AMD News Galore: Threadripper, EPYC, Ryzen Pro Processors, Integrated Vega Graphics For APUs, 7nm Ryzen Roadmap

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At its financial analyst day in Sunnyvale, AMD continued rolling out its product roadmap, specifically announcing a much-anticipated 16-core/32-thread product at the high-end of the desktop space, known as Threadripper, as well as Ryzen Pro for the professional segment, EPYC for the data center, and the inclusion of Vega as an integrated GPU in forthcoming APUs. The company also announced that 7nm+ Zen products would debut in 2020.

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Paul Alcorn
Paul Alcorn
Editor-in-Chief

Paul Alcorn is the Editor-in-Chief for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.

63 Comments Comment from the forums
  • bit_user
    EPYC for the data center
    No. No they didn't.

    Ouch. That's worse than a bad pun.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    The processors support eight memory channels per socket, for a total of 16 DDR4 channels and 32 DIMMs in a two-socket server
    Ah, but the catch is that it has the memory topology of a 8-CPU system. Lots of aggregate performance to be had, but you've got to take great care in distributing your data & threads.
    Reply
  • JamesSneed
    What a fun year this is turning out to be a tech enthusiast. Kaby Lake, Ryzen, Vega, "Threadripper", Skylake-x, Kaby-Lake-x. I don't recall this much going on in one year a loooong time.
    Reply
  • rhysiam
    We'll have to see how the infinity fabric and inter-core/inter-die latency plays out with server workloads, but if AMD have been able to keep that under control then those HEDT and Server CPUs look amazing. "EPYC" is an awful name, especially for a server CPU, but it's performance that counts.

    AMD also displayed EPYC with the heatspreader removed, and we spotted four 8-core Zeppelin die on a single package (MCP). These four die are glued together with AMD's Infinity Fabric.
    So are these literally identical dies to the ones we see in current Ryzen consumer products (Ryzen 7 etc)? That's some impressive scaling AMD have managed if they can use a single die design, with multiple package arrangements (1, 2 or 4 dies on package), to scale from a mid range consumer CPU (Ryzen 5 1400), through HEDT (16 core 32 thread), all the way up to a premium dual socket compatible server CPU (32 core, 64 thread, 8 RAM channels). With AMD's limited resources, having a single flexible silicone die makes sense, and also makes their achievements with "zen" all the more impressive IMHO. Does this also shed light on the lower clock speeds and sometimes less than competitive IPC (particularly with gaming workloads) on Ryzen 7 & 5 CPUs? Trying to make such a scale-able design must involve compromises along the way?

    My one disappointment with all this is seeing Zen 2 tied to a new process. AMD were talking up plenty of "low hanging fruit" which could be addressed in future zen architectures to raise IPC and clock speeds, which makes sense when iterating on a brand new architecture (as opposed to Intel's core architecture, where all the easy performance gains were extracted years ago). Tying Zen2 to Glo-Fo's 7nm process put the timelines largely out of AMD's hands, and means many of the performance/power improvement dot points are likely to come from process improvements as much as architectural refinements.

    Anyway - interesting times for sure.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    19699643 said:
    So are these literally identical dies to the ones we see in current Ryzen consumer products (Ryzen 7 etc)? That's some impressive scaling AMD have managed if they can use a single die design, with multiple package arrangements (1, 2 or 4 dies on package), to scale from a mid range consumer CPU (Ryzen 5 1400), through HEDT (16 core 32 thread), all the way up to a premium dual socket compatible server CPU (32 core, 64 thread, 8 RAM channels).
    Don't praise them until you see the data. If they haven't got more PCIe lanes per Zeppelin than the 20 (24, if you're stretching it) that Ryzen exposed, I think it might not be enough.

    19699643 said:
    Tying Zen2 to Glo-Fo's 7nm process put the timelines largely out of AMD's hands,
    Agreed. I sure wish they could use Samsung. I have yet to see their Glo-Fo ties do anything but weigh them down. They better be getting some sweet wafer pricing, at least.
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    19699643 said:
    So are these literally identical dies to the ones we see in current Ryzen consumer products (Ryzen 7 etc)? That's some impressive scaling AMD have managed if they can use a single die design
    It isn't really that impressive, this is basically a 4S multi-CPU built into a single MCM. Same principles but higher integration.
    Reply
  • WeldonB8
    Kinda like "JAMESSNEED" said this is turning out to be an exciting year, near the end of summer last year I read somewhere 2017 will be a year to remember, and to watch out for Intel, I don't recall anything about AMD but Iv bought every component for a new rig except CPU, mobo and RAM just waiting to see what comes out lol.
    Reply
  • Johnpombrio
    One Ryzen core=Ryzen HEDT. 2 Ryzen cores=Threadripper. 4 Ryzen cores (plus one BIG interposer and a whole lot of pins)=EYPC.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    19699532 said:
    What a fun year this is turning out to be a tech enthusiast. Kaby Lake, Ryzen, Vega, "Threadripper", Skylake-x, Kaby-Lake-x.
    You forgot 3D X-Point finally reaching the market.

    People rip on Intel for being late and falling short of their original claims, but honestly it's the brightest persistent memory technology on the (near) horizon. And it arrives none too soon - just as ever slower 3 & 4-level cell NAND is starting to dominate. Now, we just need prices to fall down to Earth.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    19699925 said:
    One Ryzen core=Ryzen HEDT. 2 Ryzen cores=Threadripper. 4 Ryzen cores (plus one BIG interposer and a whole lot of pins)=EYPC.
    Yes, if you mean dies - not "cores".

    Reply