Dr. Su's answer here is disappointing after failing to address this for so long: it is rather sad to see Zen3 CPUs stuck at a $300 minimum for 13+ months now. That is far too expensive for most of the OEM market (not to mention budget DIY). The cheapest Zen3 APU with a public price (the 5600G) at $260 is a poor replacement for a full-stack SKU portfolio.
AMD has ways to make a profit on lower-end CPUs, too. Ceding the entire low-end to Intel was simply not good for competition nor the consumer in the long-term and AMD will pay for that, unfortunately, with Alder Lake's comprehensive line-up releasing almost a full year before Zen4. A smaller Zen3 CCX (e.g., why not a 6C die to bin to 6C or 4C) would've gone a long way, IMHO. Or significantly expanding their APU availability & reducing their multi-quarter delays,
Of all of Intel's failures and flops, they've always been mindful of the $80 to $200 CPU price bracket because 1) it moves massive volume and market share, ensuring significant market control, 2) gross margins are still quite good, 3) creating an upgrade path within the same generation.
AMD can placate users now that "it's coming", but if Zen4 is anywhere close to Zen3's frankly limiting portfolio, that will be quite a disappointing facet of AMD's revival.
retail prices and material cost are linked only when offer competition is so wide to cut down profits.
nowaday market is constrained by production capabilities, not competition offer so material cost are not relevant at all, prices are based purely on demand/offer.
AMD has many issues due to the sad fate of the x86 market for the past decade before Ryzen, be it the Intel backdoor BS scam forcing them into near bankruptcy or lack of fabs.
- First is AMD maximizes highest profit with EPYC as getting marketshare in DC market is very very important. Then Console SoC priorities. Their PC market penetration strategy was peaked with Zen 2, Ryzen 3000. Because of sole reason AM4 vs Intel BS policy of socket EOL despite having proved with a P870DM running a CoffeeLake on Z170. BGA market is also a huge thing for AMD, but they really couldn't manage it well due to Intel literally catering to BGA more than LGA1200 (10nm Tigerlake BGA vs 14nm backport RocketLake disaster)
- Second is TSMC 7N allocation, AMD had to allocate all the above business units it's very tough when the use and throw junk like iPhone A-Series / Smartphone processors get more wafer demand, so they had to cut somewhere, after Zen 3 their marketshare for DIY became HUGE. Which is why AMD did not see the need of drastic price reductions, also on NewEgg 5900X, 5600X were being discounted too after 2021 Q2. Improving availability.
The biggest bummer was Zen3DV refresh. I expected a full stack refresh, but AMD was not interested because of Zen 4 approaching and if Zen3DV gets massive boost and crushes ADL, Zen 4 market adoption would be limited. Plus AM4 is already a lot saturated. Many DIY got AMD only due to AM4 socket longevity. And again the whole EPYC market becomes important. Plus as I said earlier about iPhone and smartphone. Intel and AMD like BGA trash more than anything. Since that is where tons of money is from Client revenue, not DIY. Which is why 6nm Rembrandt was made for BGA rather than a 3DV on 6nm.
AMD is doing pretty strong. Esp no Biglittle trash, Intel made it for BGA market and 10nm limitations. AMD Zen 4 having no such thing, Zen 4 will steamroll over Intel for sure.
The only downsides are - Whole memory being finicky and 12nm IOD having issues even to date with the constant WHEA, USB issues. And the total lack of documentation on the Ryzen chipset and Ryzen CPUs making people to scour over reddit and internet or that horrible discord.
Still no news on what's the node of IOD on Zen 4 Genoa, really curious on which node is that and manufactured where.
don't skirt around "Intel's BS" ...Intel outright told OEMs like Dell, HP, Gateway, Acer, Fujitsu, Sony, Toshiba, et al to lock AMD out of the market and not make their models AMD (or to minimize use of AMD)
This post is a joke right? iPhone retention is high.
Zen3DV not getting a full refresh is expected. I was wondering how a two-die Zen3D would work for a while now, and now we know it's more expensive and harder to manage. It also isn't surprising that lower-end SKUs didn't get the cache, that's how Intel's Broadwell caches ended up also (though those were BGA only).
put yourself in AMD shoes. You have 100 sqmm of TSMC N7. Of that you must provide 30 sqmm of capacity to PS5 and XBOX. Then you have the options: $10/mm in profits in datacenter and the demand is for 50 sqmm, $5/mm in desktop Ryzen and demand is 20 sqmm, $3/mm in APUs and demand is 20 sqmm and $2/mm in RADEON and demand is 30 sqmm. What do you do?
They have indeed ceding the entire low-end to the consoles... for which they are producing the proper parts.
I guess it would be nice to have those on ITX or in NUCs not only for parts with a broken iGPU, but obviously Microsoft and Sony would take offence (I wonder who's selling the broken parts to the Chinese).
I am pretty sure they have enough chips left to model not only all variations of chiplet combinations but also the profitability for a low-end die variant to satisfy all those who want to play with the red team even on lower-end builds.
And I'm afraid there simply isn't enough of them to aggregate into the type of purchasing power where this becomes profitable with the limited wafer allocations they can obtain.
