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Eletriarnation
Apr 6, 2005

People don't appreciate the substance of things...
objects in space.


Oven Wrangler
Yeah - my understanding is that Nehalem is the closest thing to a new design we've gotten from Intel in the past 10 years, introducing integrated memory controllers and PCIe lanes with QPI to replace the old Northbridge/FSB setup that persisted through Core 2 and reintroducing HT which had been absent since Netburst went off the market. Sandy Bridge, Haswell and Skylake were all refinements to that design. (Lynnfield/1156 was actually a step back, just for cost reasons I think - the memory controller was on-package but not on-die.) Whatever follows Cannon Lake may be a new design, if Intel thinks they're nearly out of tricks to squeeze more performance out of what they have.

I am not sure if (but could totally believe that) the pipeline of Nehalem was still based on Core 2 and if you go far enough back P3 as well, so I'm not sure at what point you can point to a chip and say it's a "totally" new design. Maybe the Atom qualifies? I know that a lot of the idea behind it was "Make a chip as simple as the original Pentium but running as fast as we can get it these days, plus any improvements which give you at least a 2:1 return on performance:wattage."

Eletriarnation fucked around with this message at 15:22 on May 27, 2017

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PC LOAD LETTER
May 23, 2005
WTF?!

Theris posted:

Was Sandybridge a clean sheet redesign? I was under the impression that the current Cores are still an evolution of P6.
Yeah. Some of the concepts in its design were reputedly evolved from the old P6 but the actual design itself is something else entirely.

Pentium M (Yonah, Banias, Merom?, others too mostly mobile oriented) was more closely related to the P6 than Sandybridge, but even then it was a very much a different architecture vs the original P6 from the mid 90's.

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO posted:

Yes. I think they can get by for a few years, by then ditching gloflo is a great opportunity.
Unfortunately I don't think they can ditch GF. At least not totally. Its quite possible Samsung's or TSMC's processes won't offer much if any advantages. More production capacity sure, but more clocks or better TDP's vs what they're getting now? I'm not optimistic at all. Despite the stupid process naming games going on Intel still has a solid practical lead if you're in the high end MPU market.

They should definitely be able to grow market share by just improving Zen in both the desktop and server markets though and that is definitely a big deal. Who knows, maybe in a couple of years they might start getting close to having 20% marketshare again.

PC LOAD LETTER fucked around with this message at 15:37 on May 27, 2017

Anime Schoolgirl
Nov 28, 2002

PC LOAD LETTER posted:

Yeah. Some of the concepts in its design were reputedly evolved from the old P6 but the actual design itself is something else entirely.

Pentium M (Yonah, Banias, Merom?, others too mostly mobile oriented) was more closely related to the P6 than Sandybridge, but even then it was a very much a different architecture vs the original P6 from the mid 90's.
Zen is practically the same thing in regards to its relation to the previous architectures, it's funny how things seem to repeat themselves.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

Eletriarnation posted:

Maybe the Atom qualifies? I know that a lot of the idea behind it was "Make a chip as simple as the original Pentium but running as fast as we can get it these days, plus any improvements which give you at least a 2:1 return on performance:wattage."


The Atom design developed from the "Stealey" cores used in the A100 and A110 processors in 2007, meant for use in those weird Ultra Mobile PC things that were a thing for a few years before netbooks. One of the only devices they went into was the HTC Shift.


The Stealey cores were based on Dothan Pentium M-based Celeron CPUs, obviously heavily cut downand slowed down to fit the 5 watt power envelope. So, Atom wasn't really a new microarchitecure, it was just another variant of the P6, with more similarity to older designs in that family.

Also remember that with Atom and the Stealey cores of the year before, Intel gave the directives to just cut power by any means possible, while maintaining compatibility. Once they got that with the Stealey core, they spent time refining Atom to slowly bring back performance without massively increasing power. And then eventually gave up on that line for the new Atom chips that derive from the the core i series.

