Question Zen 6 Speculation Thread

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Saylick

Diamond Member
Sep 10, 2012
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Maybe now, when AMD CPU division is cruising on its main quest, maybe Lisa will OK this side quest...
I doubt it. Lisa runs a tight ship with respect to making sure there's a business case for every investment and then to prioritize the products with the highest returns first. Regarding >1-Hi V-cache: they probably did some internal studies and the conclusion was that it offered little benefit relative to the cost. If the returns on investment weren't going to ever pan out, it never makes it out of the conceptual stage. That means no engineering samples, no real products, nada. It never sees the light of day, even as a "side quest".

Based on Adroc's comments, the same can be said for AMD not chasing the ultra high-end for discrete graphics. The type of customer for that bracket of desktop GPUs is not particularly price sensitive (read: not value conscious) and AMD simply doesn't have the branding nor position in the market to justify producing enough volume for such a product.
 
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Joe NYC

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Jun 26, 2021
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Earlier today Grok was repeatedly praising Hitler so I'm not sure if "hallucination" is even the right word for what it spews.

That did not happen.

But apparently, Grok was dropping too many truth bombs. Which is its mission statement, after all.

Hard to reconcile search for truth and serving the most heavily propagandized population that prefers soothing lies to provocative truths.
 
Jul 27, 2020
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Has it been discussed that Intel architectures are referred to by their Intel codenames while the same isn't done for AMD architectures? Everyone keeps saying Zen this and Zen that. Is it just painful to write Granite/Olympic Ridge compared to Raptor/Meteor/Arrow/Panther Lake?

Oh wait. I think I must be confusing architecture names with core names. But still, I don't see Intel threads with names like Raptor Cove/Lion Cove etc.
 
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Joe NYC

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Jun 26, 2021
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I doubt it. Lisa runs a tight ship with respect to making sure there's a business case for every investment and then to prioritize the products with the highest returns first. Regarding >1-Hi V-cache: they probably did some internal studies and the conclusion was that it offered little benefit relative to the cost. If the returns on investment weren't going to ever pan out, it never makes it out of the conceptual stage. That means no engineering samples, no real products, nada. It never sees the light of day, even as a "side quest".

There will be 4 extra years of manufacturing experience 3D Hybrid bond and it will be 4th iteration of CCD design that is works with 3D stacking.

Which means, it was much taller hill to climb in 2022, with Zen 3, than it will be in 2026 with Zen 6.

At the last investor call, Lisa and Jean seemed quite giddy at the ASP increases from Zen 5 - and V-Cache. I think we will see a lot more with Zen 6.

First of all, from monolitic Strix Point -> chiplet Medusa Point -> chiplet Medusa Point + V-Cahce
Then, Medusa Halo with V-Cache

And, I think, also in desktop. I think it is possible that AMD will be competing only with itself, so why not add some extra premium priced SKUs. I think Lisa and Jean like premium pricing.

Here is an example: How many cameras do you really need on a phone? It's not going to stop Apple from adding more, charging more money.

Imagine a hypothetical conversation:
AMD techie: we can make 2-hi V-Cache, and it will add 2% of performance
Lisa: How much will people pay for it?
AMD marketing guy: 10%
@adroc_thurston :


Lisa:

 
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Joe NYC

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Jun 26, 2021
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Based on Adroc's comments, the same can be said for AMD not chasing the ultra high-end for discrete graphics. The type of customer for that bracket of desktop GPUs is not particularly price sensitive (read: not value conscious) and AMD simply doesn't have the branding nor position in the market to justify producing enough volume for such a product.

On GPUs, I agree. NVidia is in driver's seat at this time on technology, branding, market share. The revenue upside is also small.

But the roles are reversed in CPU. AMD is ahead on technology, may be surging ahead in branding, and there is a fortune on the table, as far as client revenue to gain.

AMD has been investing heavily in mobile SoCs, to get at this market from different angles. And it is only going to intensify with Zen 6.

It would be silly for AMD to outmuscle Intel in a smaller (1/2 size) CPU datacenter (approaching 50%), and then leave 2x size market (client) on the table.
 

Saylick

Diamond Member
Sep 10, 2012
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Imagine a hypothetical conversation:
AMD techie: we can make 2-hi V-Cache, and it will add 2% of performance
Lisa: How much will people pay for it?
AMD marketing guy: 10%
This the crux of it. I doubt the benefits of 2-High outweighs the costs, even if there's non-zero demand for it. In other words, the marginal profit to be made from selling two CPUs with 1-High V$ each are higher than selling one CPU with 2-High V$ + another without V$ at all.
 
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Joe NYC

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Jun 26, 2021
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This the crux of it. I doubt the benefits of 2-High outweighs the costs, even if there's non-zero demand for it. In other words, the marginal profit to be made from selling two CPUs with 1-High V$ each are higher than selling one CPU with 2-High V$ + another without V$ at all.

