
AMD Announces 7nm Rome CPUs and MI60 GPUs - ccwilson10
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-new-horizon-7nm-cpu,38029.html
======
berbec
With AMD closing the gap with Intel competition in the CPU market is back
after a ten year abscense.

What I'm waiting for is an AMD GPU that can compete with a top-tier NVidia
offering. Vega is nice, but not really a contender on the mid to top end. The
G series cpus with vega inside are great, but where is the 2080ti, or even
1080ti, killer? Even something a bit slower, but close, would be great.

Is it too much to ask of AMD to handle both? I am unsure, but I would love to
see NVidia in a price and performance war at the same time Intel is.
Competition makes the resulting products better. Do you think the 9th Gen
Intel chips would be octocore without Ryzen?

~~~
asfgionio1234
I wouldn't say AMD is closing the gap in CPUs. They're ahead of Intel and are
widening that lead.

For whatever reason, Nvidia hasn't stagnated the way Intel has. Nvidia has
continued rapid progress in GPUs even though they have a dominant position
(and a near monopoly in the datacenter).

Perhaps because they don't have as much of a lead as Intel used to? Intel was
a monopoly, plain and simple, but AMD has always been a contender when it
comes to GPUs.

~~~
zanny
AMD is still behind per core in both clocks and per clock performance. Intel
has demonstrated the ability to just keep pushing cores to match AMDs largest
offerings by just jacking up architectures they have been milking cheap for
high margins for years.

TSMCs 7nm node will be the first legitimate tech advantage over Intel and if
Intel does get their act in gear and manages to deploy their 10nm next year
they will at least keep parity.

I am a huge AMD fan and will almost certainly be considering a Zen 2 build
next year (though the fact I can disable Intel ME and can't remove AMD PSP
will temper my interest) but thats more to support the underdog and get better
value for money than getting the absolute best possible performance.

~~~
astrodust
Intel has been the undisputed champion of _process_ since the 80486 days so
it's surprising to see how badly they're scrambling to hit even 10nm, let
alone 7nm.

I would never have bet money that the tiny little CPU designed by Acorn
Computers that ended up powering the Newton would be the first CPU to jump two
nodes ahead of Intel in terms of process, but here we are.

ARM's doing great work and I hope they continue to push core counts to even
more ridiculous levels.

~~~
matthewmacleod
(I think you've confused ARM and AMD, FWIW!)

 _it 's surprising to see how badly they're scrambling to hit even 10nm,
little lone 7nm_

The feature size there is a bit misleading – "Intel 10nm" and "TSMC 7nm" are
roughly equivalent, with IIRC the Intel 10nm process actually having a higher
transistor density. The TSMC chips aren't really "two nodes ahead" – but it
_is_ likely that Intel will lose its process lead for maybe a year or so.

I get the impression that Intel overextended on their 10nm process, in that
they were perhaps a bit more ambitious that other manufacturers and it came
back to bite them when there were scaling problems. On the other hand, last I
heard was that the scaling problems experienced with the 10nm node haven't
held up Intel's 7nm node, which could well see them re-establish their process
lead.

At the end of the day, it's great that the market is seeing some more
competition, so hopefully we will all be able to enjoy the benefits from a
variety of manufacturers soon!

~~~
blackstrips
> I get the impression that Intel overextended on their 10nm process, in that
> they were perhaps a bit more ambitious that other manufacturers and it came
> back to bite them when there were scaling problems.

I’m no micro-electronic expert but I wonder if we are hitting limits in clock
speed scaling with regards to feature size - i.e. shrinking pass a certain
feature size clock speeds actually have to drop for the chip to be stable.

Intel’s priority is clock speed first and foremost due to what they produce -
desktop and server CPUs. A new process is pointless for them if they can’t get
at least equal clock speeds out of it as their old process.

TSMC caters to mobile CPU and GPU production - those will never boost to 5Ghz
like CPUs; the former for power efficiency reasons (and heat) and the later
tends to go for more “cores” as it focuses on parallizable workloads.

~~~
da_chicken
As I understand it, it's not chip speed. It's chip voltage. Everything is a
conductor if the voltage is high enough, and the closer the traces get, the
less resistance the insulation provides. The problem is that at the
temperatures we run computers at, the conductor traces need a fair bit of
voltage to push the current through the entire chip.

~~~
londons_explore
The ratio of conductivities of insulators and conductors stays the same.

It's more that making many very long conductors with very short insulators
between them becomes problematic. But that was the case at any process size,
but now we are pushing the limits as far as possible to try to make bigger
chips.

------
tambourine_man
What happened to Intel? Have they given any official explanations yet?

How does a company, who for decades has been 1-2 node processes ahead of the
industry, suddenly gets 1-2 node processes _behind_ everyone else.

There must be an amazing story behind this that no one seems to be digging
into.

