Zen 2 APUs/"Renoir" discussion thread

[Insert_Nickname]

Hm, probably only 1WGP/2CU RDNA2 iGPU for Mendocino APU.

No public access to that tweet. If that's the case I'm expecting the same iGPU block to be used on the Raphael IOD as well.

Seems a bit stringy, but OK for a non-gaming focused device. So long as the full media engine is there it is fine for an Atom competitor.

I does seem a likely reuse of Raphaels IGP. Or perhaps the other way round. Same process after all.

Because there's a bunch of stuff they decided not to scale down. Display and media engines, that sort of thing.

IO doesn't scale well? It is still a SOC.

Probably can't scale. I/O, display engine, media engine and such will be the same size whether you have 128 or 512 shader processors. You could see it back with Caicos. It was barely larger then Cedar despite having twice the shaders onboard. (59 vs 67mm2 80 vs 160SP)

 

[maddie]

Seems a bit stringy, but OK for a non-gaming focused device. So long as the full media engine is there it is fine for an Atom competitor.

I does seem a likely reuse of Raphaels IGP. Or perhaps the other way round. Same process after all.




Probably can't scale. I/O, display engine, media engine and such will be the same size whether you have 128 or 512 shader processors. You could see it back with Caicos. It was barely larger then Cedar despite having twice the shaders onboard. (59 vs 67mm2 80 vs 160SP)

Always use the fixed overhead analogy for non-tech people. Works rather well.

 

[jpiniero]

It also depends of what we understand for "single/dual channel" it would be better to talk of how many bits instead. With 2 CUs it is likely to be 64 bits "dual channel". Also, it may be 8GB/32bit. 16GB/64 bits.

This looks like AMD answer to ADL-N

Sounds like the package is 64-bit.

 

[mikk]

Hm, probably only 1WGP/2CU RDNA2 iGPU for Mendocino APU.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1530912675043352578

RDNA2 is not the big breakthrough in the iGPU space many people had hoped for. With this low amount of shaders I doubt it can beat even the slowest Tigerlake Celeron when it comes to graphics.

 

[VirtualLarry]

RDNA2 is not the big breakthrough in the iGPU space many people had hoped for. With this low amount of shaders I doubt it can beat even the slowest Tigerlake Celeron when it comes to graphics.

This is not their performance / gaming APU product.

Any IGP at all, is welcome on Zen4 CPUs, for ordinary desktop tasks. It will make it much easier for system integrators to sell Zen4 for business, if they don't have to include a dGPU.

 

[dr1337]

With this low amount of shaders I doubt it can beat even the slowest Tigerlake Celeron when it comes to graphics.

Still a lot faster in graphics than my 5800x3d.

Though it would be really really cool to see Anandtech do a CPU render vs 2cu of rdna2 just to be sure.

 

[uzzi38]

RDNA2 is not the big breakthrough in the iGPU space many people had hoped for. With this low amount of shaders I doubt it can beat even the slowest Tigerlake Celeron when it comes to graphics.

I love how you try and take every opportunity to talk down the entirety of RDNA2, even when it has absolutely nothing to do with what the "issue" here actually is. It makes for a great laugh every time.

 

[mikk]

This is not their performance / gaming APU product.

Any IGP at all, is welcome on Zen4 CPUs, for ordinary desktop tasks. It will make it much easier for system integrators to sell Zen4 for business, if they don't have to include a dGPU.

Even if it isn't their performance APU it doesn't mean they should sell the slowest possible crap. There is no excuse when even the cheapest Celeron Tigerlake have a faster graphics with 3x the amount of shaders. After all the hype from you this is what we get from RDNA2, no it's not the big breakthrough for low power devices you expected from this architecture.

 

[uzzi38]

Even if it isn't their performance APU it doesn't mean they should sell the slowest possible crap. There is no excuse when even the cheapest Celeron Tigerlake have a faster graphics with 3x the amount of shaders. After all the hype from you this is what we get from RDNA2, no it's not the big breakthrough for low power devices you expected from this architecture.

Imagine unironically thinking that gaming performance matters for this portion of the market.

