Discussing Zen 4 vs Raptor Lake Segmentation with James Prior - Guest Telegrams

James: in a hypothetical world where Intel brings you in to get their roadmaps back on track, what would you do in your first six months?

James: rumor has it you were at AMD during K12’s development. Jim Keller is on record calling its cancellation a huge mistake. Was K12 something you worked on, and if so do you have any thoughts?

When will 24 and 32 core Ryzen land? Given where AMD’s core density is going (128 core Genoa & Bergamo), it feels like the time may soon be right to raise the bar against Intel.

Hi Tom and James! Lovely to see you two back together in a podcast. My question relates to RDNA3 pricing and the Radeon Technologies Group in general: Why did AMD have such a HUGE gap in capabilities in executing on the CPU front and executing on the GPUs? As far as I know those are two separate divisions, so no employees are hopping in between in terms of resources. When AMD was releasing bangers like Zen+ and Zen 2, RTG was perceived as the second fiddle that was forever going to be starved of money and NVIDIA would remain the only player in the enthusiast graphics board market. Why so? ATI used to be a company that prided itself in easily beating NVIDIA more than 50% of the time when they were competing, but mid 2018 to mid 2019 it seemed like they were a ghost of their former selves. But when AMD came back with RDNA and RDNA2, why didn't they price it in a way that their cards would have been no-brainers to yank as much market share from NVIDIA? With more rumours about RDNA3 pricing, what would your estimate be for AMD to truly make RDNA3 a memorable gen? Thanks for reading and keep on rocking!!

agent2

Hi Tom and James Will Amd ever get SMT4 working? I remember this being mentioned for years and years but it has yet to see the light of day, if it ever does in desktop/laptop markets. I think this could be something vital for Amd to combat Intel in segmenting their product stack instead of using little cores themselves. Say, a hypothetical 2 core / 8 thread Zen whatever chip for $100 (chose that price because Amd has nothing to compete with a 12100f i3 atm). Amd making a chiplet that small would also imply a more desktop specific architecture, since they haven’t made a dual core beside the Athlon 200GE. Maybe they never will do this since they have become a “premium” brand.

Dig Wiggler

Binning Related: How has binning evolved over the years? How long does it take to bin a chip? Did Zen completely change the binning process for AMD? Why didn't AMD use 1st gen Zen to kill off everything lower than 6 core CPUs? (Or alternatively, how feasible would it have been?) It would have been a very interesting situation for Intel to find themselves in. RAM Support: What prevents AMD from increasing the official maximum supported RAM frequency beyond the JEDEC standard spec? (Zen 1 = 2666, Zen+ = 2933, Zen 2 = 3200, Zen 3 = 3200) Do you think AMD will use EXPO to increase their official maximum supported frequency beyond the JEDEC standard(s) in the future? OEMs: What is stopping AMD from requiring EOMs to use 2x DIMMs in every laptop in order to not gimp APU performance? This has been an issue for years. Does the AMD Advantage program solve this? Bonus Question: Is there a chance AMD will change how it defines TDP so that it can be more straight forward and useful? TDP (Watts) = (tCase°C - tAmbient°C)/(HSF θca) (Definitions taken from GamersNexus) tCase°C – maximum integrated heat spreader temperature tAmbient°C - maximum temperature at the HSF (heatsink fan) inlet to achieve rated performance HSF θca (°C/W) - minimum °C per Watt rating of the heatsink to achieve rated performance

Reginald Aryee

If you're a gamer, then the 5800X3D was like getting Zen 4 early, at least in game benchmarks. There's a lot of anticipation for a 7800X3D or similar - it'll probably be like getting Zen 5 early. This line of products seems to have massive mindshare already despite only being several months old. Can Intel compete with this? Should they try?

Chris Rijk

In the space of a few months we have three GPU releases from three different companies and two CPU releases. Availability looks good. Prices are generally trending down. But... why does nobody seem happy despite all this?

Chris Rijk

Hey Tom and James, curious to know your thoughts about Intel's Software Defined silicon and what it might mean for the future of consumer CPU and GPU segmentation. Could this be a way to reduce e-waste, especially if yields improve on leading edge nodes?

Amiablechief

Hello! As we’ve seen features like ray tracing and DLSS add value for GPUs (at least for some) does James expect new features being important for CPUs? Neural engines or the like seem to be missing in this new generation of CPUs.

rafa zaya

What’s your opinion on the recent Ada Lovelace segmentation and the extreme negative reaction to it. Particularly the decision to call both the AD103/104 GPUs as RTX 4080. Could Nvidia have handled this better?

With HEDT and Workstation Threadripper being merged into one effective line up, will there be a new naming scheme to replace Ryzen HEDT or where will HEDT going?

Benjamin Cannon