~~~
aw1621107
The explanation I've seen most frequently is that process sizes aren't really
comparable between fabs any more. In this case, that would mean that Intel's
10nm process is equivalent to another fab's 7nm process.

~~~
berbec
I'm not trying to be snarky; I actually don't understand. Isn't a nanometer
the same between fabs?

~~~
mikeash
A nanometer is the same everywhere, but what you’re measuring isn’t. When they
say 7nm, are they talking about the smallest feature they can produce, the
minimum wire size, the minimum transistor size, the average transistor size,
or...?

For an analogy, a GHz is a GHz everywhere but that doesn’t mean a 3GHz CPU is
always faster than a 2GHz CPU.

~~~
gisely
If AMD can suggest that they are on smaller process size because they are
measuring a smaller feature, why wouldn't Intel just start measuring the same
feature on their chips? I have trouble believing they would stick to some
principle about what is the right feature to measure at the cost losing out on
marketing themselves.

~~~
wtallis
7nm does not refer to _any_ feature size. Process node names have continued to
follow the pattern of the next node being named as roughly the current node
divided by sqrt(2), even though density increases are no longer coming from
simple uniform horizontal shrinks.

------
at1as
One slide noted that their 7nm processor had 13.28 billion transistors per 331
mm^2.

Although 7nm/10nm have mostly become marketing terms, is this something
directly comparable between fabs/companies?

Does anyone have a comparison for Intel? Best I can find is this list:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count)
(and if that's accurate and up to date, it looks as though AMD will be well
ahead).

~~~
fermienrico
The best way to compare CPUs would be performance/watt benchmarks which is
what matters ultimately to the customer; in this case, data center customers.
Let me clarify - we are not talking about Geekbench type benchmarks. Each
customer has their own validation & qualification process for new datacenter
chip procurement.

Public gets hung up with all kinds of marketing terms (7nm, 7nm+, 10nm, 10nm+,
10nm++, etc). What does 7nm+ even mean!? It is purely a marketing term and
large datacenter customers know this. They run their workloads on test samples
and make a decision to go with Intel or AMD.

Furthermore, there is also the aspect of maintainability, servicing and
infrastructure inertia that is priced into Intel's server chips. Apple-to-
Apple chip comparison (sorry for the pun, not intended) from Intel & AMD would
not be priced the same since Intel knows that there is a giant amount of
switching inertia for a customer to switch to AMD Epyc. Furthermore,
datacenter customers want predictability and proven performance. In this case,
Intel again wins with its history and you betchya its modeled in the pricing.

So, this is all business as usual. HN loves beating on Intel but their numbers
in quarterly reports depict a different story.

Let me repeat: No sane customer gives a shit about 7nm or 10nm. My comments
are only applicable to datacenter customers. Desktop/Client chips are a whole
another enchilada where marketing plays a bigger role (have you seen the
ridiculous packaging from AMD & Intel? This is to please the RGB Gamer crowd).

~~~
Dylan16807
The feature size is relevant for understanding how the chips progress over
time. It's not relevant for a point-in-time purchase, but it's not a marketing
thing to ignore either.

The plus means a generation of optimization on how to use roughly the same
lithography tech, which can give you a big difference when they're _so hard_
to use.

~~~
akvadrako
It really doesn't matter. What if going from 10nm to 1nm means you need to use
simpler features, reducing performance?

CPUs won't necessarily evolve toward smaller feature sizes - it's just what
we've seen so far.

~~~
Dylan16807
You can always use your 1nm tech to craft more precise circuits of the same
size, packing them better. When it comes to the working chips that are made,
assuming some tighter lithography that's equally functional to the previous
one, it's only going to benefit.

------
51lver
This is really fun to watch. AMD is giving people EXACTLY what they want
(again), and intel is having to fight dirty (again).

Possible example (not at all out of character for intel): why are so many
people parroting that 10nm technical superiority junk without supplying
sources?

~~~
gameswithgo
I have seen people supply sources at least twice, frankly I'm amazed given
this comes up 5 times per day here that we have to keep explaining it.

Here is one source, again:
[https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/attachments/content/attachmen...](https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/attachments/content/attachments/21824d1529099818-slide4.jpg)

[https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/7544-7nm-5nm-3nm-
logi...](https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/7544-7nm-5nm-3nm-logic-
current-projected-processes.html)

~~~
51lver
These are very nice and detailed feature figures, but I do not see that intel
has any advantage from them (possibly my reading comprehension is failing
here...). Can you cite a source that clearly shows intel is manufacturing and
selling something better than the competing fabs?

~~~
gameswithgo
they aren't selling anything at the 10nm yet, who knows how it will perform!

but they can fit more on their chips at their process they call 10nm than the
others can fit on their chips that they call 7nm.

So it is correct to say that assigning a single size to a node is misleading.
There are many dimensions you can measure.

