
Intel Shows 2.5D FPGA at ISSCC - mrb
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331317&page_number=1
======
oliwarner
Getting a bit bored of leaks, press releases and even specs. The proof of a
CPU is in how it benchmarks across real workloads.

We're 2-3 weeks away from global release. People buying components NOW are
exactly the sort of people AMD should be working their socks off to stop
buying Intel parts. But instead of any firm performance figures, we have
rumour.

The _only_ reason I can imagine AMD is still keeping the press under cover is
because these Zen chips still can't compete where it matters and if AMD lets
that be known, everybody will go back to Plan A and buy an i7 6900K.

~~~
DannyBee
"People buying components NOW are exactly the sort of people AMD should be
working their socks off to stop buying Intel parts."

Err, for the people that matter, they probably are. I'm not sure why you would
think otherwise.

Certainly you realize their large purchasers vastly dwarf people frequenting
tech sites.

They 100% have done benchmarking/testing with, say, their top N chip
purchasers, well before now, and already either have firm commitments to buy,
or firm commitments to pass.

~~~
smueller1234
Nitpick: I'd like to point out that there's significant overlap between the
two groups. To wit, I read hardware sites (from the realworldtech forum to
anandtech and friends) and I've made 8 digit server hardware investment
choices for work. This being said, the actual product focus between a typical
core i7...K review and the mid range Xeons we've been purchasing are obviously
not the same despite the similarity in architecture. We do get to do our own
benchmarking, though. ;)

~~~
DannyBee
"Nitpick: I'd like to point out that there's significant overlap between the
two groups."

Maybe. Maybe not. But in any case, none of the 8 digit purchasers i know care
about when the review shows up on anandtech :)

------
mrb
I should have linked to the second page:
[http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331317&page_numb...](http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331317&page_number=2)

Relevant quote:

 _" AMD said its upcoming Zen x86 core fits into a 10 percent smaller die area
than Intel’s currently shipping second-generation 14nm processor. Analysts and
even Intel engineers in the session said the Zen core is clearly competitive
though many confidential variables will determine whether the die advantage
translates into lower cost for AMD."_

~~~
kogepathic
_> AMD said its upcoming Zen x86 core fits into a 10 percent smaller die area
than Intel’s currently shipping second-generation 14nm processor._

We need to compare apples to apples. AMD's Zen chips have no IGP, while most
Intel chips are shipping with an Intel GPU.

If you look at an Intel die shot, about half of the area is taken by the GPU.
[0]

Since the current batch of Zen SKUs lacks any IGP, I'd be worried if they
weren't able to come up with a die that's smaller than Intel's with an IGP...

[0] [https://www.techpowerup.com/215333/intel-skylake-die-
layout-...](https://www.techpowerup.com/215333/intel-skylake-die-layout-
detailed)

~~~
zamalek
I strongly doubt AMD are specifically targeting the desktop/laptop CPU market.

* Cloud computing has an absurd market cap.[1]

* Ryzen has some features that specifically target cloud computing:

* * More PCIe lanes than a Xeon. These are basically useless for desktop/gaming (as SLI doesn't scale beyond 2 cards). This shines for cloud computing because you can fit more GPUs in a blade. There's also ML to consider.

* * Virtualization security features. The chip can automatically encrypt pages, mitigating some of the virtualization attacks that we have seen recently.

* * More compute per watt. Cost is nice to have (which Ryzen has), but cooling is one of the main concerns when selecting chips for high density.

Intel's brand power is a waste of time and money to compete with. Unless AMD
can sort something out with Apple (for example), Intel are going to continue
dominating the desktop market - irrespective of which chip is actually
superior. It's incredibly likely that only enthusiasts would buy a Ryzen - who
AMD has catered for with XFR. Essentially, ignoring IGP is likely a strategic
decision because it's irrelevant for the markets that AMD can easily attack.

[1]: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2015/06/18/byron-
deet...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2015/06/18/byron-deeter-state-
of-the-cloud/#350677d41034)

~~~
lightedman
"SLI doesn't scale beyond 2 cards"

Guess you weren't around in the days of Quad VooDoo 2 GPU rigs. They most
certainly did scale. nVidia and AMD's implementation? Nope. They screwed the
pooch with that one and will never recover until they learn that the older way
was indeed better.

~~~
zamalek
SLI only matters for gaming - which is outside of the scope of my argument.
Regardless, it looks like 3Dfx SLI wasn't that great[1] and I did own a
Diamond Monster 3D II.

[1]: [http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/diamond-
monster-3d-ii,52...](http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/diamond-
monster-3d-ii,52-4.html)

~~~
lightedman
Diamond made crap hardware. Creative Labs' cards performed much better.

And if your dataset or code is GPU-capable, then no, SLI is quite useful here.

"Only matters for gaming" Yea, as if there weren't a bunch of other datasets
that could utilize matrix acceleration.

