Discussion Zen 5 Speculation (EPYC Turin and Strix Point/Granite Ridge - Ryzen 9000)

[DisEnchantment]

Speculate at will

 

[LightningZ71]

One can wonder if this will be a problem in newer games that might use more than 4 cores. I mean according to AMD X3D get only one V-cache die, as cross CCD latency would be prohibitive, and here we have cross CCX latency that doesn't look too good. Could it be that Hawk Point may do better in some games than Strix Point?

I'm certain that, if you look hard enough, you'll find a game or two that have more than 4 highly pressured, time sensitive threads, that will perform better on Hawk Point. The VAST majority of games tend to have 1-2 performance critical threads and an additional 1-2 threads that are very latency sensitive. Beyond that, it's more about running background tasks or off-screen work on unpacking graphics, etc. As long as the threads are there, it doesn't much matter where they are. Given the improvement on ST performance that Strix has though, there's not going to be much that suffers from running on Strix over Hawk.

 

[KompuKare]

If we forget about other markets for a second, Ian Cutress did a BOM analysis for the 7950X when it released in 2022, estimating total BOM to be around $70. For a $700 MSRP product. I have no idea how a 90% profit margin could be considered "very crappy profitability".

Based on his breakdown, the single CCD chips would be ~$45-50 BOM at the time.

I always suspect companies of hiding stuff. Have some low margins products which won't go down well with the stock market? Hide them with the high margins stuff.

AMD hiding console margins is one (although they do have hide costs so Sony and Microsoft can't compare deals); others include things like that other x86 vendor hiding true server margins recently where they've been offering some crazy discounts; etc.


AMD's Radeon division can make low profits without any of that tricks as their pride precludes going for volume to make up for high fixed costs.

EDIT: phone's autocorrect prefers "dinner" to "some". No idea what "dinner crazy discounts" is supposed to be.

 

[Rheingold]

I still remember buying the 6600K for 230€.

Launch prices are higher now, but the 7600X fell below 230€ about half a year after launch and is available for 195€ right now. Also, the main problem with AM5 at launch weren't the processors, but the ridiculous mainboard prices.

 

[Kaffeekenan]

If we forget about other markets for a second, Ian Cutress did a BOM analysis for the 7950X when it released in 2022, estimating total BOM to be around $70. For a $700 MSRP product. I have no idea how a 90% profit margin could be considered "very crappy profitability".

Based on his breakdown, the single CCD chips would be ~$45-50 BOM at the time.

Please guys, don't act like the materials are the only costs that a company has. As if they don't have to pay thousands of employees. And marketing costs. And electricity. And shipping costs. And so forth and so on.

 

[MS_AT]

I'm certain that, if you look hard enough, you'll find a game or two that have more than 4 highly pressured, time sensitive threads, that will perform better on Hawk Point. The VAST majority of games tend to have 1-2 performance critical threads and an additional 1-2 threads that are very latency sensitive. Beyond that, it's more about running background tasks or off-screen work on unpacking graphics, etc. As long as the threads are there, it doesn't much matter where they are. Given the improvement on ST performance that Strix has though, there's not going to be much that suffers from running on Strix over Hawk.

Do you maybe have an idea where to find such breakdown? How well threaded modern games are? And another thing that might bite Strix is Windows scheduler if by chance it will decide to move the time sensitive thread to Zen5c CCX then well... [Of course in ideal world that would not happen, but even 3 years after Alder Lake is on the market it's still not uncommon to find software with issues related to handling the E cores]

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

Please guys, don't act like the materials are the only costs that a company has. As if they don't have to pay thousands of employees. And marketing costs. And electricity. And shipping costs. And so forth and so on.

Back in the day when iPhone had a $200 BOM and retailed for $800 that was considered a handsome margin. Somehow today a $70 BOM with a $700 retail is a company barely scraping by.

 

[Rheingold]

Because no one buys the 12 cores Zen.

It seems like AMD is doubling down on pushing the 12-core SKU this time. The 9900X is seen much more often in the leaks, and in their slides from the AMD Tech Day they are placing the 14900K against the 9900X, not the 9950X.

 

[maddie]

If we forget about other markets for a second, Ian Cutress did a BOM analysis for the 7950X when it released in 2022, estimating total BOM to be around $70. For a $700 MSRP product. I have no idea how a 90% profit margin could be considered "very crappy profitability".

Based on his breakdown, the single CCD chips would be ~$45-50 BOM at the time.

It's an unquestionable position, irrespective of conflicting data points. Not knowing the accounting processes at AMD, to say division ? is losing money is at best, unwise. Where they assign costs is crucial.