~~~
akvadrako
They _are_ selling _something_ on 10nm:

[https://www.extremetech.com/computing/269270-intels-
first-10...](https://www.extremetech.com/computing/269270-intels-first-10nm-
cpus-have-been-spotted-in-the-wild)

------
stagger87
Increasing the vector width to 256 bits (assuming no crazy thermal throttling)
is a pretty big deal and would get me to move off Intel, unless Intel can
figure out 512 bit widths without massive throttling.

~~~
hajile
That's really a matter of Intel's 10nm process (which is roughly equivalent to
TSMC 7nm).

AMD used 128-bit and simulated 256-bit by doing 2 passes. This reduced peak
power consumption and allowed them to keep clock consistently high. That
matters because while your AVX is going slowly, your non-AVX is also going
slowly. There was simply no way x86 could do vectors that wide on 14nm without
throttling.

With the 7nm shift, AMD can use the reduced size to increase to native 256 at
full speed (and they may do 512 in 2 parts). I expect Intel to do the same
when they get replace their 10nm process with something that works. It'll
probably be a couple more shrinks though, before 512 can be run at full-speed.

------
arnon
This AMD card can compete with NVIDIA's high end Tesla V100 accelerator.

At 7.4 TFlops of double-precision, it is smack in the middle between the PCIe
version of the V100 at 7.0 and the NVLink version at 7.8.

Memory bandwidth for the MI60 is a bit better at 1000GB/s, compared to the
Tesla V100's 900GB/s.

However, AMD's problems are usually not the actual hardware, but the software
around it. NVIDIA has done amazing work with CUDA and the surrounding
frameworks, while AMD has not really. They really need to catch up on software
that makes writing code for their GPUs more trivial.

------
utternerd
64 core EPYC chips based on Zen 2 is what really blows my mind.

~~~
bitL
Threadripper 3 with 64 cores is going to be mindblowing! Not that long ago
since Parallella board advertised 64 slow cores and soon we can get all
x86/x64 high-end cores like that!

~~~
uep
It is pretty crazy. I felt the same way. Individual x64 cores tend to be so
much more powerful than other architectures, and now single chips will
effectively have 128 logical cores.

For my purposes (large builds and rendering), I think RAM prices are holding
back AMD here. To feed that many cores, you want really big RAM sticks. The
CPUs have become a comparatively small cost compared to the RAM these days.

~~~
bitL
I've recently built a TR-based DL/ML workstation and bought 128GB ECC 2,667MHz
UDIMMs for ~$1600, roughly the same price as 2990WX, but would have vastly
preferred to get 256GB instead. Unfortunately, only Samsung is now sampling
32GB ECC DDR4 UDIMMs - I haven't seen them anywhere yet, and I expect the
price is going to be insanely high :-(

~~~
stevesimmons
Speaking of insanely high RAM prices, I just came across receipts for a PC I
built in 1992. So 26 years ago, I paid $495 for 4MB. Yup, that's MB, not GB.

Admittedly these were AUD rather than USD. So maybe halve that for the USD
cost.

When we complain about how expensive memory and compute, a slightly longer
term view shows it's still pretty good value!

~~~
uep
You realize that it's not about compared to 25 years ago though, right? When I
looked at the beginning of this year, the same RAM size and speed was about
twice as expensive as it was two years ago.

------
kevin_thibedeau
Fictional process geometries are the new MHz wars.

~~~
gruez
Is that really the case? I'm not seeing process node sizes being plastered
over computers as a selling point.

~~~
etaoins
It's being mentioned more during product launches than it used to be. For
example, Apple heavily promoted the iPhone XS's 7nm SOC where previously it
wouldn't have been mentioned.

I would guess this is due to other vendors starting to surpass Intel and
wanting to highlight their process lead.

------
tmd83
Is anyone knowledgeable to comment about the memory bandwidth. I thought Zen-1
was eight channel with 32 core, now the Zen-2 is the same eight channel with
64 core. Wouldn't that cause issue or can the new memory system be that
better?