------
chx
There's a lot that goes into CPU performance. Go to
[http://wccftech.com/ryzen-smaller-die-intel-zen-
architecture...](http://wccftech.com/ryzen-smaller-die-intel-zen-architecture-
not-good-hpc/) and search for "Table courtesy of the Linley Group" without
quotes to see an extremely interesting table: [http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/02/Zen-Doubl...](http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/02/Zen-Double-Precision.png)

> Intel has a double precision IPC of 16 FLOPs per Clock with Skylake as well
> as 2x 256 bit FMA whereas Zen only has 8 FLOPs per clock and 2* 128 bit FMA.

FMA=Fused multiply-add. It remains to be seen whether dollar for dollar AMD
matches Intel or not -- it's likely to be very application dependent.

~~~
AlphaSite
Differ t workloads will be if it in different ways from the trade offs. I do t
imagine many applications will miss AVX 512.

~~~
jcoffland
It's actually quite difficult to use AVX512 and have it pay off significantly
unless you design something to specifically take advantage of it.

~~~
m_mueller
Exactly. IMO doing GPGPU is actually easier than porting code to use
vectorisation, since GPU cores are quite a bit more capable (allow
branching/context switches, just with a performance penalty) than the CPUs
vector units (vector code AFAIK completely breaks if you try to do an early
return on one unit).

I'm waiting for the day when the CPU designers learn from GPU and just give us
full OpenMP kernel support, such that you can use both multicore and
vectorization by just scattering the OpenMP kernel call, including branching
and early returns inside the kernels. I actually think that the higher core
Xeons would still be quite competitive with GPUs if that was the case, but as
it stands even the Intel MICs are a pain to program effectively. Doing this
all with OpenMP is IMO just not good solution, it's very hard figuring out
where things goes wrong.

~~~
gcp
Note that AVX512 actually addresses many of the issues that made SIMT code so
inefficient on CPUs. It's not just widening the vectors, but also adding
predication/masking etc.

I do fully agree that SIMT is a much easier programming model than SIMD.

~~~
m_mueller
Interesting, TIL. How good is the support for OpenCL on AVX512 processors?

~~~
gcp
So far that's only Knights Landing and friends, but they do seem well
supported.

------
pjc50
I'm slightly confused why everyone's talking about CPUs and ignoring the FPGA!

Anyway, it's an interesting technique. An extension of chip-on-module
packaging where instead of having a circuit board made of FR4 you have a tiny
PCB made of multilayer silicon. This allows fast connections between chips
made with different processes (CPU/DRAM/Flash are somewhat incompatible), and
joining small chips together into large ones to improve yield.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
Can you ELI5 how putting an FPGA on a cisc die will ultimately improve
performance? Does it affect both multi core and single core benchmarks?

~~~
nrclark
Adding an FPGA onto a desktop CPU probably doesn't speed up any existing
benchmark tests, but it does have a lot of potential.

At an ELI5 level, FPGAs are reconfigurable blocks of digital logic gates. So a
CPU-connected chunk of FPGA fabric could be reconfigured on-the-fly to create
task-specific CPU instructions.

A smart C compiler might be able to detect an ultra-common 16-instruction
block of code and synthesize it into FPGA logic (effectively collapsing it
down to a single instruction as far as the CPU is concerned).

edit: as pjc50 points out, Intel isn't making any FPGA/x86-64 hybrids just
yet. But I'd bet good money that they're on Intel's roadmap after the Altera
aquisition.

------
iand675
So the latest AMD cores seem like they might be more competitive... does
anyone know which AMD processors are likely to support ECC memory? My one big
gripe with Intel CPUs is that they currently only support ECC memory for non-
consumer chips. I run a personal ZFS cluster and am more concerned about data
integrity / cost than I am about pure CPU performance.

~~~
watersb
I am re-building my ZFS array with consumer parts.

GIGABYTE GA-X150M-PRO ECC Kingston 16GB ECC DIMM KVR21E15D8/16 Pentium G4600
CPU

Toys arrive in a couple of days. Total outlay was $220.

When I first built my storage box, in 2009, the AMD CPUs all supported ECC
DRAM, but I could not find a motherboard-chipset-BIOS setup that would
actually implement it.

~~~
guitarbill
I think that's why so many people go with the older HP microservers. Super
cheap, nice form factor, just add ECC RAM and HDDs.

~~~
rwg
I have an HP MicroServer N40L that I bought several years ago, and it's almost
a doorstop now. Its CPU (dual-core 1.5 GHz AMD Turion II Neo) is slow and
doesn't support AES-NI. It maxes out at 8 GB of RAM (16 GB of RAM if the stars
align and it likes the RAM you bought). It has one GigE port, and SATA ports
are limited to 3 Gbps (SATA II). Expansion is limited to an eSATA port, USB
2.0 ports, a low-profile PCIe 2.0 x1 slot, and a low-profile PCIe 2.0 x16
slot.

