AMD Starts Linux Enablement On Next-Gen "Zen" Architecture

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Starts Linux Enablement On Next-Gen "Zen" Architecture

While we're still waiting for AMD to release their new GPU kernel driver for supporting the existing R9 285 "Tonga" graphics card and their next-gen graphics cards coming out later this year, on the CPU side the AMD Linux developers have already started shipping patches to support their next-gen CPU architecture not expected for release until 2016~2017. Tux, meet the AMD Zen architecture...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-Zen-CPU-Znver1

[eydee]

Let's hope AMD catches up and there will be competition again.

[rabcor]

Let's hope AMD catches up and there will be competition again.

If they can't catch up to Pascal, Nvidia's gonna leave them in the dust. I'm hoping AMD surpasses Nvidia because believe me; I want to jump ship to team red, but AMD is always lagging too far behind the competition (on both the GPU and CPU side of things) for me to want their hardware over Intel's and Nvidia's. (Not to mentain how all AMD GPUs i've ever had turned out faulty, whereas not a single Nvidia GPU I've ever had has been faulty; and the AMD Phenom really felt like a step back from the Intel Core 2 I had before it, even if it had much better specs on paper...)

[r1348]

If Zen can't catch up to Pascal, Nvidia's gonna leave them in the dust. I'm hoping AMD surpasses Nvidia because believe me; I want to jump ship to team red, but AMD is always lagging too far behind the competition (on both the GPU and CPU side of things) for me to want their hardware over Intel's and Nvidia's.

Zen is a CPU architecture, Pascal is a GPU architecture. Apples and oranges?

[chris200x9]

If Zen can't catch up to Pascal, Nvidia's gonna leave them in the dust. I'm hoping AMD surpasses Nvidia because believe me; I want to jump ship to team red, but AMD is always lagging too far behind the competition (on both the GPU and CPU side of things) for me to want their hardware over Intel's and Nvidia's. (Not to mentain how all AMD GPUs i've ever had turned out faulty, whereas not a single Nvidia GPU I've ever had has been faulty.)

Uh Zen is a CPU arch and Pascal is GPU arch.

[schmidtbag]

Let's hope AMD catches up and there will be competition again.

I'm pretty sure they won't screw up again. Bulldozer wasn't a bad architecture by any means, but it wasn't ideal for x86 software and though it is arguably very fast and cheap to manufacture, it wasn't very efficient.

Since AMD seems to intend to include ARM, I'm a little wary about how power efficient this new architecture will be. But considering how long they're taking, I'm guessing they're not going to release it until the average benchmark puts it in competition with intel.

[rabcor]

Yeah yeah I made a mistake, I edited it out. In the GPU department, they need to catch up to pascal by 2016, in the CPU apartment they're competing with Skylake, I guess Zen is promising for that, ground up redesign of the architecture is a really big step too; they might have a fighting chance, but Intel is still using 3D Transistors and AMD still isn't.

[schmidtbag]

Yeah yeah I made a mistake, I edited it out. In the GPU department, they need to catch up to pascal by 2016, in the CPU apartment they're competing with Skylake, I guess Zen is promising for that, ground up redesign of the architecture is a really big step too; they might have a fighting chance, but Intel is still using 3D Transistors and AMD still isn't.

3D transistors are expensive and have not proven to be anywhere near as good as Intel claimed they would be. Almost no other company bothered to use them, including ones with very sufficient funding, simply because the results aren't good enough. Intel has basically unlimited funding and creates their own fabrication facilities so it wasn't a problem for them.

[MoonMoon]

in the CPU apartment they're competing with Skylake,

Since Zen is aimed at 2016 or even 2017 they won't compete with Skylake, but Skylake +1 or even Skylake +2. I wish them good luck, but if they can't come up with something that can compete with Intel's highend CPUs my AMDs will be replaced by Intels when upgrade time is coming.

[dev547]

This patch reveals the AMD Zen design no longer supports TBM, FMA4, XOP, or LWP ISAs.

So cut-down math blocks and removal of lightweight profiling?
Nice job, AMD. Time to kick all your fans in the balls.