You know what matters here? That a system is responsive for day to day tasks, and has excellent battery life. Having slightly less rubbish (but still rubbish) graphics capabilities is frankly meaningless.

 

[jpiniero]

Even if it isn't their performance APU it doesn't mean they should sell the slowest possible crap. There is no excuse when even the cheapest Celeron Tigerlake have a faster graphics with 3x the amount of shaders. After all the hype from you this is what we get from RDNA2, no it's not the big breakthrough for low power devices you expected from this architecture.

Core Celeron is so rare that it's not worth discussing. Even the Core Pentium is extremely hard to find. So the competitor is really the Atoms and the i3 115G4. If it ends up being fanless, mostly the Atoms.

Imagine unironically thinking that gaming performance matters for this portion of the market.

Exactly

 

[moinmoin]

Looks like those who want to focus on Mendocino's (lack of?) gameplayability can do so on AYA's upcoming Neo Air Plus:

AYA Neo Air Plus is a $289 gaming handheld with an AMD Mendocino processor - Liliputing

AYA Neo Air Plus is a $289 gaming handheld with an AMD Mendocino processor

liliputing.com

 

[Panino Manino]

Looks like those who want to focus on Mendocino's (lack of?) gameplayability can do so on AYA's upcoming Neo Air Plus:

AYA Neo Air Plus is a $289 gaming handheld with an AMD Mendocino processor - Liliputing

AYA Neo Air Plus is a $289 gaming handheld with an AMD Mendocino processor

liliputing.com

On a Chromebook people are missing the point, but yes, on a "gaming portable" it makes more sense. But it can also be justified if it's to play older and simpler games in low resolution, and emulation.

 

[moinmoin]

Looks like AYN will release a cheap competitor with Loki Mini ($299) offering the choice between Pentium 8500 and Mendocino. That should make all kinds of comparisons easy.

AYN Loki will be a low-cost handheld Windows gaming PC (from the makers of the AYN Odin Android handheld) - Liliputing

AYN Loki will be a low-cost handheld Windows gaming PC (from the makers of the AYN Odin Android handheld)

liliputing.com

 

[gdansk]

48 EU @ 800MHz on the Pentium 8500 is about 600gflops.
2 CU @ 1600MHz on Mendocino (van Gogh like clocks) would be about 400gflops. That would actually be less GFLOPs than the 4 Zen 2 cores in van Gogh.


But maybe AMD used 2 CU clocked high compared to van Gogh (2.4GHz?) to match their competition. Or maybe they don't care about matching their competition.

 

[Asterox]

Well ok, if the slide and information is legit.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1531276699928629250

 

[gdansk]

Like the Zen 2 in the 4700S then?

 

[dark zero]

Something is off.
Only 2 CU?
Also, that Quad Core mentioned has HT?
Some questions that needs to be ansewred soon.

 

[NostaSeronx]

I hope AMD doesn't contra-revenue this thing.

Geode LX -> Bobcat -> Jaguar -> Excavator, the general curve of buyers enthusiasm for such machines pretty much died off. After the abymasl miscalculation of EDU RV2/Dali/Pollock led to majority if not all contracts to move to Jasper Lake or Qualcomm's EDU.

There is Alder Lake-N(B-line Atom) and Meteor Lake-N(A-line Atom) for future Intel, there is ARMv9+SVE2 for future Qualcomm, there is supposed to be a viable RISC-V Laptop Proof of Concept that is to be sold from someone.

AMD still doesn't get low-cost/low-end.

GlobalFoundries for example is about to do thee announcement by end of the year:
12FDX w/ +50% perf over 22FDX.
3DIC Logic-on-Logic, RF-on-Logic, Misc-on-logic, etc.

If you are going to do something new at least be progressive and not regressive. Cut-down Zen2/RDNA2 processors come on...

 

[Zepp]

...After the abymasl miscalculation of EDU RV2/Dali/Pollock led to majority if not all contracts to move to Jasper Lake or Qualcomm's EDU.

can you elaborate on that?

