Comments on: AMD Firing On All Compute Engine Cylinders

By: Timothy Prickett Morgan

Timothy Prickett Morgan — Thu, 02 May 2024 21:31:11 +0000

I think I estimate it perfectly well, John. HA!

I think I called it pretty well a year and a half ago:

https://www.nextplatform.com/2022/09/22/arm-is-the-new-risc-unix-risc-v-is-the-new-arm/

By: John Holmes

John Holmes — Thu, 02 May 2024 18:13:34 +0000

I think you underestimate the rise of RISC. Someone with some money, is going to go after the the X86 with an Intel. Built from the ground up to change the compute environment. I admit it’s a long way off. But how long is long in the tech industry

By: HuMo

HuMo — Thu, 02 May 2024 13:18:24 +0000

And so, here we are again, at the start of 10 excruciatingly long days of atrocious anticipatory agony, suspense palpably thicker than a gastronomic Hamburg-er’s secret sauce, bowels tied in the tightest of digestive Gordian knots, waiting anxiously for the big reveal of the next Ballroom Blitz’s dancing champ, in that exquisitely delicious HPC suplex competition that is the Top500. By combining the outstanding performances and efficiencies of EPYC Zen CPUs and Instinct GPUs (as found in #1 Frontier Exaflopper) in a single package of meditative delight, the MI300A remains to me the “perfect design” for this top-fuel challenge of the best tuned computational Hellcat Demons of matrix multiplying extravaganza. But the contenders are certainly no kitchen disaster slouches either … particularly that endearing sleeping beauty, now reawakened, and singing softly in a near murmur, while cooking-up what should prove to be a storm of gustative oomph, from a poetic old bridge lit by bright Xeon spots, evocative of moonlight. May the best tastebuds win (or vice versa!)! 8^b

P.S. Great to see AMD getting increased income from this “perfect design” (and MI300X too).

By: Timothy Prickett Morgan

Timothy Prickett Morgan — Thu, 02 May 2024 11:29:00 +0000

In reply to EC. All fixed!

By: Timothy Prickett Morgan

Timothy Prickett Morgan — Thu, 02 May 2024 11:24:55 +0000

In reply to EC. I will take a look.

By: EC

EC — Thu, 02 May 2024 05:05:10 +0000

TPM, It appears the data didn’t get completely loaded for the 2nd chart, latest Q. Can you update? As always, appreciate your analysis.

By: Timothy Prickett Morgan

Timothy Prickett Morgan — Thu, 02 May 2024 02:06:17 +0000

In reply to John S.. Good questions. At the moment, AMD has Zen and Zen c cores that are in many respects more useful than a separation between E-core and P-core that Intel has. You get the same results without losing so many core features -- literally features in the cores. That is just an example of a subtle difference in architecture approach. I strongly suspect AMD will have an interesting twist on matrix math engines as well, complements of Xilinx, and frankly, am surprised it is not here yet. It can differentiate on Infinity Fabric and CXL as well. There are a lot of levers that can be pulled.

By: John S.

John S. — Wed, 01 May 2024 19:42:25 +0000

So what will AMD do in the CPU space to drive innovation and keep Intel on it’s toes? They’re doing great with TSMC (and Global Foundries) as their Fabs, but can they do the same thing they did with Opteron and AMD64 instruction set expansion with the new Epycs? Or has Intel learned it’s lesson about not giving up the lead?

But since AMD64 is a legacy platform, how will it compete with ARM and RISCV up and comers? ARM is making huge gains lately, and for fleets of web application systems, the power/performance numbers are amazing.

But will ARM and RISCV end up running into the same Spectre type problems at x86_64 did? What will be the next architecture based security problem people need to think about? Or are we past the pure performance at all cost to a more balanced world where security is a key driver as well? Especially since the latest JEDEC memory specs are supposed to help reduce Rowhammer type attack surface as well.

And of course since I try to root for the underdogs, I’ve been buying AMD CPUs for home for the past 15 years as much as I can, but since absolute speed hasn’t gone up that much, 8 year old systems do just fine for home systems where you just browse the web and other light tasks. It’s the need for Photo editing or other expensive tasks like that (and power improvements!) which has slowly moved me on to make new investments in systems. But certainly not at the bleeding edge any more.