What you probably missed is that AMD moved from 4 core per CCX with two CCX per CCD and went to 8 cores per CCD with no CCX. The result is that the lowest target chiplet is 8 cores, with 6 cores there in case there is a failed core. Without making 4-core CCX(or CCD), there is no way to make a quad-core chipset based processor. Volume is how low cost chips end up being even slightly profitable, so high volume of quad-core CCX is how Zen2 was able to pull it off. If/when six core becomes the low end, then sure, chiplet based will be cheap to make due to the high volume of six and eight core CCDs, but AMD will need to get 5 times the number of chips produced before the low end becomes profitable.
The monolithic APUs can do the job, but it's not as cheap as doing a TON of CPU dies and GPU dies and then just putting them together would be with high enough volumes. It may be that once Zen4 is out, AMD may do quad-core Zen4 on 7nm for the lower end chiplets, and save the 5nm for the high end of that market.
As far as a limited portfolio, do you really think it makes sense to have 4 different 8 core offerings that are only different due to clock speed differences, or cache size differences? How about making it more confusing where a high cache Ryzen 5 will be faster than a lower cache Ryzen 7? It makes it very clear, how many cores/threads on the chip, and that's it. They all hit the target, no, "this one is 65W TDP, this one is 105W TDP, this one is 80W TDP"...why would you WANT that?
Keep it simple, keep it clear, and be done with it. People just want cheap stuff, without thinking that cheap SHOULD be slower or limited compared to the higher cost stuff. Charging a lot more for only a slight improvement is also unpopular.
A digital picture of apes that is processed on these CPUs can sell for 10's of millions. Yet we want to squeeze every penny out of the very cores that make these bubbles possible. Must be sad to be a hardware maker right now.
AMD currently doesn't care much about desktop or mobile cpu/gpu because they can get most profit per transistor from epyc server processor. Moreover, most server buyers currently prefer epyc as no existing xeon can defeat epyc performance
it is an interesting question on many levels. Cezanne was already close to 5800X performance on many workloads. Even price aside, with Rembrandt, what is the case for single CCX chiplet processors. It seems the monolith makes up for half of the victim cache.
The review charts for the 6980HX versus 5800X 3D versus 5800X will be interesting.
Cezanne is roughly 10% behind Vermeer in clock for clock. Rembrant will probably reduce that to 5% or so. So I would expect 6980HX to roughly match 5800X in many workloads. In cache sensitive workloads though, both the desktop chips (especially the 3DX) will still pull ahead.
The yields are too dang high. There's no use in disabling 4 cores on an 8-core chiplet (although they will disable lots of cores if you pay for it, see the EPYC 72F3).
As long as they don't increase the number of cores per chiplet, I guess the solution is to drop the price of 6-cores, and go monolithic for quad-core (e.g. Van Gogh).
Two issues with the answer: 1) MSRP of the most popular Zen2 3600 was $200, and most of the time available for even less. So $300 minimum for Cezanne (~same die size, and more mature 7nm process) sounds like a BS. 2) If AMD are to use monolithic chips to compete in midrange- those are slower than Vermeer, and Alder Lake. Not only that- but they are PCIe 3.0 only, so somewhat obsolete.
Shhhhh. You're not supposed to remember previous generations. You're supposed to believe them because that's what AMD needs its fans to think.
"It can't be helped."
Not that they are making a business decision that they totally could change if they wanted to prioritize customer good will over every single dollar they can make. They could make SOME of the money and be the company the fanboys think they are instead of ALL of the money and just another corporation.
But they're not a charity. They're a business. They're exactly like Nvidia and Intel, though the latter is crushing it on the value front so maybe that's unfair to Intel.
1.These chiplets are small, so price difference from Zen2 chiplet to Zen3 chiplet can only amount to ~$1, and ~20% price increase- another ~$2. 2. No need to bin it in any real special way. It is the 5800X and higher that need better dies. And even if you had to bin- then 5600X being ~6% faster than 12400F in gaming (HU review), AMD could still make a slightly lower locked 'R5 5600', and use low quality dies. 3. Rembrandt is huge (~208mm2), it is DDR5/LPDDR5 only, and has no motherboards- so not fit for budget for a long time still.
the rule in this biz has always been that the real meat is in lucrative server/hpc. Viabilty there pays for cutting edge designs that can later filter down to mainstream.
amd ingeniously & of impecunious necessity, came up w/ a single design that could do both - so well in fact, it worked in reverse - desktop paid the bills while high end had a long think about epyc.
a facet of it tho, was they came in very strong for mainsteream - an ~8 core was their ~START point - MEH, it worked very well.
a/ i dont think these cheap intel chips are a patch on a 6 core zen rig, & nor were they cheap til amd forced them to be.
Intel is on borrowed time surviving/relying on this custom - they need very high margins & amd is slowly strangling them.amdS ability to spread the same mass produced, hi yield chiplet around so many products & markets gives them enviable costs. They can sell ~$200 6 cores PROFITABLY any time - but WHY? when folks happily pay more?
