Speculation: Ryzen 4000 series/Zen 3

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Ajay

Lifer
Jan 8, 2001
15,332
7,792
136
I think we all agree it's always a good thing when higher ups are familiar with the matters they are supposed to manage and decide about. :wink:

In that regard it's interesting how much AMD is focused on recruiting and promote senior staff with a background in science and engineering:
position at AMDeducation
Nazar Zaidi (LinkeIn)Senior vice president of Cores, Server SoC and Systems IP EngineeringPh.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in electrical engineering
Andrej Zdravkovic (LinkedIn)Senior vice president of Software DevelopmentBachelor and Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering
Spencer PanSenior vice president of Greater China Sales and president of AMD Greater ChinaBachelor and Master degrees in electronic engineering
Jane Roney (LinkedIn)Senior vice president of Business OperationsBachelor of Science in physics and math
Daniel (Dan) McNamara (LinkedIn)Senior vice president and general manager, Server Business UnitBachelor and Master of Science degrees in electrical engineering
Joshua Friedrich (LinkedIn)Corporate Vice PresidentBachelor Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Table from planet3dnow.de
That's the way Intel *used* to do it!
 
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Saylick

Diamond Member
Sep 10, 2012
3,084
6,184
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Well, BK was a "fab guy" and look where it got them.
BK being a "fab" guy is like how Apple is run by a "supply chain" guy. Neither are true technical/design types; they're both bean counter types that are great at milking a successful business and padding the bottom line, not for driving innovation and pushing the envelope. The difference being Apple just has too much clout and a lack of true competitors for them to flounder with Tim at the helm.
 

Richie Rich

Senior member
Jul 28, 2019
470
229
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As a software architect driving semi large projects I dont have a single developer on my team which role I cant stand in myself. Having a tech management role requires you to be bleeding edge yourself.
Exactly. The point is to know all important stuff which creates 80% of impact from each segment. Those last 20% is often huge amount of less important details. That's Pareto rule. More segments you can absorb means bigger picture you can see. This is main difference between visionary type (Musk, Jobs, Keller etc.) and specialist type. This is reason why even great specialist (or CFO->CEO) promoted into leading position could be a disaster (like Bulldozer or Sculley in Apple).

Anyway, every person who went from engineer position up to vice-president with significant industry impact should be valuated as positive example worth to follow. If not there is always something wrong with those people.
 

soresu

Platinum Member
Dec 19, 2014
2,617
1,812
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Musk, Jobs, Keller
Keller does NOT belong in the same breath as Musk and Jobs.

Jobs was mostly a business 'genius' who took the lions share of the credit for ideas realised by others like Wozniak - like a frontman for a band who takes the public credit for songs he sings, but did not write.

Musk certainly has a greater overall technical grounding than Jobs did, but don't be fooled - he's hardly some contemporary Einstein among engineers, he's still just doing what Jobs did.

Keller on the other hand is an actual expert/specialist, more Wozniak than Jobs - he just tends to get more credit than those around him due to being a more visible management fixture in several notable CPU development groups since DEC Alpha.

Even at the university level, often the true author of a big discovery can be overshadowed by the name of their mentor and head of any research effort.

I can't count the number of times I read the name of a specific professor called James Tour in relation to materials research work (graphene, ReRAM) at Rice University, and even though he often singled out the true author of the paper under his mentorship, those names slip my mind because his name keeps coming up afterward over something else - I suspect a similar fog lies over Keller's many collaborators.
 

soresu

Platinum Member
Dec 19, 2014
2,617
1,812
136
The difference being Apple just has too much clout and a lack of true competitors for them to flounder with Tim at the helm.
That and Samsung stopped really pushing the envelope too some time ago - I don't think folding phones really count to be honest.

I'm hoping that their licensing RDNA from AMD could indicate a drive for standalone VR to replace Gear VR in the future, at least then they would be back in a field they had pioneered in the early days of the modern VR push, as it is Apple is clearly dipping their toes in with software before a hardware push in the future.
 

uzzi38

Platinum Member
Oct 16, 2019
2,565
5,572
146
Any idea what is this? Is it for apple or someone else?
There's one thing _rogame forgot to mention there - the memory is most likely GDDR6. GT2 in Time Spy is predominantly memory bound, so if it's beating the GDDR5 based Subor Z+ by such a large margin.. well I'm sure you can guess.

Aside form that, everything we know is there.

Honestly, I think he's on point with his guess that it's the Xbox Series S - or in other words, the rumoured 'Lockhart'.