 

[NostaSeronx]

can you elaborate on that?

AMD's Raven2 turned out more expensive than Stoney/Carrizo-L.
Raven2/Dali => ~$70 for full part on FP5
Pollock is a severe harvest => ~$50 for that part on FT5.
Single-channel 1600 MHz DDR4/Very slow iGPU/CPU, etc

At the time of each of those launches, price+shipping => Carrizo-L/Stoney was ~$30 and had the backing of 70+k wafer per month at Dresden.

107 mm2 Carrizo-L <-- High volume Fab1
125 mm2 Stoney <-- High volume Fab1
150 mm2 RV2/DAL/POL <-- Low volume Fab8, AMD capped it to 200,000 processors a month. Where STN/CZL didn't have such caps.

So EDU contracts for CZL/STN were capable of expansion, while RV2/DAL/POL weren't capable of expansion.

Pay more, get less products to offset increased price => Cancelling EDU Windows/Chromebook for all Raven2/Dali/Pollock products. With majority(if not all) of the products going for Intel or Qualcomm instead.

The outright halting of GF28A killed off the EDU contracts, thus ending AMD's venture into low-cost education, till this product. Which I suspect given all the dies at 7nm/6nm might also have capped supply.

 

[LightningZ71]

That's just... bad. I get that it's a minimum cost product, and that the target market is just going for the cheapest thing available, but, with just 2CUs equivalent, it's going to be next to useless for anything at all that requires any sort of video acceleration. At the very lowest levels of education, yes, it's just showing essentially youtube videos and 2D animations, but, these things also target the high school market where kids are seeing graphic design classes (one of my kids just finished a year in one) with various programs that can take advantage of an iGPU. Their low end atom based celerons were painful to use. Even with just half of Van Gogh at reasonable clocks, it would have been... something. I'm just disappointed with how cost reduced this is.

I get it. It's cheap. It didn't have to be THIS bad though.

 

[moinmoin]

Just a reminder that Mendocino is the successor to Pollock, which itself is Raven2/Dali with one memory channel disabled.

So it's going from 2 Zen+ cores and 3 Vega CUs to 4 Zen 2 cores and 2 RDNA2 CUs, both with one memory channel. So it's supposed to be bottom of the barrel stuff. On the CPU side it's still a clear upgrade. On the media side AV1 is supported so fully up to date with any iGPU AMD currently offers. Whether the GPU side is stagnating we'll see once it's out (personally hope somebody does an extensive direct Intel/AMD comparison using AYN's Loki Mini).

 

[VirtualLarry]

At the time of each of those launches, price+shipping => Carrizo-L/Stoney was ~$30 and had the backing of 70+k wafer per month at Dresden.

And Stoney was OUTRIGHT GARBAGE. Ask me how I know. (I owned several, with different "bins" of Stoney. They were ALL garbage, compared to a Zen 2C APU.)

 

[Shivansps]

This has "Kabini" written all over it. The CPU is Zen2, but it is crippled, the memory will be crippled for sure as these systems will probably run 8GB 32bit lpddr5. The iGPU is not only 2CU, it also says "128kb on die cache" so probably it dosent have L2 either.

Ehm, this is better than ADL-N in what way exactly? I get this is probably the Raven2 replacement intended to target ATOMs but come on AMD, you were supposed to destroy them not join them!

 

[LightningZ71]

I suspect that the CPU performance will fall somewhere between quad and octacore Goldmont ADL-N. I just don't know about the GPU side. I don't think it's a step backwards from 3CU Vega at modest clocks. 64 bit LPDDR5 that's in the 5XXX range should give you more performance in every way than the old straight DDR4 single channel implementations of the previous generation. It's just... meh. I'd rather look for Intel i3-1115g4 laptops instead at this point. They move for $275 at retail and can go down to below $250 in bulk for passable systems. The G4 config has non-trivial graphics performance, dual core 6MB L3 Tiger Lake is going to be just as usable as a Zen2 4MB L3 quad in MOST (but certainly not all), and, save for AV1, Intel's media block is probably better. This had better be a staggeringly cheap product...