Sunday, September 24, 2017
Finally Upgraded!
The final parts arrived and now I am finally rocking a new build featuring an AMD 1950X CPU, so I have 16 cores/32 threads running at 4 GHz. It is combined with 32 GB of DDR4 3200 MHz CL14 RAM and is running so nicely. Video processing is much faster and the games I've played thus far have also improved nicely. It is that video processing I wanted so much though (why I went for the Ryzen Threadripper over just a Ryzen 7) and it is really awesome to have a system capable of over 2x encoding speed at x264 Medium, compared to about 0.1x before. I am very much looking forward to putting it to some serious work soon, but right now, I have a few other things to take care of first (like this post).
Sunday, September 17, 2017
Comment on Threadripper
Just days ago a video was put out showing that the four dies in an AMD Threadripper CPU are in fact all Zeppelin dies, but two are disabled (very possibly defective dies). Since then I have seen a number of people commenting on how they wonder if this means we could see a 32-core Threadripper in the future, by just having these two dies be active. Well, from what I understand of the Zeppelin die and the Infinity Fabric that ties them together in both Threadripper and Epyc, this cannot happen and will not happen.
As we know from the single-die Ryzen processors, the Zeppelin dies are complete onto themselves, critically with their own memory controllers. The controllers are designed for dual channel, but by combining them with Infinity Fabric we can get quad-channel (Threadripper) and eight-channel (Epyc) memory support. This is also why you would not see a Threadripper with more than two dies (or less then two dies) active because the platform has no support for six-channel or eight-channel memory. Sure, in theory Infinity Fabric could allow another die's memory controller to be used, resulting in higher latency for both dies involved. It would require an entirely different platform that will provide access to RAM for these extra dies to be usable, and I cannot imagine AMD would want to introduce a fourth desktop platform. Currently we have Ryzen 3/5/7, single-die platform, Threadripper, two-die platform, and Epyc, four-die platform. Crossing products between these makes no sense and adding another platform to that already healthy mix is also nonsensical.
So, chances are the only way to see an even higher core count Threadripper is to also see a higher core count die (which means a higher core count Core Complex/CCX). That will certainly come, but I would think it would not be until Zen2 and the 7 nm shift. At least, that is my reasoning on it.
As we know from the single-die Ryzen processors, the Zeppelin dies are complete onto themselves, critically with their own memory controllers. The controllers are designed for dual channel, but by combining them with Infinity Fabric we can get quad-channel (Threadripper) and eight-channel (Epyc) memory support. This is also why you would not see a Threadripper with more than two dies (or less then two dies) active because the platform has no support for six-channel or eight-channel memory. Sure, in theory Infinity Fabric could allow another die's memory controller to be used, resulting in higher latency for both dies involved. It would require an entirely different platform that will provide access to RAM for these extra dies to be usable, and I cannot imagine AMD would want to introduce a fourth desktop platform. Currently we have Ryzen 3/5/7, single-die platform, Threadripper, two-die platform, and Epyc, four-die platform. Crossing products between these makes no sense and adding another platform to that already healthy mix is also nonsensical.
So, chances are the only way to see an even higher core count Threadripper is to also see a higher core count die (which means a higher core count Core Complex/CCX). That will certainly come, but I would think it would not be until Zen2 and the 7 nm shift. At least, that is my reasoning on it.
Sunday, September 10, 2017
Maybe I Should Set a Reminder
Huh... I honestly didn't realize I forgot so many weeks in a row to post anything. Sorry about that. Past few weeks have been somewhat busy for me, but still should have remembered.
Anyway, there are several possible topics but the one I have an opinion I feel like sharing is Amazon looking for a location for its HQ2/second head quarters. I am glad to see the news that the company is willing to consider places other than the largest cities, on the coasts, where the cost of living is really high. I do wonder how much various companies have been hurting their ability to hire when they are located in expensive places. It might be prestigious, but how much talent is not interested in moving hundreds to thousands of miles for a job that will barely make ends meet, when instead they could find a nearer job that pays left, but also leaves them with savings? I know where I would rather take a job.
Anyway, there are several possible topics but the one I have an opinion I feel like sharing is Amazon looking for a location for its HQ2/second head quarters. I am glad to see the news that the company is willing to consider places other than the largest cities, on the coasts, where the cost of living is really high. I do wonder how much various companies have been hurting their ability to hire when they are located in expensive places. It might be prestigious, but how much talent is not interested in moving hundreds to thousands of miles for a job that will barely make ends meet, when instead they could find a nearer job that pays left, but also leaves them with savings? I know where I would rather take a job.
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