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jaxa

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  • 4 weeks later...

At Computex, Intel Demos A 28-Core Processor Clocked At 5GHz (Updated)

 

Intel's 28-Core 5GHz Processor And Test System Breaks Cover (Updated)

 

AMD Reveals Threadripper 2 : Up to 32 Cores, 250W, X399 Refresh

 

Threadripper 2 is 12nm Zen+. 7nm Zen 2 is rumored to increase core count by 50%, meaning that we could see 48-core Epyc 2 and 24-48 core Threadripper 3 chips, along with 12-core "mainstream" Ryzen chips. There's also the possibility that core count will be doubled, which would be insane.

 

I hope new game engines are able to exploit 12, 16, 32, 48, or even 64 cores going forward.

Edited by jaxa
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That 28 core announcement was complete and utter bullshit. 1. It was an old skylake CPU and 2. It was vaper cooled to below ambient. They hid the chiller under the desk! and deliberately did not disclose that fact!

 

So again, another reason not to give your hard earned cash to company based in a country with a know history of human rights abuses.

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I really hope they won't, until these CPUs go mainstream at sensible prices (if ever). Even prosumers won't pay 10 grand for a CPU.

 

i dont even have £1000 so 10000 is way out of my reach.

anyway 10000 + 20%vat will be 12000

 

1. Engines should scale to use as many available resources as possible. Set a 2 or 4 core minimum to target most of the gaming market, but use 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 24, 32, or even 64 cores if possible.

 

2. There is a chicken and egg problem of future proofing. Most people don't have 12-32 cores now, but if you support it in your engine today, people will be able to use it years down the line. Wouldn't it be nice if id Tech 4 / Doom 3 was able to scale to use more cores/threads, not really needed for Doom 3, but greatly appreciated by the more complicated Dark Mod? Game developers can test their games using their fancy 12-32 core workstations, as well as on the typical dual or quad-core a PC gamer has today.

 

3. AMD delivered Threadripper TR 1950X with 16 cores and 32 threads for $999. That price has declined to about $860 today. Even if it is a niche product, that's far under the price of a new car, and the prosumers/enthusiasts have paid that much for Intel and now AMD CPUs. AMD hasn't revealed pricing for the 32-core Threadripper 2 yet. Maybe it will be just $1,500, maybe closer to $2,000. Intel sells 18-core $2,000 Core Skylake-X chips, and used to sell a 10-core $1,700 Broadwell-E chip.

 

The future is very multithreaded. It's time to get with the program because huge single-threaded gains will only likely come from using some new material to boost clock rates from GHz to THz. That isn't forecast to happen for years. If we master 3d stacking and heat dissipation of CPU cores, we could see core counts rocket into the thousands (CPU, not GPU).

Edited by jaxa
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Engines should scale to use as many available resources as possible.

 

But you know that kind of never happens, if the engine isn't developed any longer. Sure, memory and drives may get larger and faster, and some raw power will help a bit, but that's diminishing returns. It's like throwing a ton of unoptimized models in a daylight map in a Thief 2 mission and expecting reasonable framerate. Same for TDM. It could even use one core now, if the performance was around what you can get on a single thread in DirectX 11 (which is literally 10x faster than TDM now). But it won't happen until somebody rewrites the code. And I'm not sure engines can be written in this future-proof way for CPUs, like "let's have it scale to 99 cores". I mean devs have to know what these 99 cores would do, and how they're supposed to know that, when they're allowed to use like 4-6 cores?

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Intel behaves like a blockchain startup looking for venture capital nowadys. They should be busy fully fixing Meltdown and Spectre in their designs instead. They got all the resources they could ever need - but just keep on shoveling flawed CPUs on the market.

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  • 1 month later...

The AMD Threadripper 2 Teaser: Pre-Orders Start Today, Up to 32 Cores

 

Pricing is $1799 for 32 cores, $1299 for 24 cores. But only the 32 and 16 core variants will be available this month. The 24 and 12 core variants come out in October.

 

These can be dropped in to existing X399 motherboards, but the increase to 250 W TDP for 24 and 32 cores may or may not be a problem.

 

Once 7nm Zen 2 lands, we should expect to see 48 or 64-core Epyc, and 12 or 16-core Ryzen. Epyc should be coming earlier in 2019, with Ryzen coming out later. Threadripper 3 could keep the same 32 core count as Threadripper 2, but possibly using 2 less dies (or inactive cores spread out over all 4 dies) and with a significant IPC gain from the move to the 7nm Zen 2 architecture.