It's okay as a NAS that mostly sits idle and occasionally serves up
unencrypted data at GigE speeds or less. For more demanding tasks, it's
woefully underpowered.

~~~
guitarbill
I have one of those. Finding the RAM is pretty easy, I'm running 16GiB of ECC
RAM. Cheap, too, because DDR2 if I remember. You can put a NIC in the PCIe
slot. The SATA ports are fine for spinning disks. You can use the drive bay
which is also SATA.

Of course it always depends on the use-case, but for most people at home it's
sufficient. I use it as a Minecraft and media server.

------
gm-conspiracy
Was this headline changed?

I thought it referenced AMD originally?

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Yes, it originally linked to the second page of this article, which is
subtitled "Zen squeezes x86 area and power" and has a completely different
topic. The HN submission received the editorialized title "AMD Zen core is 10%
smaller than Intel's current gen, and has 2x larger L2" which is why the top
comment
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13642442](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13642442))
references AMD as the focus of the article.

Like EETimes articles (and to be fair, they're not alone in the practice),
this article is basically just a collation of manufacturer press releases.

To hammer this point home, or perhaps to reach a 500 word target, the author
concludes by discussing a new Mediatek mobile SOC completely unrelated to
either Intel's FPGAs on page 1 or the AMD Zen cores on the top half of page 2.

------
Groxx
Link seems to go to " _Intel Shows 2.5D FPGA at ISSCC_ " instead?

edit: oh, derp. nevermind. there's a second page:
[http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331317&page_numb...](http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331317&page_number=2)

edit edit: so apparently page 2 can't be linked to. whatever. bottom of the
article content has a "next page" link.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Your link takes me to page 2. Running Chrome with uBlock Origin; not sure why
you're being redirected to page 1.

~~~
Groxx
¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ it seems to be working now. maybe strange cookies / site bugs /
who-knows-what.

------
robotjosh
Maybe a big L2 cache is nice, but overall performance is all that really
matters. I suspect the figures we have seen are from running the chip hot with
a fancy cooler. Gamers won't be able to overclock much and regular people will
have heat and noise to deal with. Just a hunch, we'll see in a few weeks. I'm
going to buy a ryzen setup if they are not awful.

~~~
jackmott
a big l2 cache will tend to lead to good overall performance. In that it will
positively impact the performance of a wide range of programs. Especially ones
that adhere to common OOP or functional programming practices. (Pointer
hopping, virtual functions, linked lists, etc)

Games or other carefully tuned programs that carefully lay out data in memory
may not be much affected I guess.

------
webaholic
reddit has some benchmarks (rumored):

[http://i.imgur.com/9bXzF5B.png](http://i.imgur.com/9bXzF5B.png)

[https://videocardz.com/65913/how-fast-is-
ryzen](https://videocardz.com/65913/how-fast-is-ryzen)

~~~
pshposh
Why do both of these feature only the physics benchmark? The second link
illustrates that Intel still wins in single core performance.

~~~
gcp
I don't think there's any question that Intel will win in single-thread
performance. AMD has never stated the opposite. They will, though, manage to
deliver much more cores despite only being a tiny bit behind in single-core,
which is a very big difference from e.g. Bulldozer.

~~~
phire
Yeah, Intel will remain the single-thread king. But I feel like intel have
backed themselves into a corner here.

The main reason intel is getting better single-thread performance is the
higher clock speeds. I think the graphs even suggest that zen is getting
higher IPC.

I really doubt Intel can push the clock speeds much higher. Intel really need
to find more IPC somewhere, otherwise future versions of Ryzen (Zen+, Zen++)
will overtake the intel chips as AMD refine the Zen design to improve IPC and
improve clock speeds at the same time.

~~~
floatboth
Intel wins on single thread… _on the desktop line (4 cores max)_. Summit Ridge
is competing against the overpriced "enthusiast" lineup
(Haswell-E/Broadwell-E), which doesn't clock nearly as high as Skylake/Kaby
Lake.

------
vegabook
personally hoping for ECC support on the AMD consumer chips, because Xeon
pricing right now is just a total and utter ripoff. For the growing in-memory
database world this would be huge.

------
bdconsulting
Link points at something else. Even the edited link below..

~~~
kunaltyagi
Groxx has the correct link

------
akerro
And consumes twice less WATs!

------
qeternity
AMD really needs to start competing on price. Match Intel and Nvidia
performance, at 75% TCO.

~~~
peatmoss
I think they could carve out a niche by being the chip maker that produces a
trustworthy computing environment that supports blob-free computing without
the equivalent of Intel Management Engine.

That plus your point about TCO could be a nice way of competing with Intel.

~~~
ori_b
That's not a big enough niche to pay for fabs.

~~~
guidedlight
AMD are also pushing their custom fabrication. I believe all the current
gaming consoles use custom AMD chips.

Although I'm sure there is little profit in that business model, but it would
keep the workers busy.