Kazinsal
Dec 13, 2011



If anyone here is a super low level technical person and wants to know more about the conversion of x86 instructions to RISC micro-ops and associated pipeline/latency/clock/unit info, this is a really good PDF that goes into detail for pretty much every x86 microarchitecture since P5 and K7 (unfortunately no K6, which is where AMD introduced their RISC86 architecture): http://agner.org/optimize/instruction_tables.pdf

Menacer
Nov 25, 2000
Failed Sega Accessory Ahoy!
AMD has been cracking x86 instructions into RISC-like micro-ops since the K5. Dave Christie covers the design decisions behind this in his IEEE Micro paper about the design of the K5.

If you're interested in some of the history that led them to these decisions, check out Mike Johnson's book on superscalar microarchitecture design. It's basically his Ph.D. dissertation, but it's a very good from-the-ground-up discussion of designing a superscalar (and subsequently out-of-order) microprocessor, and why you would make this decision.

That book has an appendix that discusses how to make an out-of-order 386 without micro-ops -- work he did while working at AMD (where he was also an architect on the Am29000 line of RISC processors, which are brought up in Dave Christie's article). Mike went on to be the lead architect on K5, so one could consider the K5 article a logical conclusion to superscalar design book.

PC LOAD LETTER
May 23, 2005
WTF?!
Thanks for those links. I had no idea there was that much public information available on the K5. Its a pretty old CPU now but it seems to me the approach used was fairly out there (as I understand it the K5 was pretty much a 29000 RISC CPU with a x86 "front end") yet it worked fairly well still. Too bad they never got the clocks up much but I have a few fond memories of it still.

3peat
May 6, 2010

Kilson
Jan 16, 2003

I EAT LITTLE CHILDREN FOR BREAKFAST !!11!!1!!!!111!

Are those wooden fans (edit: casings)? I imagine it's some kind of stupid audiophile equipment :v:

HalloKitty
Sep 30, 2005

Adjust the bass and let the Alpine blast

Kilson posted:

Are those wooden fans (edit: casings)? I imagine it's some kind of stupid audiophile equipment :v:

They look like normal enough Noctuas to me...

Drakhoran
Oct 21, 2012

Kilson posted:

Are those wooden fans (edit: casings)? I imagine it's some kind of stupid audiophile equipment :v:

Nah, that's just Noctua's signature color scheme.

I presume the cooler on the left is an EPYC cooler?

Methylethylaldehyde
Oct 23, 2004

BAKA BAKA

Kilson posted:

Are those wooden fans (edit: casings)? I imagine it's some kind of stupid audiophile equipment :v:

Nah, those are Noctua fans, super quiet, good airflow, and all the case-window spergs think they're ugly as poo poo for some reason, but gently caress them. They're pretty popular to bundle with heatsinks that either don't come with a fan, or come with a really lovely one.

NewFatMike
Jun 11, 2015

ASRock mITX announced

Comes in both X370 and B350 variants.

Watermelon Daiquiri
Jul 10, 2010
I TRIED TO BAIT THE TXPOL THREAD WITH THE WORLD'S WORST POSSIBLE TAKE AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID AVATAR.
i like how they also made a mobo with 13 pcie ports

Risky Bisquick
Jan 18, 2008

PLEASE LET ME WRITE YOUR VICTIM IMPACT STATEMENT SO I CAN FURTHER DEMONSTRATE THE CALAMITY THAT IS OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM.



Buglord

NewFatMike posted:

ASRock mITX announced

Comes in both X370 and B350 variants.

mITX x370 instead of the x300 :raise: x300 seem to be vaporware

redeyes
Sep 14, 2002

by Fluffdaddy

Watermelon Daiquiri posted:

i like how they also made a mobo with 13 pcie ports

Hilarious. Buttcoin edition. I guess they don't know that GPU mining is dead. Also the IoT router looks interesting.

wargames
Mar 16, 2008

official yospos cat censor

Risky Bisquick posted:

mITX x370 instead of the x300 :raise: x300 seem to be vaporware

x300 is the super low end right so maybe for partners only that do enterprise poo poo boxes?

repiv
Aug 13, 2009

wargames posted:

x300 is the super low end right so maybe for partners only that do enterprise poo poo boxes?

