Jim Keller Leaves AMD, Again

[Adarion]

Well, that doens't have to be bad news. If Zen's design / K12 is finished, well, maybe that guy is just always looking for the next challenge. He's inspiring stuff, bringing the ball into rolling and once it's nicely on speed and track he goes for the next project.
We'll see.

[mao_dze_dun]

I'll keep saying it - the only thing that can save AMD at this point is a powerful APU with acceptable power usage and heat output. If they can make something that can output 1080p at 60fps and at least medium settings, they're going to make a killing at the small factor market, which is all the rage these days.

[peppercats]

Zen architecture has been done for a while, I don't think this will impact it at all. He's probably just burned out. I remember reading they already did some early testing fabs of zen but I can't find the source now.

[GDJacobs]

For me Intels hypertheading is bullshit garbage Technology .... All pro gamers i know deactivate this in BIOS if they have an intel system with that but the irony is the most selled gaming CPUs from intel do not have hyperteathing at all... Only the highend CPUs do have it but gamers do not use them they buy 4 core and overclock them.

The boemia interaktive Arma3 developers wrote aricles about this more fake cores are contra productive because it increase complexity but the benefits for games like arma3 are small and in most cases slower.
Arma3 has Hand optimated multicore support for many cores even arma2 had support for up to 12 real cores.

But they gaming companies and gamers are stupid and Intels Propaganda PR is King so
Er buy 8 core zen cpu and turn of this shit hypertheating .... What a irony

Hyperthreading was useful for the Netburst architecture where without SMT the penalty of a pipeline stall was huge. It is similarly useful for in-order architectures to boost efficiency as in Power6. The utility of SMT in the Core architecture is more debatable.

[xeekei]

He did was he was there to do. Help design Zen. I don't see how this will affect anything.

[Blahblah]

Isn't Zen in the late stages of its development? If so, I doubt this could have that much of an effect on it's final design.

[gamerk2]

For me Intels hypertheading is bullshit garbage Technology .... All pro gamers i know deactivate this in BIOS if they have an intel system with that but the irony is the most selled gaming CPUs from intel do not have hyperteathing at all... Only the highend CPUs do have it but gamers do not use them they buy 4 core and overclock them.

False. Actually, most newer games are starting to show sometimes significant gains with HTT enabled. Frostbite 3 especially is sensitive to HTT.

Secondly, HTT is cheap for Intel to implement; it's only about 5% extra die space for about 20% extra performance. It's actually one of the more effective additions to the CPU as a function of total die area.

[xeekei]

False. Actually, most newer games are starting to show sometimes significant gains with HTT enabled. Frostbite 3 especially is sensitive to HTT.

Secondly, HTT is cheap for Intel to implement; it's only about 5% extra die space for about 20% extra performance. It's actually one of the more effective additions to the CPU as a function of total die area.

Besides, AMD can't afford to be very different from Intel at this point. Software developers are going to design their stuff around how Intel is doing things.

[nightmarex]

To all those who didn't understand what I was trying to say... firstly the titian x being capped, just look at the benches (on this site) much like how AMD's offerings cap out around 50 FPS in those EON games Michael loves to test, so to do Nvidia GPUS (around 110 FPS)... Not one jab about a $1000 video card performing like a $300 one in the Nvidia camp.. You're biased as hell not to notice.

To the guy that doesn't understand that AMD CPU's are amazing... AVX/2 is powerful yeah? How many programs take advantage of it? So all those super powerful Intel CPUS where sites bench AVX2(512) and say Intel processors are 50%+ faster than AMD's based off of that aren't lying it's just not a practical programming paradigm or use case, the same when programming for 3d now MMX SSE it's powerful stuff but highly underutilized, most people don't use it so they're not using the chip to it's fullest potential (when applicable) the same thing with HSA type processors, they're not being used to full potential... So joker who didn't understand... You can laugh but then I laugh at you pretending to be a programmer not knowing that basic stuff... As someone who programmed during the single core era in assembly geeking out all the speed I could, your comment reflects a general ignorance of how using features of a chip (including on board video card ones like the newer intels and AMD apu's) can bring great performance. I did admit that AMD's typical x84/64 speed isn't special (compared to Intel's) but you seem to have glossed over that part whilst jerking off to type something... shall we say ignorant? You laughed like you could design a better chip, show the world your immense awesomeness and go get them tiger!

Next about the turbo vs. disabling cores to make them run faster... Turbo mode doesn't get you to 5ghz+ and sometimes (depending on cooling solutions as well) the only way to achieve that level of speed was disabling cores (heat created and power used), turbo also didn't disable the sister cores sharing the front end slowing things down.... Do you people understand English or just enjoy twisting what I type?

Lastly Like I said about Keller... http://www.kitguru.net/components/cp...er-leaves-amd/
His departure dose not effect Zen. I did however find that the comment about the long term plans being affected rather strange if his departure was in fact planned, unless they meant that they cannot "replace a talent" like him kinda of way.

This post is why I don't revisit most articles, you guys really made me earn my coffee. Next time look up this stuff yourselves. Doing that however would require some comprehension.

[duby229]

False. Actually, most newer games are starting to show sometimes significant gains with HTT enabled. Frostbite 3 especially is sensitive to HTT.

Secondly, HTT is cheap for Intel to implement; it's only about 5% extra die space for about 20% extra performance. It's actually one of the more effective additions to the CPU as a function of total die area.

If you can show one benchmark where it gains I can show at least 4 where it loses performance.