. Dangit.

Higher IPC is a crutch for lazy devs. We have decent enough IPC. Need more computational power for everyone.
 
whatevs said:
No no no.

It's 2018, almost 2019.

Tired of the shitty crappy games from 1995. The last real improvement in game AI happened in Half-Life 1 when the marines picked up your grenades and tossed them back and used cover.

NOOOOOTHING has changed. It's because of you 640K-ers.

Get off my lawn. Dangit.

Higher IPC is a crutch for lazy devs. We have decent enough IPC. Need more computational power for everyone.
Click to expand...


640k'ers, referencing a random quote attributed to Bill Gates that has virtually no basis as anyone involved in Operating Systems would know that ram needs would eventually go up.

Also you conveniently missed the main point, devs have had plenty of horsepower to use for years now in terms of cpu and they never bother much with it. Throwing more cores on a cpu isn't magically going to make devs suddenly want to put them all to use. They've had 4 core, 6 core and (if you count bulldozer) 8 cores to an extent for years now and what massive changes have they delivered that really taxes all the cores on the cpu? Even on a quad core cpu for most games there's a lot of untapped processing power that isn't used, you might get the odd one that really taxes the cpu but they're in the minority. More cores in the long run is a good thing for multi tasking, rendering, video editing etc, but for gaming they will mostly go unused or barely used for quite some time to come.
 
thenapalm said:
I don't understand why they would put 16 cores on a non-Threadripper CPU. Doing so would overlap on the high end market. What purpose would Threadripper serve at that point? More PCI lanes?

(I know next to nothing about Threadripper)
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I guess for the same reason they have 8 cores in a Threadripper today. With the 'rippers it is all about the comparatively huge amount PCIe 3.0, memory and USB resources you get. The price you pay is for the lag inserted by the cross-package and cross CCX communications. An AM4, 16 core Ryzen would have the same cross CCX lag as the current 8-core ones so they would be inherently much faster than today's 16-core 'rippers. I would stay with my threadripper simply because I actually make use of the extra PCIe 3.0 lanes (I run 3x M.2 drives and a buttload of USB3 devices). I would not be able to do that without heavy sacrifices using an AM4 socket and X#70 chiopset.
 
Chris_B said:
640k'ers, referencing a random quote attributed to Bill Gates that has virtually no basis as anyone involved in Operating Systems would know that ram needs would eventually go up.

Also you conveniently missed the main point, devs have had plenty of horsepower to use for years now in terms of cpu and they never bother much with it. Throwing more cores on a cpu isn't magically going to make devs suddenly want to put them all to use. They've had 4 core, 6 core and (if you count bulldozer) 8 cores to an extent for years now and what massive changes have they delivered that really taxes all the cores on the cpu? Even on a quad core cpu for most games there's a lot of untapped processing power that isn't used, you might get the odd one that really taxes the cpu but they're in the minority. More cores in the long run is a good thing for multi tasking, rendering, video editing etc, but for gaming they will mostly go unused or barely used for quite some time to come.
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The Steam Hardware survey showed the opposite. The vast majority did not have decent number of threads(including semi-real HT) until very recently.

The game devs wont design a game for a fraction of a percent of players. Why more than 2 card SLI, even SLI itself is dead.

The i3-7100 is first i3 to be 2C/4T. Intel has been dragging its feet for too long. Holding back innovation because it has gotten fat on its monopoly.

As for the 640k, yeah, im being lazy in using that reference.

edit: not i3-7100, the first cheap 4 core with enough cache to not be crippled 2/4 in just name only.
 
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Chris_B said:
Also you conveniently missed the main point, devs have had plenty of horsepower to use for years now in terms of cpu and they never bother much with it.
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The Guild Wars 2 devs, to cite one counterexample, have said the primary graphical slowdown during world boss events is too much on the main thread (in particular, character model processing, which is why you can go from 90 FPS in the open world to 20 when a world boss fight starts and 50+ people show up). I have no more details than that, but they say, in essence, that single-threaded IPC isn't enough.
 
cyberguyz said:
I run 3x M.2 drives and a buttload of USB3 devices
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Out of idle curiosity, what? I have an external hard drive and a big thumb drive with a high sustained transfer rate (300MB/s sequential writes!) but I always wonder what the people who complain about "only" (say) 6 USB3 ports are doing that they need more.
 
Chris_B said:
LOL you honestly believe that? Game devs do the bare minimum for cpu usage, most games are lucky if they use 4 cores (and even if they do it's incredibly rare to see all 4 cores at even 50% usage) let alone 6 or 8 despite at least 6 core cpus being around for 8 years now.

Yeah on paper they have the potential to have better ai yadda yadda yadda, but in reality seeing as most games are designed with consoles at the forefront, we have to wait until they're at a comparable level before devs even consider bothering to code for more cores, better ai etc.
Click to expand...
And now you know why the game developers have so much catching up to do when everyone said IPC and no one pressed that you should use more cores.
short term thinking is what got gaming into the mess it is today.