Enterprise shitboxes don't need overclocking though, so A300 is sufficient for those. X300 is for people who love overclocking but hate having lots of USB ports? :confused:

3peat
May 6, 2010

Drakhoran posted:

I presume the cooler on the left is an EPYC cooler?

Yes.

AVeryLargeRadish
Aug 19, 2011

I LITERALLY DON'T KNOW HOW TO NOT BE A WEIRD SEXUAL CREEP ABOUT PREPUBESCENT ANIME GIRLS, READ ALL ABOUT IT HERE!!!

redeyes posted:

Hilarious. Buttcoin edition. I guess they don't know that GPU mining is dead. Also the IoT router looks interesting.

Every 480/580 AMD card is currently sold out due to a spike in Etherium prices. So yeah, they will probably sell a bunch of those to miners.

eames
May 9, 2009



Part of me hopes that Vega will be extremely efficient for cryptocurrency stuff so AMD can sell terrible GPUs with GTX 1070 level gaming performance and 250W power consumption at ridiculous prices and they still won't be able to keep them in stock. Man that'd be a hilarious turn of events.

eames fucked around with this message at 19:53 on May 29, 2017

Wistful of Dollars
Aug 25, 2009

NewFatMike posted:

ASRock mITX announced

Comes in both X370 and B350 variants.

Yay, at last.

Sneaky Kettle
Jul 4, 2010

NewFatMike posted:

ASRock mITX announced

Comes in both X370 and B350 variants.

I am wary of this Fatal1ty branding. Wasn't it the case that these things had supposedly optimized, actually terrible network adapters?

Anime Schoolgirl
Nov 28, 2002

Sneaky Kettle posted:

I am wary of this Fatal1ty branding. Wasn't it the case that these things had supposedly optimized, actually terrible network adapters?
that can be ignored by using the generic atheros drivers most installations now default to

orcane
Jun 13, 2012

Fun Shoe
Also this one says Intel Gigabit Ethernet on the X370 picture.

Canned Sunshine
Nov 20, 2005

CAUTION: POST QUALITY UNDER CONSTRUCTION



orcane posted:

Also this one says Intel Gigabit Ethernet on the X370 picture.

:laffo:

Anime Schoolgirl
Nov 28, 2002

intel gigabit ethernet is a good NIC and pretty cheap and it's on a lot of AM3 and FM2 boards, even

Canned Sunshine
Nov 20, 2005

CAUTION: POST QUALITY UNDER CONSTRUCTION



Anime Schoolgirl posted:

intel gigabit ethernet is a good NIC and pretty cheap and it's on a lot of AM3 and FM2 boards, even

Oh I don't disagree, I just still find it funny.

PerrineClostermann
Dec 15, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
I look at my laptop with an Intel CPU and AMD GPU and laugh every time :smug:

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

eames posted:



Part of me hopes that Vega will be extremely efficient for cryptocurrency stuff so AMD can sell terrible GPUs with GTX 1070 level gaming performance and 250W power consumption at ridiculous prices and they still won't be able to keep them in stock. Man that'd be a hilarious turn of events.

It's happened multiple times over the years. 480 was going for 20% over MSPR shortly after launch due to buttminers.

It's nice for AMD short-term sales numbers but I think somewhat bad long term. AMD can say they have more market share of GPUs sold, but if it's 20% on steam hardware survey and other publisher statistics, game devs will make the rational choice to put more work into nvidia optimization. And AMD isn't the one getting the bonus revenue from cards selling above MSRP.

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO
Feb 28, 1985


I'm surprised AMD don't sell a lightweight compute card that's just a standard card, cheaper, with no video outputs, and separate the markets.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO posted:

I'm surprised AMD don't sell a lightweight compute card that's just a standard card, cheaper, with no video outputs, and separate the markets.

Don't they, for the normal high performance computing market?

EmpyreanFlux
Mar 1, 2013

The AUDACITY! The IMPUDENCE! The unabated NERVE!

