AMD shows its Zen CPU can compete with Intel’s best - deanssirte1947

AMD on Thursday finally unveiled its new Zen microarchitecture, with a pair of CPUs that could put the company backward into the fight with Intel's unexcelled.

AMD same its Summit Ridge CPU, aimed at high-performance desktops, will pack 8 cores and boast simultaneous multi-threading technology to give it 16 duds of processing power. Summit Rooftree is targeted for Q1 2017, though a trickle of chips could appear sooner. A 2nd chip for servers, encrypt-called Naples, will feature an unbelievable 32 cores with SMT, giving information technology 64 threads per CPU. SMT is similar to Intel's Hyper-Threading technology, which splits a single core into two practical cores for more performance.

To establish that Zen has the right stuff, AMD officials on Wednesday night demonstrated before a herd of reporters and analysts that an 8-nitty-gritty Dot could tally just atomic number 3 fast as Intel's newest 8-marrow consumer Core i7 chip.

zenvsbroadwelle — AMD's Summit Ridge SoC (left) running at 3GHz can run a Blender fork out just as blistering as a Core i7-6900K (right) operative at 3GHz.

Why this matters: Upbound to now, both had speculated that Dose would fall short. Recently-leaked benchmarks seemed to indicate it was no better than Intel's Haswell microarchitecture released Sir Thomas More than two years ago. If other tests clog AMD's demonstration, yet, IT appears to run neck-and-neck with the freshly released Broadwell-E. If AMD can current capable its promise, it's great news for the fellowship likewise as for consumers.

Clock-for-clock, it's looking fast

The manifestation used the multi-rib Blender rendering covering on two similarly configured PCs. One featured an engineering sample Elevation Ridge chip, piece the other featured a new Intel Broadwell-E Core i7-6900K Mainframe. While the Core i7-6900K can sew to 4GHz on few workloads, AMD conducted the test with both CPUs locked at 3GHz.

This methodological analysis whitethorn seem nonconforming to around, but twinned the chips time-for-clock helps reveal their efficiencies. Conducting the test this way as wel helps AMD protect the final shipping clock speeds of the chips. In the demo, which was performed just once, the Zen ended a nose ahead of the Broadwell-E Core i7-6900K check.

It's just a single quiz happening an unreleased Processor, and under the control of AMD. Still, the significance of the performance feat quells any fears that Zen would be the all-too-familiar "too little, too late" story from a company that has eaten Intel's dust.

The demonstration exceeded the crowd's expectations. "This is the most exciting AMD (CPU) launching in a X," said Kevin Krewell, principal analyst with Tirias Search, who attended the event. "They real have hit the mark up on this."

zenunveiled — AMD's Window pane testament fit into the new AM4 socket and appears to support double-channel DDR4.

Performance, throughput and efficiency

AMD officials also raised the curtain on Zen's completely new microarchitecture. Spent are the shared out, clustered multi-meander cores of the old Bulldozer and Piledriver designs—Zen's cores are digest-unaccompanied cores with SMT. The chip is beingness fabbed by byproduct company Circular Foundries on a 14nm process, using FinFet technology.

amd1 — AMD's new Battery-acid is a completely new CPU demonstrating a big performance boost over previous designs.

AMD CTO Mark Papermaster said the Zen core is about performance, throughput, and efficiency. Papermaster aforesaid Zen features a new high-performance cache, a greatly improved prefetcher, and a completely redesigned branch prediction unit.

This is a big gun for AMD, and Papermaster showed it. "It's a thrill to tell you we to the full validated our performance accomplishment," he said, beaming. He as wel promised that AMD was only hot up. "We are second. I told you a year ago we are back. And I'm really happy to tell you we delivered that performance and the team is not stopping, they are full forward happening the next-generation design."

The Summit Rooftree chips are in reality SoCs and will support DDR4, USB 3.1 10Gbps, NVMe, SATA Express and PCIe 3.0. Other inside information of Summit Ridge such atomic number 3 die size, transistor numerate and thermals weren't released Wednesday dark.

128threads — Here's what 128 threads of computer science looks like on a dual-processor AMD Naples-based server.

Napoli brings 32 cores and 128 duds

It's non just just about the screen background, either. AMD also wowed the crowd by demonstrating its server-headed Naples SoC running in a dual-processor system. With each Napoli packing 32 cores and SMT, that means a Naples-based server would feature 128 threads of work out power.

Officials said Zen volition continue to evolve—the new chip design will scale down to laptops sometime next year. But first AMD needs to ship these first Zen chips.

The consumer-focused Summit Ridge is expected to hit shelves in the first quarter of 2017, but AMD officials said some limited chips may ship in systems as before long as the end of this year. The server-oriented Naples chip would hit in the first half of 2017. "I told you the best is yet to total," aforementioned AMD CEO Lisa Su. "The next 12 months will atomic number 4 even more elating."