"Viabilty there pays for cutting edge designs that can later filter down to mainstream" Selling in the server / high performance / enthusiast market (and especially holding the performance crown) basically means selling for a higher ASP, average selling price. However, a lot of the income comes from the low end and middle market, where most of the chips are selling. As for the fate of Intel, AMD can't strangle them as it basically can't produce enough processors. See this: https://www.statista.com/statistics/735904/worldwi... No matter how and what it was counted, and how and what it wasn't, it's clear that AMD has a long way to go to strangle Intel - and, as AMD bounced from a low of 18%, the Intel of the future 5, or 10 years from now could too. As for financial results, Intel can basically survive years without selling a single product - and, as a failing company, their financial situation is smiling - $77 billions revenue at a 55% gross margin. So no, even failing as "hard" as they are now (which basically means just a bit of progress), they have at least a decade before falling into obsolescence. (if the chip production crush abates and AMD can order twice as many chips as they do now, they'll have a real chance to turn the tables on Intel. However, that is purely an hypothetical at the moment, with Intel also competing on TSMC "top" products).
“AMD’s launch of Ryzen 3000 back in July 2019 was a first in bringing high performance x86 computing through the medium of chiplets.” — I think you're ignoring two-die Dual Core Pentium Ds (2005) and quad-core Penryns (2008).
The dual core Pentium Ds and quad core Penryns were composed of two whole Pentium D single cores processors and Penryn dual core processors, respectively, connected the same way 2P servers processors were connected. This is the same situation as the original Threadripper and Epyc processors. Each individual Pentium D single core chip and Penryn dual core chip were also sold as fully functional single core and dual core processors.
Chiplets on the other hand, are generally understood to be chips that cannot function on their own. For example, a Zen 2 CPU chiplet, lacks the IO controllers needed to interface with the rest of the system.
It is the same in the sense that any of these chips could be the only one in the processor package and everything would still work. If you had a processor with only a Zen 2/3 CPU chiplet or only the I/O chiplet, then it would not work. It does not matter if the memory controller or PCIe controller is integrated into something inside the processor package or on the motherboard chipset.
If you are going to claim that the memory & PCIe/PCI/AGP controllers being on a motherboard chipset constitutes the processor being a chiplet, then everything that is not a true SOC is a chiplet. To me, this seems like a fairly ridiculous definition that fails to match how anyone actually uses the term.
> It does not matter if the memory controller or PCIe controller is integrated into > something inside the processor package or on the motherboard chipset.
It does because the topology is different, and that complicates the compute dies' interactions. In the prior examples, they only interacted for cache coherency. In the more recent examples, they have to route requests through either their own or the other's memory or PCIe controller. Further, the one they had to route it through might not even be directly connected.
> If you are going to claim that the memory & PCIe/PCI/AGP controllers being on a > motherboard chipset constitutes the processor being a chiplet,
No, it's just simpler to implement multi-die, when your bus interface and memory controller is unified.
I think it's worth pointing out that the cheapest chiplet based CPU was the Ryzen 3 3100 at $99, and on the other hand the cheapest monolithic 7nm Ryzen CPU available to DIY is the $259 Ryzen 5 5600G.
Which means that regardless of production costs, in the end it's still a marketing decision what product to make available and at what prices. The 3100/3300X show that it was profitable at the time for AMD to have chiplet based entry level CPUs.
For a long time, I was kicking myself for not snatching a 3300X, when I had the chance. Those things were an absolute performance bargain. I saw them as recently as last summer, but selling for > $160 and I'm now hoping 5600X will drop.
Shipping? The article also seems to make a big deal about shipping, but I just have a hard time accepting that shipping tiny little slivers of silicon in large batches adds more than a trivial amount to production costs.
at this point the cost is in renting the space and getting it on time. every shipping channel has been slowed down and delayed for the past two years, so you either pay up to hop the line/ship air or your container of chips wanders off somewhere and delays hundreds of thousands of chips like what happened to nvidia.
CPU dies are assuredly more expensive per unit of weight or volume than gold. Obviously, they require better packaging than gold, but I still find it hard to believe that even air freight wouldn't be a cost-effective way to move them.
Speaking of air freight, I just heard that Fed Ex wants to equip some of its planes with surface-to-air missile defenses, so they don't have to circumnavigate certain conflict regions. They formally requested permission for this from the FAA, which has to ensure the systems pose no risk to other planes or the public.
3100/3300X disappeared very quickly, and their MSRPs were not held. Yields on 7nm 8-core chiplets are too high to bother with disabling half the cores to make a budget CPU.
Ideally, AMD will push monolithic Van Gogh quad-cores to address the budget market. The iGPU on it should be enough for many users. DDR5 pricing is the remaining problem.
Plenty of code was added into Linux to support Van Gogh, and it is the chip in the Steam Deck. There have also been roadmaps that showed "Dragon Crest" as what looked like a minor refresh of Van Gogh.
At the very least, AM5 motherboards have to exist before it could launch in the way I'm suggesting. Zen 4, Rembrandt desktop APUs, and maybe Van Gogh budget desktop APUs could launch in Q3 2022 or into 2023.
"One of the dynamics that we do think about a great deal is how and when to introduce that AM5 ecosystem and ensure that the DDR5 supply, as well as pricing of DDR5 memory, is mature and something that's easily attainable for an end-user
And so there may be other forces beyond the product itself that slow down or meter the introduction of APUs into that AM5 socket."