 

[kekframeX]

Back in the day when iPhone had a $200 BOM and retailed for $800 that was considered a handsome margin. Somehow today a $70 BOM with a $700 retail is a company barely scraping by.

Did you forget that the sales of Apple devices led to other strategic gains such as OS and ecosystem market share and buy in, which resulted in a closed ecosystem where Apple could take 30% from most software sales? A quarter of Apple's total revenue comes from software and services.

Imagine if Microsoft, Asus, and AMD merged and took $0.30 from you for every dollar you spent on your PC. The OS also runs exclusively on the hardware, vice versa which locks users to the brand. Would you like that?

 

[yottabit]

Back in the day when iPhone had a $200 BOM and retailed for $800 that was considered a handsome margin. Somehow today a $70 BOM with a $700 retail is a company barely scraping by.

With a CPU you’re paying almost entirely for the R&D, at least I would think

Plus retailer margins, packaging, shipping etc.. not sure if that was worked into the BOM

 

[Hail The Brain Slug]

With a CPU you’re paying almost entirely for the R&D, at least I would think

Plus retailer margins, packaging, shipping etc.. not sure if that was worked into the BOM

The R&D is (or at least could be) amortized across all product lines using the CCD they designed for that gen. IIRC BOM typically does not contain those costs, but specifically the $70 figure was 2xCCD + 1xIOD + packaging (substrate)

 

[Abwx]

The R&D is (or at least could be) amortized across all product lines using the CCD they designed for that gen. IIRC BOM typically does not contain those costs, but specifically the $70 figure was 2xCCD + 1xIOD + packaging (substrate)

RD, assembly and so on cost much more than the BOM, and that s in all tech oriented industries, FI a VW car like a Golf has a BOM that is barely 3k $ while it s sold 10x this amount, that s comparable to a CPU.

Think that for 4bn/year manpower cost they would need 80$/CPU out of 50M/year just to pay for this expense, if a 5600G MRSP is 110-120€ it s because the RD cost is already amortized, hence this very low price, not so much for newly released products.

 

[desrever]

I have no idea how a 90% profit margin could be considered "very crappy profitability".

Then you don't know how semiconductor margins work. Most top end parts for CPU/GPU have very high margins and even mid range parts will have decent margins but the cost of R&D is so high, companies need these margins to continue designing and making new chips. AMD is only somewhat profitable pricing their products at their current prices and doesn't have the same margins as Nvidia or Intel from 10 years ago.

How much do you think each H100 costs nvidia to make verse how much they sell for?

 

[Saylick]

Guys, there's gross margins and then there's operating margins...

Revenue - COGS = Gross Margins. COGS = cost of goods sold, aka raw production costs.

But then you have operating expenses, which includes R&D, rent, electricity, salaries, and all the other overhead items, basically.

From AMD's last earnings statement, Gross Margins were 47% and Operating Margins were 1% (both are averaged across all segments). Note: This includes an expense item from acquiring Xilinx which dilutes the EPS.

If you want it broken down by segment, you'll have to look more closely at the tables. Make of this what you will.

 

[gdansk]

Zen 5 Granite Ridge is cheaper in both materials and cost of development than its competition.
It recycles already developed components, uses a mature node and is the same die size as its predecessor.

 

[Hitman928]

Guys, there's gross margins and then there's operating margins...

Revenue - COGS = Gross Margins. COGS = cost of goods sold, aka raw production costs.

But then you have operating expenses, which includes R&D, rent, electricity, salaries, and all the other overhead items, basically.

From AMD's last earnings statement, Gross Margins were 47% and Operating Margins were 1% (both are averaged across all segments). Note: This includes an expense item from acquiring Xilinx which dilutes the EPS.

If you want it broken down by segment, you'll have to look more closely at the tables. Make of this what you will.
View attachment 103592

AMD is still writing off huge amounts of money from their Xilinx and other acquisitions over the last few years to save on taxes. Their non-GAAP results are a much better reflection of how they are actually doing overall. Their operating income goes form $36M to $1.1B for the latest quarter with an operating margin of 21%, the vast majority of the difference being in depreciation/amortization accounting.

 

[Saylick]

AMD is still writing off huge amounts of money from their Xilinx and other acquisitions over the last few years to save on taxes. Their non-GAAP results are a much better reflection of how they are actually doing overall. Their operating income goes form $36M to $1.1B for the latest quarter with an operating margin of 21%, the vast majority of the difference being in depreciation/amortization accounting.

View attachment 103595

Correct, hence my one note regarding Xilinx.