The console angle is not the same as for the PC the cores on PC are very fast and the cores on current consoles are just for sending data to the gpu,

By grasping back to IPC everyone will lose and AMD which clearly is making the most of multi core cpu is pushed into a spot where there is more competition rather then less.
 
I'm curious.

Apart from people who do rendering/encoding who cares about higher core counts these days? There are obviously niche applications for HEDT type systems but for everyone else?

Most granny/mom and dad/business types probably won't notice a difference above a decent dual core chip, when working on their web/email/Ms office machines.

Most gamers likely won't notice a difference above 4-6 cores.

Even most of us enthusiasts and heavy multitaskers likely see a significant diminishing returns over 6 cores or so.

I wonder what market they are going after in bumping core count at this point when they already have consumer octa-cores on the market.

It obviously makes sense for their HEDT Threadripper platform, but for everyone else? They'd probably be better off with greater IPC/core clocks and sticking with 4-6 cores.
 
And here Intel thought the plan was marginally more cores with a cutdown of L3 cache in their HEDT chips.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I'm curious.

Apart from people who do rendering/encoding who cares about higher core counts these days? There are obviously niche applications for HEDT type systems but for everyone else?

Most granny/mom and dad/business types probably won't notice a difference above a decent dual core chip, when working on their web/email/Ms office machines.

Most gamers likely won't notice a difference above 4-6 cores.

Even most of us enthusiasts and heavy multitaskers likely see a significant diminishing returns over 6 cores or so.

I wonder what market they are going after in bumping core count at this point when they already have consumer octa-cores on the market.

It obviously makes sense for their HEDT Threadripper platform, but for everyone else? They'd probably be better off with greater IPC/core clocks and sticking with 4-6 cores.
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It is not about caring it is about the limits they reach on clock speed. But when you can do work to change the playing field in your favour you better do it quickly. The need for 16 cores is not there but what we need more then anything else is progress and IPC never been about progress in gaming.
If everyone that is gaming would have 16 cores would that not change the landscape for gaming more then anything else.
How about next 5 years where the minimum cores needed would be 8 instead of what we have now that would be something worthwhile.
 
Pieter3dnow said:
It is not about caring it is about the limits they reach on clock speed. But when you can do work to change the playing field in your favour you better do it quickly. The need for 16 cores is not there but what we need more then anything else is progress and IPC never been about progress in gaming.
If everyone that is gaming would have 16 cores would that not change the landscape for gaming more then anything else.
How about next 5 years where the minimum cores needed would be 8 instead of what we have now would be something worthwhile.
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I tend to think that mulithreading has now gotten about as good as it ever will be, without some kind of major technological innovation that can break down instructions and execute them across multiple cores or subcores.

The truth is that true multi threading is not possible on all types of code.

Gamer fanboys dating back to AMD's early days of "MOAR CORES" always like to blame "lazy devs" for not making it happen, but the truth is that only a small portion of code (maybe ~30%) can ever be effectively multithreaded due to a variety of dependency issues, thread locking and the like.

To a certain extent you can fake it, and have multiple single threaded processes running in parallel utilizing more cores, but there are limited to how much you can brake up a game engine effectively.
 
Part of the problem is that modern CPU design takes a unified approach in order to keep costs down.

Both AMD and Intel design unified architectures, that usually target performace/Watt and then release mobile versions and through a combination of binning and cranking up the voltage create high end desktop CPU's and server chips, with only small variations.


Ideally each of these should have their own unique from scratch design. The unified design will always hold back either low wattage models or high clock models, and as time goes on, high clock models are more and more an afterthought.

There is a reason my 7 year old 3930k can hit higher max clocks than most more modern chips.

If we had a true dedicated high performance architecture we'd be seeing much higher clocks in high end desktop CPU's.
 
I wonder if they'll use that "chiplet" and "active interposer" tech on the Zen 2/Ryzen gen 3. I think it would make a great combo of technologies and give us the best of everything. Have chiplets for 3 or 4 CCX units, a PCIe controller, and memory controller that they can all speed bin for the best performance for the price range, all on an active interposer built using older production methods, and not have whole dies lost in production because of a defect in one little piece. I bet if produced separately, each CCX at 7nm would probably be about the size of a couple grains of rice, and they could get such great yields per wafer.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
Part of the problem is that modern CPU design takes a unified approach in order to keep costs down.

Both AMD and Intel design unified architectures, that usually target performace/Watt and then release mobile versions and through a combination of binning and cranking up the voltage create high end desktop CPU's and server chips, with only small variations.


Ideally each of these should have their own unique from scratch design. The unified design will always hold back either low wattage models or high clock models, and as time goes on, high clock models are more and more an afterthought.

There is a reason my 7 year old 3930k can hit higher max clocks than most more modern chips.

If we had a true dedicated high performance architecture we'd be seeing much higher clocks in high end desktop CPU's.
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All I have to say about that.
 
16 cores?
Maybe the mobo makers would have to actually put some effort into the VRMs of their AM4 mobos.

Like, I find it really sad that only top end x470 mobos have decent VRMs, where was the mid range skimp out quite heavily and could hold back PB2/XFR2.
 