The DDR5 premium will be relaxed eventually, but unlike Intel with Alder Lake, AMD is all in on DDR5 with AM5. So they will wait a bit.
Obviously, when there are no longer silicon supply constraints, AMD will have to find ways to serve more markets in order to maximize profits. When there are supply constraints, they can make products for the markets that are easier for them to serve from within their technology portfolio. So the fact that they aren't currently covering the low end of the desktop market very well isn't something for which I can take them to task the way some of the comments here are doing.
It's not just reticle limit and defect rate. Smaller chips also do much better with edge loss as well.
The real trick isn't so much money as millimeters. Starting at around 100mm or bigger for a roughly squarish shape chip yields start dropping exponentially, eventually those yield costs start surpassing packaging costs.
Not that yields and packaging are simple costs. SRAM uses far fewer metal layers than logic, so stacked SRAM might make sense even for smaller chips if the packaging gets cheap enough.
Right now, Intel basically owns the < $150 CPU space. The 12th generation i3s are right now by far the price/performance kings in that price range. What holds those back is the still too high price of 660 boards that can take DDR4, but once they are widely available for $ 120 or less, they are no-brainers for that budget. IMO, AMD is making a serious mistake by essentially abandoning that range for now.
AMD has more constraints on production capacity than Intel. I'm sure they'd like to address all market segments, but they have to be judicious about where to allocate their dies.
They are not interested in covering every segment of the market. It is not necessary. Besides, there is just as much as you could possibly cover. Do not forget that AMD had been posting historically record revenues. They are literally selling everything they could possibly produce.
Once their capacity increases, they will be able to cover more segments.
"Beyond this, AMD has to ship its 14nm dies for its products from New York to Asia first, to package them with the TSMC compute dies, before shipping the final product around the world. That might be reduced in future, as AMD is believed to make its next-generation chiplet designs all within Asia."
Hmm, on the surface that seems unlikely, given the recent extension of their deal with GF. What would they do with all the excess wafer supply? I doubt shipping adds much cost on a per-chip basis to start with.
Yeah, the shipping comment is a bit inane. The silicon is all air shipped - not on some banana boat. So, a few days to get there and clear customs. It's going to be shipped as die in wafer form and then assembled with all the rest. Depending on the arrangement with the foundry, it might be tested die shipped or raw wafers shipped and tested in Asia.
My question is regarding Rembrandt. The platform is marketed as DisplaytPort 2.0 "Ready". What does this really mean? I can neither see that RDNA2 iGPU supports UHBR10 output at 40 Gbps not dGPU supporitng anything more than DP 1.4. Is there any level shifter chip on motherboard that supports DP 2.0 at 40 Gbps? "Ready" always worries me that something is not there quite yet.
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ikjadoon - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
Dr. Su's answer here is disappointing after failing to address this for so long: it is rather sad to see Zen3 CPUs stuck at a $300 minimum for 13+ months now. That is far too expensive for most of the OEM market (not to mention budget DIY). The cheapest Zen3 APU with a public price (the 5600G) at $260 is a poor replacement for a full-stack SKU portfolio.AMD has ways to make a profit on lower-end CPUs, too. Ceding the entire low-end to Intel was simply not good for competition nor the consumer in the long-term and AMD will pay for that, unfortunately, with Alder Lake's comprehensive line-up releasing almost a full year before Zen4. A smaller Zen3 CCX (e.g., why not a 6C die to bin to 6C or 4C) would've gone a long way, IMHO. Or significantly expanding their APU availability & reducing their multi-quarter delays,
Of all of Intel's failures and flops, they've always been mindful of the $80 to $200 CPU price bracket because 1) it moves massive volume and market share, ensuring significant market control, 2) gross margins are still quite good, 3) creating an upgrade path within the same generation.
AMD can placate users now that "it's coming", but if Zen4 is anywhere close to Zen3's frankly limiting portfolio, that will be quite a disappointing facet of AMD's revival.
NixZero - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
retail prices and material cost are linked only when offer competition is so wide to cut down profits.nowaday market is constrained by production capabilities, not competition offer so material cost are not relevant at all, prices are based purely on demand/offer.
Silver5urfer - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
AMD has many issues due to the sad fate of the x86 market for the past decade before Ryzen, be it the Intel backdoor BS scam forcing them into near bankruptcy or lack of fabs.- First is AMD maximizes highest profit with EPYC as getting marketshare in DC market is very very important. Then Console SoC priorities. Their PC market penetration strategy was peaked with Zen 2, Ryzen 3000. Because of sole reason AM4 vs Intel BS policy of socket EOL despite having proved with a P870DM running a CoffeeLake on Z170. BGA market is also a huge thing for AMD, but they really couldn't manage it well due to Intel literally catering to BGA more than LGA1200 (10nm Tigerlake BGA vs 14nm backport RocketLake disaster)
- Second is TSMC 7N allocation, AMD had to allocate all the above business units it's very tough when the use and throw junk like iPhone A-Series / Smartphone processors get more wafer demand, so they had to cut somewhere, after Zen 3 their marketshare for DIY became HUGE. Which is why AMD did not see the need of drastic price reductions, also on NewEgg 5900X, 5600X were being discounted too after 2021 Q2. Improving availability.