I reiterate: game developers should scale to use as many as 32 cores if the user has them available. This Threadripper 2 launch seems to be paving the way for a mainstream 16-core Ryzen CPU within the next year or so. Both Intel and AMD already have mainstream 6-8 cores. The cat is out of the bag and it's time to future proof.

Edited by jaxa
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Many cores on just 3 processors meaing 3 CPU chips? So right now the trend is that the number of cores is not tied anymore directly to the number of processors?

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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Nice chip, but way, way too much money

 

This launch could be seen as a warm up for a 2019 Ryzen launch, possibly 16 cores for $500-600. Or 12 cores for $500. Depends on how many cores will be added to the CCX once AMD shrinks from 14/12nm to 7nm.

 

 

Many cores on just 3 processors meaing 3 CPU chips? So right now the trend is that the number of cores is not tied anymore directly to the number of processors?

 

Not sure what you are asking.

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-5-1600x-cpu-review,5014-2.html

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/microarchitectures/zen

 

AMD has Ryzen, Threadripper, and Epyc processors ranging from 1-4 Zen dies. Each Zen die currently has 8 cores (split into two core complexes (CCXs) with 4 cores each).

 

The Epyc server chips have 4 dies, for up to 32 cores. Threadripper had 2 dies for up to 16 cores, but the newly launching Threadripper 2 has 2 or 4 dies for up to 32 cores. Ryzen has 1 die for up to 8 cores.

 

Shrinking to 7nm will allow AMD to increase the core count by either 50% or 100%. We'll know when more details about the upcoming 7nm Epyc processors are released. In the best case scenario, by 2019-2020, Epyc will have 64 cores, Threadripper will have 32 cores, and Ryzen will have 16 cores. But it could end up being 48/32/12.

 

Edit: I should add that there are disabled dies and/or cores. The original and refreshed Threadrippers that have 2 dies active also have 2 dies disabled, explaining their large physical size. The 24-core Threadripper will probably have cores disabled on each of the 4 dies. And although there is a 250 W TDP, that's only 63 W for each die. The heat is spread out.

Edited by jaxa
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This launch could be seen as a warm up for a 2019 Ryzen launch, possibly 16 cores for $500-600. Or 12 cores for $500. Depends on how many cores will be added to the CCX once AMD shrinks from 14/12nm to 7nm.

 

 

 

Not sure what you are asking.

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-5-1600x-cpu-review,5014-2.html

https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/microarchitectures/zen

 

AMD has Ryzen, Threadripper, and Epyc processors ranging from 1-4 Zen dies. Each Zen die currently has 8 cores (split into two core complexes (CCXs) with 4 cores each).

 

The Epyc server chips have 4 dies, for up to 32 cores. Threadripper had 2 dies for up to 16 cores, but the newly launching Threadripper 2 has 2 or 4 dies for up to 32 cores. Ryzen has 1 die for up to 8 cores.

 

Shrinking to 7nm will allow AMD to increase the core count by either 50% or 100%. We'll know when more details about the upcoming 7nm Epyc processors are released. In the best case scenario, by 2019-2020, Epyc will have 64 cores, Threadripper will have 32 cores, and Ryzen will have 16 cores. But it could end up being 48/32/12.

 

Edit: I should add that there are disabled dies and/or cores. The original and refreshed Threadrippers that have 2 dies active also have 2 dies disabled, explaining their large physical size. The 24-core Threadripper will probably have cores disabled on each of the 4 dies. And although there is a 250 W TDP, that's only 63 W for each die. The heat is spread out.

 

Ah, thank you kindly. I'm not tech savvy so this is very helpful.

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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Here's the review for the 16 and 32 core versions of Threadripper 2.

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13124/the-amd-threadripper-2990wx-and-2950x-review

 

Referring to the 60 PCIe lanes and 4 memory channels:

 

As a result, one way of visioning the new second generation 32-core and 24-core products is bi-modal: half the chip has access to the full resources, similar to the first generation product, while the other half of the chip doubles the same compute resources but has additional memory and PCIe latency compared to the first half. For any user that is entirely compute bound, and not memory or PCIe bound, then AMD has the product for you.