Pieter3dnow said:
And now you know why the game developers have so much catching up to do when everyone said IPC and no one pressed that you should use more cores.
short term thinking is what got gaming into the mess it is today.

The console angle is not the same as for the PC the cores on PC are very fast and the cores on current consoles are just for sending data to the gpu,

By grasping back to IPC everyone will lose and AMD which clearly is making the most of multi core cpu is pushed into a spot where there is more competition rather then less.
Click to expand...


It's no secret that coding for more cores is harder to do, and even harder is spreading the computing load across them all in a way that actually makes use of a significant amount of each core. Developers have to get money chucked at them to bother doing anything other than the bare minimum. Its not like multiple cores is some new fad, we've had quad cores for over a decade now and it's rare that a game will actually hammer all the cores.
 
whatevs said:
The Steam Hardware survey showed the opposite. The vast majority did not have decent number of threads(including semi-real HT) until very recently.

The game devs wont design a game for a fraction of a percent of players. Why more than 2 card SLI, even SLI itself is dead.

The i3-7100 is first i3 to be 2C/4T. Intel has been dragging its feet for too long. Holding back innovation because it has gotten fat on its monopoly.

As for the 640k, yeah, im being lazy in using that reference.

edit: not i3-7100, the first cheap 4 core with enough cache to not be crippled 2/4 in just name only.
Click to expand...


The steam survey hardly covers all pc gamers, and even the ones it does cover you have to consent to sending the data to valve. And with the way people are about sending any type of data i have to wonder how much of the player base their survey represents. You could equally argue that statistically not that many have 1070\1080 grade gpu's and above in the steam survey, hundreds of thousands if not millions do but from what i remember that's not represented that well on their statistics.
 
Chris_B said:
LOL you honestly believe that? Game devs do the bare minimum for cpu usage, most games are lucky if they use 4 cores (and even if they do it's incredibly rare to see all 4 cores at even 50% usage) let alone 6 or 8 despite at least 6 core cpus being around for 8 years now.

Yeah on paper they have the potential to have better ai yadda yadda yadda, but in reality seeing as most games are designed with consoles at the forefront, we have to wait until they're at a comparable level before devs even consider bothering to code for more cores, better ai etc.
Click to expand...
I have no idea why so many people are liking your comment. That scares me that people are actually as ignorant as you are with what you just said. That is laughably stupid that you think games only use 50% of a 4 core CPU. Pretty much every modern game uses well over 50% of my overclocked i7. Hell there are plenty of games that will Peg or Nearly Peg all eight threads of my CPU. Sounds like some of you have been living under a fucking rock.
 
whatevs said:
No no no.

It's 2018, almost 2019.

Tired of the shitty crappy games from 1995. The last real improvement in game AI happened in Half-Life 1 when the marines picked up your grenades and tossed them back and used cover.

NOOOOOTHING has changed. It's because of you 640K-ers.

Get off my lawn. Dangit.

Higher IPC is a crutch for lazy devs. We have decent enough IPC. Need more computational power for everyone.
Click to expand...


Read my post above. Multithreading is about as good today as it will ever get. Only a very small portion of code can be effectively multithreading. It's not "lazy developers" it's a fundamental basic law of computer science.


Most code simply cannot be multithreaded. Not now, not ever. No matter how many programmers, time and dollars you throw at it.


Many cores may be the future, but it's not a future we should want. It's only the future because we are running up against the laws of physics when it comes to die shrinks.

If we could indefinitely shrink dies and increase IPC and clock speed, it would be much more effective for most client workloads to keep using a small number of cores, but have those cores be much faster.
 
misterbobby said:
I have no idea why so many people are liking your comment. That scares me that people are actually as ignorant as you are with what you just said. That is laughably stupid that you think games only use 50% of a 4 core CPU. Pretty much every modern game uses well over 50% of my overclocked i7. Hell there are plenty of games that will Peg or Nearly Peg all eight threads of my CPU. Sounds like some of you have been living under a fucking rock.
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I've yet to see some of these magical games that can load up 8 cores almost fully, i've already said that a few games can put more load on a core but i've yet to see one maxing one out or coming close to it , usually the load will be mostly on one core and then slacken off the rest of the cores using much smaller percentages of the core. (funny how you ignored that part) instead of flapping your gums give some examples that can "nearly peg" all 8 cores of a cpu.
 
Chris_B said:
I've yet to see some of these magical games that can load up 8 cores almost fully, i've already said that a few games can put more load on a core but i've yet to see one maxing one out or coming close to it , usually the load will be mostly on one core and then slacken off the rest of the cores using much smaller percentages of the core. (funny how you ignored that part) instead of flapping your gums give some examples that can "nearly peg" all 8 cores of a cpu.
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I found this one. Hard to read the osd on mobile, but looks like around 50% usage across most of the 8 threads.
 
ThatsAgood1jay said:
Both the PS4 and Xbox one are 8 core APU's, so what is this 'comparable level' you're describing?
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Each of those cores is VERY slow compared to Zen or modern Intel stuff though. Having double the cores that are half as fast is pointless as it still limits what they can do with a game.
 
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