I have watched the AMD presentation of RyZen a few days ago.
The Top model will be a 3.4 GHZ 8 core 16 thread CPU.
Looks promising.

https://youtu.be/4DEfj2MRLtA

. . Hi Mike,

. . The presentation clearly pits the Ryzen against the i7-6900K in performance. But I have to wonder why they put it up against an overclocked i7-6700K in one of the game demos. Was that because it fell behind the 6900K in that demo or is it a hint they intend to compete against the 6700K on price?

Stephen

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Are they really at such a disadvantage compared to Intel CPU's?

Yes - some AMD processors nominally have n cores, but only n/2 floating point units, so (for SETI purposes) they cannot really process more than n/2 WUs efficiently. I tried an 8 core (FX) cpu on a test machine and found that it had real problems running > 4 WUs.

. . Hi CA,

. . To put that into perspective though, an basic 8core i7 is actually a 4 core processor with 4 hyperthreaded cores and so has only 4 maths units too. The difference is the AMD cores are not hyperthreaded, they just scrimped on maths units. But the Intel does have the edge.

Stephen

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Take a look here.
Excerpt:

♦  The 8 core, 16 thread RYZEN CPU has a TDP of 95 watts, 45 watts less than its direct Intel competitor.
♦  The 8 core 16 thread RYZEN CPU competes with Intel’s fastest 8 core 16 thread offering, the $1199 Broadwell-E. i7 6900K, in terms of features and performance and exceeds it in power efficiency.

Many times in the past similar comparisons have been done, and not borne fruit on general release production hardware. Given the lack of hype over the current release, i'm very hopeful that this time they will be true comparisons.
But i'll wait to see what publicly purchasable hardware does before I get my hopes up too much.

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Grant
Darwin NT

I read an article last year about AMD selling 75% of one of the Global Foundries plants to someone else. I agree that AMD probably doesn't on-paper own any fabs, but they certainly own the production rights/capacity of a few. I believe that sale in late '14 or early '15 is what gave them the capital to be able to float in the meantime until Zen can launch and start paying for itself.

And yes, I did edit my post minutes after posting and corrected myself about the amount of debt they were in. I don't know where I got the $19bn figure from, and it is entirely possible it was a bit of fact blurring by conflating 2019 with $19bn.

And yes, power consumption is factored-in with the decision to purchase large amounts of units for a mass production of servers. At the moment, it looks like the Zen architecture is ahead in both power consumption and heat output, even if it is a few 100 MHz slower.



All that being said, I still think AMD is in a good position here. They're not going to blow Intel out of the water with this, but it appears that it is going to be an actual competitive product. The lack of hype seems promising this time around, because it's like they're not trying to us PR to cover-up for an inferior product.....unlike the Bulldozer lineup. They hyped Bulldozer for two years and how it was going to stomp all over Intel, and then it spectacularly didn't even come close.

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

Take a look here.
Excerpt:

♦  The 8 core, 16 thread RYZEN CPU has a TDP of 95 watts, 45 watts less than its direct Intel competitor.
♦  The 8 core 16 thread RYZEN CPU competes with Intel’s fastest 8 core 16 thread offering, the $1199 Broadwell-E. i7 6900K, in terms of features and performance and exceeds it in power efficiency.

Many times in the past similar comparisons have been done, and not borne fruit on general release production hardware. Given the lack of hype over the current release, i'm very hopeful that this time they will be true comparisons.
But i'll wait to see what publicly purchasable hardware does before I get my hopes up too much.

More important TDP != power consumption it is Thermal Design Power, or how much heat the cooling system is expected to handle.
Depending on the designed thermal limits the TDP for a product can be adjusted up or down. Often the same product is marketed under multiple TDPs for different scenarios.

AMD has a long history of making claims and not actually delivering. So we will not really know the facts until reviewers get a chance look it over.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

The lack of hype seems promising this time around, because it's like they're not trying to us PR to cover-up for an inferior product.....unlike the Bulldozer lineup. They hyped Bulldozer for two years and how it was going to stomp all over Intel, and then it spectacularly didn't even come close.

That's pretty much my take on things at this time.
No need for marketing BS when the product can speak for itself.

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Grant
Darwin NT