Also, it's probably not for Apple. This benchmark suggests that only GDDR6 memory is used, there's no DDR4 etc at all. Shared memory between the CPU and GPU only - like the Subor Z+. I don't think Apple would request for such a device, a large number of workloads in Apple's ecosystem are quite dependent on memory latency, the iGPU isn't good enough for this to be a device based around gaming when compared to upcoming consoles.
 

kapulek

Member
Oct 16, 2010
56
33
91
If Lockhart is 8c/8t and Xbox Series X is 8c/16t developers must be "happy". Apart from PS5, XsX and PC they will have one more console to develop for.

uzzi38 have you heard anything about next gen Nintendo console with AMD hardware?
 

Veradun

Senior member
Jul 29, 2016
564
780
136
If Lockhart is 8c/8t and Xbox Series X is 8c/16t developers must be "happy". Apart from PS5, XsX and PC they will have one more console to develop for.

uzzi38 have you heard anything about next gen Nintendo console with AMD hardware?
I am an early band wagoner for 8c/8t in XsX

Yeah, should or shouldn't my point is an 8c/8t setup is perfectly in line with what Devs have been using the past generation and doesn't bear any additional baggage for additional optimization steps.

I second this and further add that I think the CPU part will be 8c/8t (no SMT) to have better efficiency and also a strict parallelism with jaguar for perfect portability of whatever code one wants to port from the one x
 

DisEnchantment

Golden Member
Mar 3, 2017
1,590
5,722
136
I think going forward we can be sure those leaks will be drying up. Zen1 and Zen2 benchmarks were leaked months ahead of launch.
AMD will be more reluctant to share details going forward to avoid Osborning themselves.
Its 2 Q away and there is nothing on the internet for RDNA2/Zen3 in contrast to Zen benchmarks leaks of almost 9+ months before launch and 7+ months for Zen2
 

amrnuke

Golden Member
Apr 24, 2019
1,181
1,772
136
I think going forward we can be sure those leaks will be drying up. Zen1 and Zen2 benchmarks were leaked months ahead of launch.
AMD will be more reluctant to share details going forward to avoid Osborning themselves.
Its 2 Q away and there is nothing on the internet for RDNA2/Zen3 in contrast to Zen benchmarks leaks of almost 9+ months before launch and 7+ months for Zen2
It always seemed silly that they would benchmark their unreleased CPUs (or permit benchmarking their unreleased CPUs) on programs that they know communicate with a server. I'm glad it's locked down. I actually think it may tamp down on the rampant speculation, since there won't be "Oh, that's an ES and probably we can expect xx% higher clocks from the final product" and so on.
 

joesiv

Member
Mar 21, 2019
75
24
41
Nope, and I doubt there will be one.
I also doubt it too. Nvidia was very smart with their agreement with Nintendo for the switch. Nvidia is doing the developement of the Switch SDK for developers. This would abviously make it much harder for Nintendo to switch vendors and have to create all the toolsets again from scratch, especially if they want backwards compatibility with the next gen switch (switch pro?) and the current software.

I don't know if Nintendo is stilll planing on being more mobile like (IOS/Android) in terms of decoupling hardware/software release cycles, not locking software to a specific hardware generation. If so, it would seem that Nintendo would stick with Nvidia for several generations, and most definitely arm for the CPU.
 
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coercitiv

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2014
6,151
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I actually think it may tamp down on the rampant speculation, since there won't be "Oh, that's an ES and probably we can expect xx% higher clocks from the final product" and so on.
The worst rampant speculation on Zen 2 had nothing to do with the leaks. Remember the 6c/12t @ $99 or 16c/32t @ 5.1Ghz claims? :)
 

scannall

Golden Member
Jan 1, 2012
1,944
1,638
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All I'm saying is people invent things out of thin air, no ES bench leaks necessary.

PS: on the flip side I welcome the relative silence too, gives us heaps of time to endlessly debate SMT4 and 6xALU for ALL. /s
At some point they will have to go wider. Silicon won't clock any higher. And alternative materials, while possible are a lot more expensive. And just slapping 2 more ALU's on by themselves wouldn't add much throughput. Need to keep all that fed as well, which is even more transistors. When will it happen? I have no idea, my crystal ball is defective.
 

coercitiv

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2014
6,151
11,683
136
Kinda hit one with the 6c/12t with the 1600AF at $85. Not exactly the same, but still crazy!
The 1600 AF does indeed call for a moment of reflection on the past few years. The jump in performance and value in the $100 and $200 price brackets was quite astounding.

[Edit] I wanted to reference the 4C decade in some way, but couldn't find the right words until I stumbled upon this old article: The Intel Core i3-7350K (60W) Review: Almost a Core i7-2600K. This article title is the perfect embodiment of the past era and exactly what Zen helped resetin terms of consumer choice.
 
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