This is an argument from the scarcity POV, from a (assumed) necessity for tradeoff. But if you look at history of selling CPUs, probably 95% of the time, sales of CPUs are limited by demand and only about 5% of time, sales are limited by supply.

But a typical forum poster thinks it is the reverse.

If Lisa made a call to TSMC and said: "We need to double the number of N4P wafers for Zen 5 next quarter)
TSMC likely reply: "2x might be a little tight for next quarter, we can come close, but next quarter, no problem. Let us know if you want to go to 3x quarter after that".

So what is the argument if there is no tradeoff?
 

Saylick

Diamond Member
Sep 10, 2012
3,909
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This is an argument from the scarcity POV, from a (assumed) necessity for tradeoff. But if you look at history of selling CPUs, probably 95% of the time, sales of CPUs are limited by demand and only about 5% of time, sales are limited by supply.

But a typical forum poster thinks it is the reverse.

If Lisa made a call to TSMC and said: "We need to double the number of N4P wafers for Zen 5 next quarter)
TSMC likely reply: "2x might be a little tight for next quarter, we can come close, but next quarter, no problem. Let us know if you want to go to 3x quarter after that".

So what is the argument if there is no tradeoff?
Stacking more V$ dies on top of itself stresses the part of the manufacturing supply chain that is currently the bottleneck: advanced packaging. Wafers themselves aren't the bottleneck. Plus with more stacks, you're dealing with lower overall yields. Do the performance advantages of 2-High outweigh the costs, which include opportunity costs? Likely not, otherwise AMD would've done it.
 

Joe NYC

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Jun 26, 2021
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Stacking more V$ dies on top of itself stresses the part of the manufacturing supply chain that is currently the bottleneck: advanced packaging. Wafers themselves aren't the bottleneck. Plus with more stacks, you're dealing with lower overall yields. Do the performance advantages of 2-High outweigh the costs, which include opportunity costs? Likely not, otherwise AMD would've done it.

Advanced packaging (especially CoWoS) had a big bottleneck in 2024. No one talks about it any more, which means no more bottleneck in mid 2025.

With a year out, mid 2026, AMD can order as much capacity as its heart desires (for 3D stacking).

BTW, from the little dialog, the comparison is not performance delta vs. cost delta (soyjack), it is cost delta vs. ASP delta.
 
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Joe NYC

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Jun 26, 2021
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Nah. They are afraid it will be too popular and they won't be able to fulfill demand. Plus, it could eat into some of their Genoa-X and soon Shimada Peak-X profits.

Oh, no, another tradeoff argument. If I could get a dollar for every forum poster (or YouTuber) repeating this invalid argument, I would be able to afford a couple of shares of AMD by now.
 
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HurleyBird

Platinum Member
Apr 22, 2003
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Who cares.

People at AMD not gonna subject themselves to copious amounts of *redacted torture just to shave a few fabric ns for a bunch of forum dwellers. they have better stuff to do.
case. closed.

Feels like there may be a jedi-IQ-bell-curve thing going on here, with this in the midwit position, and something like "move things closer together and latency goes down" in the dimwit and jedi positions.

Just going off the rough heuristic that latency really, really, often seems to correlate with distance/wire length.

To the extent the dimwit/jedi position ends up correct, it's probably less about the direct impact of moving something further or closer, but the aggregate impact of many changes that are downstream from that. Like, incredibly easy to see an argument going in the opposite direction (eg. that the latency hit will be miniscule) prior to the release of Arrow Lake.
 
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Joe NYC

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Jun 26, 2021
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Not really proof of AMD's paranoia that dual V-cache CCDs will be bad for them. If they considered it good, they would've done it already.

Unlike 7950x3d, which was a fail volume wise, 9950x3d seems to be selling quite well at very healthy prices. So no point in fixing something that's not broken now.

As far as performance, specifically in gaming, it's likely that 2nd layer of V-Cache would improve gaming performance more than V-cache chip under the 2nd CCD. Just my guess...

It would be true even more so in Zen 6, where the gaming threads would be even less likely to spill over to the 2nd CCD, with 12 cores / 24 threads.
 

Schmide

Diamond Member
Mar 7, 2002
5,705
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Good time to watch the Gamers Nexus video with Amit Mehra and Wendell.


Amit tell some good stories on what he has and what he currently designs in the chips. There is one part where he says something to the effect. A lot of pieces can run faster but you basically end up running at the speed the slowest area to keep everything coherrent. His responsibility seems to be the fabric between the L3 cache and the cores.

Take note of his story about the PA-RISC chips he worked on in the 90s and his one chip that would run faster than most other chips.
 

Doug S

Diamond Member
Feb 8, 2020
3,264
5,660
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That did not happen.

But apparently, Grok was dropping too many truth bombs. Which is its mission statement, after all.

Hard to reconcile search for truth and serving the most heavily propagandized population that prefers soothing lies to provocative truths.

You can literally google "grok praising Hitler" and see pages and pages of links to stories about it
 
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