The biggest bummer was Zen3DV refresh. I expected a full stack refresh, but AMD was not interested because of Zen 4 approaching and if Zen3DV gets massive boost and crushes ADL, Zen 4 market adoption would be limited. Plus AM4 is already a lot saturated. Many DIY got AMD only due to AM4 socket longevity. And again the whole EPYC market becomes important. Plus as I said earlier about iPhone and smartphone. Intel and AMD like BGA trash more than anything. Since that is where tons of money is from Client revenue, not DIY. Which is why 6nm Rembrandt was made for BGA rather than a 3DV on 6nm.
AMD is doing pretty strong. Esp no Biglittle trash, Intel made it for BGA market and 10nm limitations. AMD Zen 4 having no such thing, Zen 4 will steamroll over Intel for sure.
The only downsides are - Whole memory being finicky and 12nm IOD having issues even to date with the constant WHEA, USB issues. And the total lack of documentation on the Ryzen chipset and Ryzen CPUs making people to scour over reddit and internet or that horrible discord.
Still no news on what's the node of IOD on Zen 4 Genoa, really curious on which node is that and manufactured where.
plonk420 - Saturday, January 15, 2022 - link
don't skirt around "Intel's BS" ...Intel outright told OEMs like Dell, HP, Gateway, Acer, Fujitsu, Sony, Toshiba, et al to lock AMD out of the market and not make their models AMD (or to minimize use of AMD)lmcd - Saturday, January 15, 2022 - link
This post is a joke right? iPhone retention is high.Zen3DV not getting a full refresh is expected. I was wondering how a two-die Zen3D would work for a while now, and now we know it's more expensive and harder to manage. It also isn't surprising that lower-end SKUs didn't get the cache, that's how Intel's Broadwell caches ended up also (though those were BGA only).
askar - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
put yourself in AMD shoes. You have 100 sqmm of TSMC N7. Of that you must provide 30 sqmm of capacity to PS5 and XBOX. Then you have the options: $10/mm in profits in datacenter and the demand is for 50 sqmm, $5/mm in desktop Ryzen and demand is 20 sqmm, $3/mm in APUs and demand is 20 sqmm and $2/mm in RADEON and demand is 30 sqmm. What do you do?abufrejoval - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
They have indeed ceding the entire low-end to the consoles... for which they are producing the proper parts.I guess it would be nice to have those on ITX or in NUCs not only for parts with a broken iGPU, but obviously Microsoft and Sony would take offence (I wonder who's selling the broken parts to the Chinese).
I am pretty sure they have enough chips left to model not only all variations of chiplet combinations but also the profitability for a low-end die variant to satisfy all those who want to play with the red team even on lower-end builds.
And I'm afraid there simply isn't enough of them to aggregate into the type of purchasing power where this becomes profitable with the limited wafer allocations they can obtain.
Targon - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
What you probably missed is that AMD moved from 4 core per CCX with two CCX per CCD and went to 8 cores per CCD with no CCX. The result is that the lowest target chiplet is 8 cores, with 6 cores there in case there is a failed core. Without making 4-core CCX(or CCD), there is no way to make a quad-core chipset based processor. Volume is how low cost chips end up being even slightly profitable, so high volume of quad-core CCX is how Zen2 was able to pull it off. If/when six core becomes the low end, then sure, chiplet based will be cheap to make due to the high volume of six and eight core CCDs, but AMD will need to get 5 times the number of chips produced before the low end becomes profitable.The monolithic APUs can do the job, but it's not as cheap as doing a TON of CPU dies and GPU dies and then just putting them together would be with high enough volumes. It may be that once Zen4 is out, AMD may do quad-core Zen4 on 7nm for the lower end chiplets, and save the 5nm for the high end of that market.
As far as a limited portfolio, do you really think it makes sense to have 4 different 8 core offerings that are only different due to clock speed differences, or cache size differences? How about making it more confusing where a high cache Ryzen 5 will be faster than a lower cache Ryzen 7? It makes it very clear, how many cores/threads on the chip, and that's it. They all hit the target, no, "this one is 65W TDP, this one is 105W TDP, this one is 80W TDP"...why would you WANT that?
Keep it simple, keep it clear, and be done with it. People just want cheap stuff, without thinking that cheap SHOULD be slower or limited compared to the higher cost stuff. Charging a lot more for only a slight improvement is also unpopular.
dodoei - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
A digital picture of apes that is processed on these CPUs can sell for 10's of millions. Yet we want to squeeze every penny out of the very cores that make these bubbles possible. Must be sad to be a hardware maker right now.zamroni - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
That $300 is msrp. Oem buys in bulk and usually gets big discountzamroni - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
AMD currently doesn't care much about desktop or mobile cpu/gpu because they can get most profit per transistor from epyc server processor.Moreover, most server buyers currently prefer epyc as no existing xeon can defeat epyc performance
Frenetic Pony - Saturday, January 15, 2022 - link
Quit whinging, there's supposed to be a new Intel midrange competitor around the corner.mode_13h - Sunday, January 16, 2022 - link
> Frenetic Pony: "Quit whinging"lol. Thanks for that image.