The other interesting thing is that they said the memory access would be more
uniform kind of like NUMA independent given that the controller is no longer
part of the individual chip but a common element. Which definitely makes good
performance easier with such a beast of cheap but does it do so at the cost of
the lowest possible latency as in when in Zen-1 the memory access was from a
channel in the same CPU. I would hope that a massive single piece of IO chip
would allow them to design the thing better but does anyone know or care to
guess?

~~~
zamadatix
Probably bodes for worse memory performance for (most) VM hosts and better
memory performance for (most) bare metal workloads. I don't think anyone is
concerned with many-VM class workloads not having the highest possible memory
throughput though and I doubt going to even 16 channels would make a big
differences anyways. It'll be somewhat easy to find out if memory bandwidth
needs to scale linearly or you hit massive perf losses in the real world
though as Intel's competing 2x24core die was announced to have 12 channels.

There was a longstanding rumor that the IO chip was going to have ~512mb of l4
cache. Considering it wasn't announced I'm thinking that turned out to not be
true but from a pure performance perspective that is probably more useful than
a couple more memory channels (though likely more complicated).

~~~
tutanchamun
I'm really curious about cache on the IO die. Ian Cutress of Anandtech said
Rome is ~ 1000 mm² in total. [0] Based on that and the pictures of the Rome
die that were shown some users [1] estimated the size of the IO die to be 387
- 407 mm².

\- Zen 1 (8 cores) with IO is 213 mm².

\- the Zen 2 core only chiplets are estimated to be around 70 mm².

\- if we assume IO scales as well as the rest (which it doesn't) Zen 1 would
be ~106 mm² on 7nm.

\- let's just say the difference between Zen 2 core only chiplets and the
imaginary Zen 1 on 7nm is the size of the IO per Zeppelin die => ~36 mm²

\- now double the area again because the IO die is on 14nm => 72 mm²

\- now quadruple the size because we have 8 memory channels and 128 PCIe 4.0
lanes => 288 mm²

Going by my flawed layman estimation this would mean we still have a budget of
~100 mm² for additional functionality. Either PCIe 4.0 takes much more space
than PCIe 3.0, they have some secret sauce in there, or maybe just a large L4
cache.

If they use EDRAM instead of SRAM like Intel did with some of their Broadwell
and Skylake CPUs they could probably fit quite a bit cache in this area. Intel
used 128 MB EDRAM fabbed on a 22nm node which required 84mm ² [2]

[0]
[https://twitter.com/IanCutress/status/1059924863014653958](https://twitter.com/IanCutress/status/1059924863014653958)

[1]
[https://old.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/9uscqu/epyc_and_epyc_2...](https://old.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/9uscqu/epyc_and_epyc_2_dies_compared/e96m4yv/)

[2] [https://www.anandtech.com/show/6993/intel-iris-
pro-5200-grap...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/6993/intel-iris-
pro-5200-graphics-review-core-i74950hq-tested/3)

------
lxcid
I have a feeling this is not a AMD vs Intel or Apple vs Intel.

This is TSMC vs Intel. TSMC basically make the 7nm chip for Apple and AMD.

It looks like this company HQ at Taiwan provided the bragging right for Apple
and AMD…

~~~
zamadatix
I don't think it's one or the other rather both. TSMC is definitely starting
to lead the foundries but e.g. nobody expects the next gen Qualcomm Snapdragon
chip to beat the Apple A12X even though both are coming out of TSMC.

IMO Intel is lagging on both fronts, AMD is catching Intel a bit, ARM is
steamrolling year/year perf increases compared to x86, and Apple remains +25%
ahead of every other ARM chip.

------
Symmetry
Well, looks like Semiaccurate was right about Rome's architecture. Personally
I'm excited about the wider vector units.

------
sergiotapia
Video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwX13bo0RDQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwX13bo0RDQ)

Dr. Lisa Su is so inspiring when she speaks - very clear, sure of her product
and confident. Hopefully I get there one day!

------
doctorsher
Non-AMP link: [https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-new-horizon-7nm-
cpu,38...](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-new-horizon-7nm-
cpu,38029.html)

~~~
sctb
Updated. Thanks!

~~~
Filligree
I actually prefer the amp link...

~~~
vatueil
The original AMP link, for those looking for it:
[https://amp.tomshardware.com/news/amd-new-horizon-7nm-
cpu,38...](https://amp.tomshardware.com/news/amd-new-horizon-7nm-
cpu,38029.html)

------
airstrike
nm is the new megapixel

~~~
jandrese
It's the Mhz. Intel went down the Mhz rabbit hole with NetBurst and it gave
AMD a temporary advantage (P4 vs. Athlon 64). Are we seeing the same thing
again with 7nm vs. 10nm?

