Hardware

Back at Computex 2024, AMD unveiled their highly anticipated Zen 5 CPU microarchitecture during AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su's opening keynote. AMD announced not one but two new client platforms that will utilize the latest Zen 5 cores. This includes AMD's latest AI PC-focused chip family for the laptop market, the Ryzen AI 300 series. In comparison, the Ryzen 9000 series caters to the desktop market, which uses the preexisting AM5 platform.

Built around the new Zen 5 CPU microarchitecture with some fundamental improvements to both graphics and AI performance, the Ryzen AI 300 series, code-named Strix Point, is set to deliver improvements in several areas. The Ryzen AI 300 series looks set to add another footnote in the march towards the AI PC with its mobile SoC featuring a new XDNA 2 NPU, from which AMD promises 50 TOPS of performance. AMD has also upgraded the integrated graphics with the RDNA 3.5, which is designed to replace the last generation of RDNA 3 mobile graphics, for better performance in games than we've seen before.

Further to this, during AMD's recent Tech Day last week, AMD disclosed some of the technical details regarding Zen 5, which also covers a number of key elements under the hood on both the Ryzen AI 300 and the Ryzen 9000 series. On paper, the Zen 5 architecture looks quite a big step up compared to Zen 4, with the key component driving Zen 5 forward through higher instructions per cycle than its predecessor, which is something AMD has managed to do consistently from Zen to Zen 2, Zen 3, Zen 4, and now Zen 5.

Zen 5 marks the fifth generation of AMD's winning Zen series CPU microarchitectures that have turned a once written-off company in the processor market back to competitiveness. It seems like just a couple of years have gone by, but AMD Zen is now into its seventh year, and the company has transitioned two desktop sockets, five chipset series, and seven processor lines. The new Zen 5 microarchitecture powers the new AMD Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" processors on the desktop, the all important Ryzen AI 300 series "Strix Point" processors on notebooks, and the 5th Gen EPYC "Turin" server processors. AMD is planning to launch the new server processors a little later this year, but has dedicated Summer 2024 to its client segment—desktops and notebooks.

The new Zen 5 microarchitecture builds on AMD's proven CPU core technology, and doesn't try anything fancy like its generational counterpart from Intel, the Lion Cove P-core used on Arrow Lake. Zen 5 still brings a double-digit percentage IPC gain over the previous generation, and introduces several efficiency improvements over Zen 4 thanks not just to its newer 4 nm process, but also a host of other innovations. AMD was able to increase clock speeds, and lower TDP across the desktop processor lineup, while still achieving good performance gains.

What's Being Done?

13:30 - the systems deployed for both companies with either one of these processors to within one percentage Point are experiencing the same stability issues even disabling ecores has not fully resolved the issue for one of these companies the error rate also seems to be going up over time on the server side

I've found 2 vintage desktops from around the 2000's era. One already had a broken power supply that won't even turn on (and thankfully didn't break anything else). The other desktop had a working ATX PSU, but it just blew out a few days ago. The PSU is an Elitech LC-B450E and I believe it has 4 molex connectors.

Now, I was wondering, would it be possible to repair the PSU (not that I would do that myself because I don't even know how to solder)? If not, would it be possible to get a relatively new one that's compatible?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ervuwSwKu18

Nice example of real reverse engineering at a low level in a ten minute dense summary, including die level comments on structures. Also, why Broadcom sucks in engineering terms (NDA nonsense).

Edit: link got fucked somehow, use this:

https://www.techpowerup.com/323616/intel-isolates-root-cause-of-raptor-lake-stability-issues-to-a-faulty-etvb-microcode-algorithm

This week’s Stratechery Interview is with AMD CEO Lisa Su. Su began her career at Texas Instruments, after earning her PhD in electrical engineering at MIT, where she played a significant role in developing silicon-on-insulator transistor technology. Su then spent 12 years at IBM, where she led the development of copper interconnects for semiconductors, served as technical assistant to CEO Lou Gerstner, and led the team that created the Cell microprocessor used in the PlayStation 3. After a stint as the CTO of Freescale Semiconductor, Su joined AMD in 2012, before ascending to the CEO role in 2014.

Su has led a remarkable run of success for AMD over the last decade. After decades of being an also-ran to Intel, AMD has developed the best x86 chips in the world, and continues to take significant share from Intel in datacenters in particular. AMD has also been a major player in console gaming, in addition to its traditional PC business and graphics chip business. That GPU business is now increasingly at center stage, as AMD takes on Nvidia in the market for datacenter GPUs.

In this interview, conducted a day after Su’s Computex keynote, we talk about Su’s career path, including lessons she learned at her various stops to the top, before discussing why AMD has been able to achieve so much during her tenure. We discuss how the “ChatGPT” moment changed the industry, how AMD has responded, and why Su believes the long-run structure of the industry will ultimately work in the company’s favor.

If you get paywalled (I wasn't for this post, but idk how this site is set up?) TH has recapped a little bit of it here.

I am genuinely curious how this will work and how games will be supported

The so-called AI engine is supposed to help gamers lose less with features like AI Skysight which scans the game's mini map in real time for threats and then points them out to the player.

Seems pretty wild to release $950/$900 (realistically will be over $1000 out of pocket) monitors with DP 1.4.

The silver lining (if it even exists) seems to be that they are at least focused on more local "edge" scenarios for generative "AI".

2.5 KW PSU, that's a crazy power supply.

Not sure why fans needs USB-C, but what do I know?