 

 

Parts of that review aren't written yet, so here's another one:

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-threadripper-2-2990wx-2950x,5725.html

 

Basically: The 2990WX is great for some workloads and lousy for others.

 

Also, Intel is reportedly about to launch 9th generation CPUs including some mainstream 8-cores:

 

https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/12/17680384/intels-9th-generation-processors-october-release-date-rumors

Edited by jaxa
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Intel is teasing its return to discrete GPUs... although it is scheduled for 2020:

 

https://wccftech.com/intel-discrete-graphics-cards-arctic-sound-gpu-2020-launch/

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-gpu-gaming-amd-nvidia,37616.html

 

https://www.cnet.com/news/intel-steals-nvidias-thunder-with-sneak-peek-at-its-first-discrete-gpu-in-years/

 

I guess it will start out as a 10nm part.

 

I'm not really too keen on supporting Intel as a company. But if the Arctic Sound GPU was Earth-shatteringly better than offerings from AMD and Nvidia, I would be interested to see how AMD CPU + Intel GPU combos work out. It will also be interesting to see how open Intel is with their GPU hardware, and whether or not it initially suffers due to games not being optimized for it.

 

If anything, it could help drive prices down a bit and alleviate the demand issues associated with cryptocurrency mining, if that is still a big deal in 2020 and if miners are still using GPUs and not some purpose-built ASIC stuff.

 

Clearly, Intel believes it can tap into the markets that Nvidia has been able reap significant profit from, and sell cards to enthusiasts/gamers as well as to corporations and academics for purposes including machine learning. As well as cryptominers if possible. Branching out into GPU-based systems for self-driving cars would probably require more specialized hardware than they have revealed to date.

 

The demand for better GPUs is insatiable. VR at high framerates, high resolution, and high field of view will require big increases in GPU performance, and potentially even greater increases in power efficiency in order to stuff a significant amount of that performance into untethered headsets. AMD put 1 petaflops into a rack with 80 GPUs and 20 CPUs, but they ultimately want 1 petaflops in a single GPU. Even if VR headsets disappeared without a trace, there will be some other use case for >1 petaflops massively parallel GPUs, such as supercomputing.

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This one is a bit of an oddity:

 

Arm Maps Out Attack on Intel Core i5

 

Arm and Arm chip makers such as Qualcomm have been taking aim at the laptop market for the past few years. This is why recently we’ve been seeing not just Chromebooks with Arm chips, but also Windows 10-based laptops.
Starting this year and until 2020, we’re going to see three laptop-class performance CPU cores from Arm . The first, which Arm already announced previously and should come out this year on a 7nm process, is Cortex-A76. The Cortex-A76 promises a 35% performance uplift compared to the previous generation, the Cortex-A75, along with four times the machine learning inference performance.
For 2019, Arm has planned the “Deimos” core, while in 2020 we should see the “Hercules” core on both 7nm and 5nm processes. All three chips utilize the newer DynamiQ technology that will replace big.LITTLE.
Beating Intel’s Core i5
Arm is not shy about stating its ultimate goal with these upcoming chips, and that’s to beat the Intel Core i5 U-line, while using significantly less power too. According to Arm's own tests, Cortex-A76 is already expected to be on par with Intel’s Core i5-7300U CPU, using less than 5W of power, compared to 15W for the 7300U.

 

 

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IIRC, the guy behind the Larrabee project said something like that, "Once you made your engine multi-threaded, it doesn't matter how much hardware threads an end user can have: 2, 4, 100; you can utilize them all."

A bit late to the party, but yes, that is basically true. It actually depends on the algorithm. For example in TDM, each ai could use its own thread for the calculations needed to be done each frame, and each of those treads could be executed by a seperate core. This goes for other stuff as well. But there are other aspects which are hard or even impossible to parallize. The main benefit for gaming imho is that you can "outsource" tasks to the additional cores, while the main routine is executed on the first core. However, 100 cores won't result in an 100 times faster engine then. It gives you a boost, but it is limited.

 

In the end someone parallizing a program will not restrict the parallization to a set amount of cores (why should he), so additional cores can be of benefit. On the other hand game developers will always make sure that a specific amount of hardware is sufficient to run the game properly, as otherwise they would only restrict the amount of consumers in question and therefore their possible profit, and that is not what they want to do :)

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FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

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