 

[LightningZ71]

Do you maybe have an idea where to find such breakdown? How well threaded modern games are? And another thing that might bite Strix is Windows scheduler if by chance it will decide to move the time sensitive thread to Zen5c CCX then well... [Of course in ideal world that would not happen, but even 3 years after Alder Lake is on the market it's still not uncommon to find software with issues related to handling the E cores]

I don't know of any really good technical writeups on it, but, from living on the forums for years and looking at the task manager and programming tools monitoring the modern games I play, it's quite evident that it's rarely more than 2 physical cores that are pushed to near 100% usage in any modern game. Single threaded performance is VERY important for the first two cores, and still somewhat important in the next few. After that, they spend more of their time doing little more than waiting for system events or decompressing data.

Here's a forum post by someone that did some game comparisons by examining their thread activity...

Info - Examining Per Thread CPU usage in games

Alternative Title: Why single core performance still matters A question popped up in my head recently: does Windows have some tool or utility to monitor CPU time of an applications threads? The primary reason to ask this question and find out if there's a way to see a trend in games on their...

forums.tomshardware.com

Examining per-thread CPU usage in games...

 

[Joe NYC]

For the second bullet, would that mean Zen6 release in like 12-18 months from now, so mid-life kicker is not needed?

I cam across this article saying 2025 release for Zen 6, which would be within 18 months of Zen 5 release. They say their source is AMD, but I have not seen any direct quotes from AMD about that.

AMD Zen 6 is "on track" for 2025 release - report claims - OC3D

Rumour has it that AMD Zen 6 CPUs are on track to release in 2025, giving the Ryzen 9000 series a shorter than expected shelf life.

overclock3d.net

 

[Makaveli]

I cam across this article saying 2025 release for Zen 6, which would be within 18 months of Zen 5 release. They say their source is AMD, but I have not seen any direct quotes from AMD about that.

AMD Zen 6 is "on track" for 2025 release - report claims - OC3D

Rumour has it that AMD Zen 6 CPUs are on track to release in 2025, giving the Ryzen 9000 series a shorter than expected shelf life.

overclock3d.net

hmm I'm expecting Vanilla Zen 5 and X3D this year and maybe a refresh on 3nm in 2025 but not Zen 6 in 2025....

 

[jdubs03]

It would be some turnaround if they could pull that off. A paper launch in late 2025 seems more realistic.

 

[RnR_au]

I cam across this article saying 2025 release for Zen 6, which would be within 18 months of Zen 5 release. They say their source is AMD, but I have not seen any direct quotes from AMD about that.

AMD Zen 6 is "on track" for 2025 release - report claims - OC3D

Rumour has it that AMD Zen 6 CPUs are on track to release in 2025, giving the Ryzen 9000 series a shorter than expected shelf life.

overclock3d.net

Not quite. They say that according to TechRadar AMD says that Zen 6 is on target for 2025.

From the linked TechRadar article;

AMD didn’t have anything of note to say at the LA event about its next-generation Zen 6 processors first mentioned at Computex 2024. We still don’t know much about the Zen 6 and Zen 6c architectures at the moment, only that they are still on track for a release in 2025.

A release could be anything... serverside included. And the way TechRadar mentions the 2025 date it sounds like it wasn't even part of AMD's Computex talking points, but referring to perhaps an earlier rumour.

"still on track for a release in 2025" - I'm scratching my head on this one... I can't remember any rumours to such an effect. MLID perhaps? An extrapolation of the Nirvana/Morpheus roadmap? Nirvana was 2023 - Morpheus 2024... so add a year to both... and hey you get a Zen 6 release in 2025. Centipede in action?

 

[mostwanted002]

Zen6 in 2025 makes no sense.
AMD announced extended support for AM5 platform to 2027.
They can easily launch Zen6 in 2026 and launch refreshes/X3D in 2027 to support that claim. Why would they as a company want to hurry things up?

 

[Makaveli]

Zen6 in 2025 makes no sense.
AMD announced extended support for AM5 platform to 2027.
They can easily launch Zen6 in 2026 and launch refreshes/X3D in 2027 to support that claim. Why would they as a company want to hurry things up?

I agree I think Zen 6 will tie into the release of DDR6.

However it doesn't mean we may not see some kinda of castrated version of Zen 6 for AM5 but doubting the 2025 release date.

 

[Joe NYC]

hmm I'm expecting Vanilla Zen 5 and X3D this year and maybe a refresh on 3nm in 2025 but not Zen 6 in 2025....

View attachment 103624

Between
a) 3nm Zen 5 refresh in 2025
b)- Zen 6 (3nm) in 2025

My guess is that Zen 6 in 2025 is more likely. Only because probability of 3nm Zen 5 refresh is ~ zero. There would have to be some major breakdown with Zen 6 for AMD to be forced to shrink Zen 5 to 3nm.

But still, the most likely outcome is
c) Zen 6 in 2026