The Hardcard - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
it is an interesting question on many levels. Cezanne was already close to 5800X performance on many workloads. Even price aside, with Rembrandt, what is the case for single CCX chiplet processors. It seems the monolith makes up for half of the victim cache.The review charts for the 6980HX versus 5800X 3D versus 5800X will be interesting.
Josh128 - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
Cezanne is roughly 10% behind Vermeer in clock for clock. Rembrant will probably reduce that to 5% or so. So I would expect 6980HX to roughly match 5800X in many workloads. In cache sensitive workloads though, both the desktop chips (especially the 3DX) will still pull ahead.nandnandnand - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
The yields are too dang high. There's no use in disabling 4 cores on an 8-core chiplet (although they will disable lots of cores if you pay for it, see the EPYC 72F3).As long as they don't increase the number of cores per chiplet, I guess the solution is to drop the price of 6-cores, and go monolithic for quad-core (e.g. Van Gogh).
Kamen Rider Blade - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
This is why I think they need to go with a Multi-Chiplet size strategy instead of a one-size fits all.There needs to be a 4-core CCX, 6-core CCX, 8-core CCX, & 12-core CCX.
Realistically, they could get by with 4/8/12 core designs only moving foreward, but having that 6-core variant does offer more pairing flexibility.
This will eventually allow them to "Mix & Match" to make CCD's in nearly any core count they want.
Add in 3D V-cache, and use Zen 4C to double the core counts on some designs, and you have a recipe for success IMO.
Being able to match and counter-offer everything that Intel has on their product stack is important.
Wereweeb - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
Complexity adds cost.neblogai - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
Two issues with the answer:1) MSRP of the most popular Zen2 3600 was $200, and most of the time available for even less. So $300 minimum for Cezanne (~same die size, and more mature 7nm process) sounds like a BS.
2) If AMD are to use monolithic chips to compete in midrange- those are slower than Vermeer, and Alder Lake. Not only that- but they are PCIe 3.0 only, so somewhat obsolete.
HisDivineOrder - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
Shhhhh. You're not supposed to remember previous generations. You're supposed to believe them because that's what AMD needs its fans to think."It can't be helped."
Not that they are making a business decision that they totally could change if they wanted to prioritize customer good will over every single dollar they can make. They could make SOME of the money and be the company the fanboys think they are instead of ALL of the money and just another corporation.
But they're not a charity. They're a business. They're exactly like Nvidia and Intel, though the latter is crushing it on the value front so maybe that's unfair to Intel.
brantron - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
1) Zen 3 is larger. TSMC has raised prices several times since 2019. There are OEM only SKUs that presumably cost less.Epyc uses dies with more than 2 cores fused off, at significantly higher prices.
So 5600X ≠ 3600. It's bound to be binned in a specific way, like just the extra leaky dies.
2) Rembrandt is PCIe 4.0. If it's higher volume, it could turn up for desktops sooner. They'll really have to if Zen 4 APUs are delayed.
neblogai - Sunday, January 16, 2022 - link
1.These chiplets are small, so price difference from Zen2 chiplet to Zen3 chiplet can only amount to ~$1, and ~20% price increase- another ~$2.2. No need to bin it in any real special way. It is the 5800X and higher that need better dies. And even if you had to bin- then 5600X being ~6% faster than 12400F in gaming (HU review), AMD could still make a slightly lower locked 'R5 5600', and use low quality dies.
3. Rembrandt is huge (~208mm2), it is DDR5/LPDDR5 only, and has no motherboards- so not fit for budget for a long time still.
msroadkill612 - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
We have short memories.the rule in this biz has always been that the real meat is in lucrative server/hpc. Viabilty there pays for cutting edge designs that can later filter down to mainstream.
amd ingeniously & of impecunious necessity, came up w/ a single design that could do both - so well in fact, it worked in reverse - desktop paid the bills while high end had a long think about epyc.
a facet of it tho, was they came in very strong for mainsteream - an ~8 core was their ~START point - MEH, it worked very well.
a/ i dont think these cheap intel chips are a patch on a 6 core zen rig, & nor were they cheap til amd forced them to be.
Intel is on borrowed time surviving/relying on this custom - they need very high margins & amd is slowly strangling them.amdS ability to spread the same mass produced, hi yield chiplet around so many products & markets gives them enviable costs. They can sell ~$200 6 cores PROFITABLY any time - but WHY? when folks happily pay more?
Calin - Monday, January 17, 2022 - link
"Viabilty there pays for cutting edge designs that can later filter down to mainstream"Selling in the server / high performance / enthusiast market (and especially holding the performance crown) basically means selling for a higher ASP, average selling price. However, a lot of the income comes from the low end and middle market, where most of the chips are selling.
As for the fate of Intel, AMD can't strangle them as it basically can't produce enough processors. See this: https://www.statista.com/statistics/735904/worldwi...
No matter how and what it was counted, and how and what it wasn't, it's clear that AMD has a long way to go to strangle Intel - and, as AMD bounced from a low of 18%, the Intel of the future 5, or 10 years from now could too.
As for financial results, Intel can basically survive years without selling a single product - and, as a failing company, their financial situation is smiling - $77 billions revenue at a 55% gross margin.