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO posted:

I'm surprised AMD don't sell a lightweight compute card that's just a standard card, cheaper, with no video outputs, and separate the markets.

So basically say gently caress it, embrace that buttcoin miners won't stop doing this and sell buttcoin edition cards that are theoretically useless for anything but compute?

fishmech posted:

Don't they, for the normal high performance computing market?

Aren't those much more expensive? That'd be why.

New Zealand can eat me
Aug 29, 2008

:matters:


Theris posted:

I hope AMD realizes that any product with names like those has to come in a box featuring a poorly CGI'd warrior lady in bikini armor.

I miss those :smith:

This is terrible, imagine how much better it would be if the robot had boobs

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

FaustianQ posted:

So basically say gently caress it, embrace that buttcoin miners won't stop doing this and sell buttcoin edition cards that are theoretically useless for anything but compute?


Aren't those much more expensive? That'd be why.

They're more expensive upfront, but that's partially because they're low volume sellers, and partially because they're a decent bit more powerful for pure compute tasks than the typical graphics cards of equivalent chipsets.

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO
Feb 28, 1985


fishmech posted:

Don't they, for the normal high performance computing market?

That'll be why I guess. Maybe when Vega comes they could keep selling 580s that way.

I'm surprised sapphire or someone isn't already doing that.

PerrineClostermann
Dec 15, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

New Zealand can eat me posted:

I miss those :smith:

This is terrible, imagine how much better it would be if the robot had boobs



Just screenshot Firestrike!

Paul MaudDib
May 3, 2006

TEAM NVIDIA:
FORUM POLICE

fishmech posted:

Don't they, for the normal high performance computing market?

There's the FirePro S9000 series. Possibly more. As you note, it's fairly common in the HPC market - removing the ports allows you to put more louvers there and cool it better. Another even more niche feature offered is passive cooling (eg NVIDIA K80) - dedicated supercomputers push aircon through the rack pretty quickly and you remove a whole ton of moving parts.

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO posted:

I'm surprised AMD don't sell a lightweight compute card that's just a standard card, cheaper, with no video outputs, and separate the markets.

This is all about economies of scale. What's the savings from removing a few extra discretes and side-chips in mass-production quantities? Not much. How much does it cost to set up the pick-and-place machine for new boards, and track an entire other second lineup? At least some. How many are they going to sell? Well, either very few, or their entire stock - in which case you're now sold out for months until you can ramp production (by which time it may well be over).

I'm sure you can see why they aren't jumping all over that.

Also, miners usually figure on selling used cards to get some of their money back out when they're done with them. Regular users are gonna want a display output.

Whether they are OK or not kinda depends on the card and how the miner has used it. Most miners do undervolt and try to run them cool (lots of fan) which helps electromigration, and they usually don't have many thermal cycles on them (it's one of the primary failure modes). But man it is a lot of power-on hours, and fan bearings wear over time, etc. And open-air-frame cases probably aren't the world's best thing w/r/t electrostatic discharge (which can cause very subtle damage that doesn't necessarily kill the card outright).

Frankly I really like the idea of the XFX Hardswap series. It should be easier for end-users to swap fans, it's a pretty common failure mode and would be appreciated by bitlords and gamers alike.

Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 04:52 on May 30, 2017

MaxxBot
Oct 6, 2003

you could have clapped

you should have clapped!!

Kazinsal posted:

If anyone here is a super low level technical person and wants to know more about the conversion of x86 instructions to RISC micro-ops and associated pipeline/latency/clock/unit info, this is a really good PDF that goes into detail for pretty much every x86 microarchitecture since P5 and K7 (unfortunately no K6, which is where AMD introduced their RISC86 architecture): http://agner.org/optimize/instruction_tables.pdf

Thank you, I'm a big CPU nerd so stuff like this is right up my alley.

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New Zealand can eat me
Aug 29, 2008

:matters:


PerrineClostermann posted:

Just screenshot Firestrike!

You better not be taking pictures of my girlfriend!!!!

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