Anandtech: An Interview with AMD’s Forrest Norrod: Naples, Rome, Milan, & Genoa

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Snowdog

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An interview with AMD's Forrest Norrod. Naturally not much revealed, but next generation Milan is still DDR4, DDR5 needs new socket. That might mean similar for the desktop. Frontier Supercomputer won't be using Milan, but custom Silicon. Sound like GCN and Navi will coexist for Datacenter/Pro and gaming...

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14568/an-interview-with-amds-forrest-norrod-naples-rome-milan-genoa

Some highlights, but the whole thing is worth a read:
PCWatch: Support for DDR5?

Forrest Norrod: DDR5 is a different design. It will be on a different socket. We've already said Milan is a mid-2020 platform, and we've already said that's socket SP3, so DDR4 will still be used for Milan.

PCWatch: For the Frontier supercomputer, powered by AMD, is that using the Milan platform? With that processor, and with NVIDIA as a GPU, Frontier, is a brand new system, but I can’t understand the current remarks on the CPU. Is it Zen 3?

Forrest Norrod: Frontier is not Milan. It’s a custom CPU.

IC: When Intel says they have a custom CPU, all they are doing is changing the core count, frequency, the cache, and perhaps the TDP. Are you using custom CPU in the same context?

Forrest Norrod: Intel talks big about having custom CPUs for the cloud guys and it's just different TDPs or configurations. When I say we are going to use a custom CPU for Frontier, that is not what I mean. Under Intel’s definition, we already supply custom CPUs, for example, Amazon needed a different model so we provided it to them - you can't buy it anywhere else. But no, when I say custom CPU, I mean it's a different piece of silicon.

PCWatch: Instinct is based on 7nm, so how about changing to the Navi architecture and performance?

Forrest Norrod: There's going to be some overlap between the two. I think Lisa eluded to this earlier, where GCN and Vega will stick around for some parts and some applications, but Navi is really our new gaming architecture so I don't want to go beyond that. You'll see us have parts for both gaming applications and non-gaming applications.
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Snowdog said:
An interview with AMD's Forrest Norrod. Naturally not much revealed, but next generation Milan is still DDR4, DDR5 needs new socket. That might mean similar for the desktop. Frontier Supercomputer won't be using Milan, but custom Silicon. Sound like GCN and Navi will coexist for Datacenter/Pro and gaming...

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14568/an-interview-with-amds-forrest-norrod-naples-rome-milan-genoa

Some highlights, but the whole thing is worth a read:
Click to expand...
Thanks for the post, I'm going to start digesting this now.
 
Forrest Norrod: DDR5 is a different design. It will be on a different socket.
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I called it.. 2020 EOL AM4 for a reason.
 
{NG}Fidel said:
That's a great run though.
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Oh no complaints at all. Just few people said they'd transition to DDR5 and I didn't see that as being possible without a socket change typically. Yes in past it has been done (DDR3-4 with the intel lakes for mobile/desktop) but after such a long run with AM4 I think there could be some improvements available by now.
 
N4CR said:
Oh no complaints at all. Just few people said they'd transition to DDR5 and I didn't see that as being possible without a socket change typically. Yes in past it has been done (DDR3-4 with the intel lakes for mobile/desktop) but after such a long run with AM4 I think there could be some improvements available by now.
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They (AMD) tried it with ddr2/3, but it didn't really work that well. iirc they had some boards with both ddr2 and ddr3 slots, but not many.
 
Nobu said:
They (AMD) tried it with ddr2/3, but it didn't really work that well. iirc they had some boards with both ddr2 and ddr3 slots, but not many.
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Yeah, and as I recall the only real difference between AM2+ and AM3 was DDR3 support.
 
I find it interesting that it sounds like GCN is going to stick around for non-gaming applications while Navi is their new gaming architecture going forward.

Nolan7689 said:
Yeah, and as I recall the only real difference between AM2+ and AM3 was DDR3 support.
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And before that the only difference between Socket 939 and AM2 was support for DDR vs DDR2. That one was a bit of a disaster because of how closely they released but generally speaking I think switching to a new memory type is a good reason for a new socket.
 
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