So no, even failing as "hard" as they are now (which basically means just a bit of progress), they have at least a decade before falling into obsolescence.
(if the chip production crush abates and AMD can order twice as many chips as they do now, they'll have a real chance to turn the tables on Intel. However, that is purely an hypothetical at the moment, with Intel also competing on TSMC "top" products).
eSyr - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
“AMD’s launch of Ryzen 3000 back in July 2019 was a first in bringing high performance x86 computing through the medium of chiplets.” — I think you're ignoring two-die Dual Core Pentium Ds (2005) and quad-core Penryns (2008).vlad42 - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
The dual core Pentium Ds and quad core Penryns were composed of two whole Pentium D single cores processors and Penryn dual core processors, respectively, connected the same way 2P servers processors were connected. This is the same situation as the original Threadripper and Epyc processors. Each individual Pentium D single core chip and Penryn dual core chip were also sold as fully functional single core and dual core processors.Chiplets on the other hand, are generally understood to be chips that cannot function on their own. For example, a Zen 2 CPU chiplet, lacks the IO controllers needed to interface with the rest of the system.
mode_13h - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
> This is the same situation as the original Threadripper and Epyc processors.That's sort of an unfair comparison, IMO. Those had integrated memory & PCIe controllers, whereas the former didn't.
vlad42 - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
It is the same in the sense that any of these chips could be the only one in the processor package and everything would still work. If you had a processor with only a Zen 2/3 CPU chiplet or only the I/O chiplet, then it would not work. It does not matter if the memory controller or PCIe controller is integrated into something inside the processor package or on the motherboard chipset.If you are going to claim that the memory & PCIe/PCI/AGP controllers being on a motherboard chipset constitutes the processor being a chiplet, then everything that is not a true SOC is a chiplet. To me, this seems like a fairly ridiculous definition that fails to match how anyone actually uses the term.
mode_13h - Saturday, January 15, 2022 - link
> It does not matter if the memory controller or PCIe controller is integrated into> something inside the processor package or on the motherboard chipset.
It does because the topology is different, and that complicates the compute dies' interactions. In the prior examples, they only interacted for cache coherency. In the more recent examples, they have to route requests through either their own or the other's memory or PCIe controller. Further, the one they had to route it through might not even be directly connected.
> If you are going to claim that the memory & PCIe/PCI/AGP controllers being on a
> motherboard chipset constitutes the processor being a chiplet,
No, it's just simpler to implement multi-die, when your bus interface and memory controller is unified.
mode_13h - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
> you're ignoring two-die Dual Core Pentium Ds (2005) and quad-core PenrynsThose used symmetrical chiplets. Maybe a trivial distinction... you decide.
FWIW, the first MCM I remember hitting the PC market was the Pentium Pro. Its L2 cache was on a separate die.
ilt24 - Saturday, January 15, 2022 - link
@mode_13h>Those used symmetrical chiplets. Maybe a trivial distinction... you decide.
How about Clarkdale and Arrandale processors (2010) , which had a separate gpu die in the package.
mode_13h - Sunday, January 16, 2022 - link
Fair point.Something I've always wondered is what's the other die on the Tiger Lake substrate. Is that also a separate GPU die? I've never seen it explained!
arashi - Monday, January 17, 2022 - link
PCH, Intel's been doing that for a long time now. Only AMD ships a true monolithic SoC.https://www.anandtech.com/show/7047/the-haswell-ul...
arashi - Monday, January 17, 2022 - link
*of x86 vendors.mode_13h - Tuesday, January 18, 2022 - link
Thanks!...ugh, Intel's slide calls it a "1-chip BGA solution", when they really mean "1-package BGA solution".
So, what interests me about that is whether the CPU die theoretically can simply be re-packaged for desktop usage.
ET - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
I think it's worth pointing out that the cheapest chiplet based CPU was the Ryzen 3 3100 at $99, and on the other hand the cheapest monolithic 7nm Ryzen CPU available to DIY is the $259 Ryzen 5 5600G.Which means that regardless of production costs, in the end it's still a marketing decision what product to make available and at what prices. The 3100/3300X show that it was profitable at the time for AMD to have chiplet based entry level CPUs.
mode_13h - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
Yes, this.For a long time, I was kicking myself for not snatching a 3300X, when I had the chance. Those things were an absolute performance bargain. I saw them as recently as last summer, but selling for > $160 and I'm now hoping 5600X will drop.
The_Countess - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
That of course was pre-pandemic when both shipping and substrates were cheap.mode_13h - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
Shipping? The article also seems to make a big deal about shipping, but I just have a hard time accepting that shipping tiny little slivers of silicon in large batches adds more than a trivial amount to production costs.whatthe123 - Saturday, January 15, 2022 - link
at this point the cost is in renting the space and getting it on time. every shipping channel has been slowed down and delayed for the past two years, so you either pay up to hop the line/ship air or your container of chips wanders off somewhere and delays hundreds of thousands of chips like what happened to nvidia.mode_13h - Sunday, January 16, 2022 - link
CPU dies are assuredly more expensive per unit of weight or volume than gold. Obviously, they require better packaging than gold, but I still find it hard to believe that even air freight wouldn't be a cost-effective way to move them.mode_13h - Sunday, January 16, 2022 - link
Speaking of air freight, I just heard that Fed Ex wants to equip some of its planes with surface-to-air missile defenses, so they don't have to circumnavigate certain conflict regions. They formally requested permission for this from the FAA, which has to ensure the systems pose no risk to other planes or the public.jvl - Monday, January 17, 2022 - link
:joy: ...the things you imagine hearing, thanks for the laugh of the daymode_13h - Tuesday, January 18, 2022 - link
Huh? No, it's real.https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/14/business/fedex-anti...
