• AMD had their Computex keynote and as expected destroyed the entire deskop, workstation, and server CPU market.
  
  The only product officially launched (rather than just teased) was Ryzen 3000.  (AnandTech)
  
  Top of the line is the 3900X. 12 cores, 4.6GHz, 64MB cache, 105W, $499.  It easily outperforms not only Intel's 9900K (roughly the same price) but also their 9920X 12 core HEDT chip that sells for $1199.  (Or rather, sold for $1199, because if that price doesn't come down they're not going to be selling many more of them.)
  
  IPC is up by 15%, putting AMD definitively ahead of Intel on a clock-for-clock basis, which hasn't been the case since the Pentium 4 days.  Multi-threaded performance vs. 2017's 1800X is up 100% for the same price and an extra 10W of power.  50% from extra cores, 15% from IPC improvements, and 15% from clockspeed.  Multiply it out.  It works.
  
  Meanwhile the 3800X replaces the 2700X, and the 3700X replaces the 2700.  The 3800X is $399 (vs. $329 for the 2700X) and the 3700X at $329 is $30 more than the 2700.
  
  Rounding out the low end (six cores is now low end) are the $249 3600X and the $199 3600.
  
  All the 6 and 8 core parts have 32MB L3 cache, which is double the previous generation.  And that means that a fully-equipped Epyc 2 CPU will have 256MB of cache.  That's a lot.
  
  Ryzen 3000 will be available July 7.
  
  Notably absent is the 16 core model.  Clearly AMD are waiting for Intel's 10 core CPU to come out so they can nuke it on launch day with something that is both cheaper and 50% faster.
  
  Side note: AMD could clean up in the small server market with the 3900X - Intel only have 6 core parts out so far.  But only ASRock are making server boards for AM4, and without at least Supermicro on board nothing is going to happen.
  
  
• Navi also peeked out from behind the curtain.  (AnandTech)
  
  Also appearing in July, it delivers 25% better performance per clock and 50% better performance per watt than Vega.  And it supports PCIe 4.0.
  
  The Radeon 5700, the initial launch part, was shown beating an RTX 2070 by 10%, which is exactly what AMD needed to do.  Obviously they would have selected a benchmark that shows the card in its best light; on the other hand this is a new architecture and driver optimisations will improve performance over time.
  
  
• The X570 chipset also showed up briefly and appears to have been pared down slightly from 16 PCIe 4.0 lanes to 12.  (AnandTech)
  
  Board makers were not happy with its power consumption, which required active cooling, so AMD split it into consumer and pro parts; the latter will have the full 16 lanes available.
  
  
• Threadripper aten't dead.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Speculation has been swirling after Threadripper was found dead in a pool of its own blood at the bottom of a staircase in a burned-out hotel in a small town in Kamchatka missing from a roadmap slide.  Lisa Su put the speculation to rest:

  I don't think that we ever said Threadripper was not going to continue, it somehow took on a life of its own on the internet. You will see more Threadrippers from us. You will definitely see more Threadrippers from us.

  
  
  
• Arm has also been busy and announced the Cortex A77, codenamed Deimos.  (AnandTech)
  
  This is Arm's first step towards a super-wide design like Apple's self-designed CPUs, increasing the instruction dispatch from 4 instructions per cycle to 6.  It's expected to deliver 20% better IPC than A76, and open the door to further improvements next year.
  
  For comparison, AMD and Intel desktop and server CPUs only dispatch 4 instructions per cycle.
  
  Arm also announced the Mali G77 GPU as a companion to the A77.  (AnandTech)
  
  This offers 30% better performance and 30% better efficiency over last year, and 60% better performance in offloading AI tasks.
  
  
• Qualcomm is letting people actually run benchmarks on their 8cx Arm laptop chip.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It performs almost identically to an Intel i5, with much better battery life.
  
  If your software has been cross-compiled for Arm.  If not, you're toast.
  
  
• Intel announced the i9-9900KS.  (PC Perspective)
  
  A bit confusing, but it's a 9900K with 5GHz all-core boost.  So...  Overclocked.
  
  TDP not specified but probably fictional anyway.
  
  
• DigitalOcean don't have an Australian datacenter (though they are deploying Australian CDN nodes), and Vultr don't have attached storage in their Sydney datacenter so I can't do the ZFS trick.  But home-grown cloud provider Binary Lane (which I still think is a play on DigitalOcean via Neil Gaiman) have configurable storage sizes and let you install custom ISOs.
  
  And they start at A$4 per month which is just ridiculously cheap.  So I'm moving my dev/test servers from Vultr to Binary Lane and my production web servers from Hivelocity to DigitalOcean.
  
  My backup server will stay with Hivelocity because (a) it works and (b) I'm not likely to find a better deal on 48TB of storage any time soon.  (No, I don't use 48TB of storage.  I just happen to have 48TB of storage.)
  
  
• Razer announced the Blade Studio Edition which still lacks the PgUp/PgDn/Home/End keys.  (AnandTech)
  
  
• Acer announced the ConceptD (how the hell do you pronounce that?) 7 mobile workstation.  (AnandTech)
  
  Which is exactly the same laptop as its existing ConceptD 7 laptop except now the graphics card is called "Quadro".
  
  Also, while this one does have the PgUp/PgDn/Home/End keys, the unfortunate colour and industrial design choices make it look like a $199 Chromebook from Malaysia.
  
  
• Corsair announced their Force Series MP600 SSDs highlighting the chief weakness of PCIe 4.0 in that they require a whacking great heatsink.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Expected to ship at the same time as Ryzen 3000, 4.95GB/s read, 4.25GB/s write.

Video of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, May 28 2019 02:47 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, May 28 2019 02:59 AM (Iwkd4)

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