nandnandnand - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
3100/3300X disappeared very quickly, and their MSRPs were not held. Yields on 7nm 8-core chiplets are too high to bother with disabling half the cores to make a budget CPU.Ideally, AMD will push monolithic Van Gogh quad-cores to address the budget market. The iGPU on it should be enough for many users. DDR5 pricing is the remaining problem.
meacupla - Sunday, January 16, 2022 - link
I thought AMD Van Gogh was dead?DDR5 DIMM pricing is ridiculous, but the word is DDR5 SODIMM pricing is very competitive with DDR4 SODIMM.
If board makers are smart, they should offer their AMD 6000/7000 APU mini-PC and mITX with DDR5 SODIMM slots.
nandnandnand - Sunday, January 16, 2022 - link
Plenty of code was added into Linux to support Van Gogh, and it is the chip in the Steam Deck. There have also been roadmaps that showed "Dragon Crest" as what looked like a minor refresh of Van Gogh.At the very least, AM5 motherboards have to exist before it could launch in the way I'm suggesting. Zen 4, Rembrandt desktop APUs, and maybe Van Gogh budget desktop APUs could launch in Q3 2022 or into 2023.
https://www.neowin.net/news/amd-suggests-that-ddr5...
"One of the dynamics that we do think about a great deal is how and when to introduce that AM5 ecosystem and ensure that the DDR5 supply, as well as pricing of DDR5 memory, is mature and something that's easily attainable for an end-user
And so there may be other forces beyond the product itself that slow down or meter the introduction of APUs into that AM5 socket."
The DDR5 premium will be relaxed eventually, but unlike Intel with Alder Lake, AMD is all in on DDR5 with AM5. So they will wait a bit.
quadibloc - Friday, January 14, 2022 - link
Obviously, when there are no longer silicon supply constraints, AMD will have to find ways to serve more markets in order to maximize profits. When there are supply constraints, they can make products for the markets that are easier for them to serve from within their technology portfolio.So the fact that they aren't currently covering the low end of the desktop market very well isn't something for which I can take them to task the way some of the comments here are doing.
Frenetic Pony - Saturday, January 15, 2022 - link
It's not just reticle limit and defect rate. Smaller chips also do much better with edge loss as well.The real trick isn't so much money as millimeters. Starting at around 100mm or bigger for a roughly squarish shape chip yields start dropping exponentially, eventually those yield costs start surpassing packaging costs.
Not that yields and packaging are simple costs. SRAM uses far fewer metal layers than logic, so stacked SRAM might make sense even for smaller chips if the packaging gets cheap enough.
eastcoast_pete - Saturday, January 15, 2022 - link
Right now, Intel basically owns the < $150 CPU space. The 12th generation i3s are right now by far the price/performance kings in that price range. What holds those back is the still too high price of 660 boards that can take DDR4, but once they are widely available for $ 120 or less, they are no-brainers for that budget. IMO, AMD is making a serious mistake by essentially abandoning that range for now.mode_13h - Sunday, January 16, 2022 - link
AMD has more constraints on production capacity than Intel. I'm sure they'd like to address all market segments, but they have to be judicious about where to allocate their dies.TekCheck - Sunday, January 16, 2022 - link
They are not interested in covering every segment of the market. It is not necessary. Besides, there is just as much as you could possibly cover. Do not forget that AMD had been posting historically record revenues. They are literally selling everything they could possibly produce.Once their capacity increases, they will be able to cover more segments.
Alexvrb - Saturday, January 15, 2022 - link
"Beyond this, AMD has to ship its 14nm dies for its products from New York to Asia first, to package them with the TSMC compute dies, before shipping the final product around the world. That might be reduced in future, as AMD is believed to make its next-generation chiplet designs all within Asia."Hmm, on the surface that seems unlikely, given the recent extension of their deal with GF. What would they do with all the excess wafer supply? I doubt shipping adds much cost on a per-chip basis to start with.
casteve - Monday, January 17, 2022 - link
Yeah, the shipping comment is a bit inane. The silicon is all air shipped - not on some banana boat. So, a few days to get there and clear customs. It's going to be shipped as die in wafer form and then assembled with all the rest. Depending on the arrangement with the foundry, it might be tested die shipped or raw wafers shipped and tested in Asia.TekCheck - Sunday, January 16, 2022 - link
My question is regarding Rembrandt. The platform is marketed as DisplaytPort 2.0 "Ready". What does this really mean? I can neither see that RDNA2 iGPU supports UHBR10 output at 40 Gbps not dGPU supporitng anything more than DP 1.4. Is there any level shifter chip on motherboard that supports DP 2.0 at 40 Gbps? "Ready" always worries me that something is not there quite yet.