AMD's Zen Livestream Event Is Today, More Zen Code Lines Up For Linux 4.10

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD's Zen Livestream Event Is Today, More Zen Code Lines Up For Linux 4.10

For those interested in the upcoming Zen processors, a quick reminder that later today is AMD's livestream event where they will be giving a "sneak preview" of the upcoming Zen CPU...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-Zen-Event-Today

[Adarion]

I hope they'll present some tech data and also Linux related stuff, not just looks-good-in-a-prospect images and let's-play-style events.
I guess it will be a fine CPU, and I am very much looking forward to it, but then what about negative things like built in digital restriction management? And what about coreboot / libreboot support? What is included that needs drivers? Are any blobs onboard or needed (e.g. like SoC-USB3.x-controllers and the likes)?

And for gaming CPU is one part, but the GPU (and misc.) the other - and I guess they're showing plain Zen (plus Fury, RX4xx, or maybe even a glance at Vega?) and not yet RavenRidge. So I hope there will be more than "just" gaming. (compiling app-office/libreoffice on Gentoo for example )

[chuckula]

I hope they'll present some tech data and also Linux related stuff, not just looks-good-in-a-prospect images and let's-play-style events.

Yeah, prepare to be disappointed. They won't even have anybody from AMD who is actually has the technical qualifications to talk about these chips onstage. It's going to be a lot of marketing fluff with some game demonstrations that are pretty uninteresting from a CPU perspective.

[bridgman]

I hope they'll present some tech data and also Linux related stuff, not just looks-good-in-a-prospect images and let's-play-style events.
I guess it will be a fine CPU, and I am very much looking forward to it, but then what about negative things like built in digital restriction management? And what about coreboot / libreboot support? What is included that needs drivers? Are any blobs onboard or needed (e.g. like SoC-USB3.x-controllers and the likes)?

And for gaming CPU is one part, but the GPU (and misc.) the other - and I guess they're showing plain Zen (plus Fury, RX4xx, or maybe even a glance at Vega?) and not yet RavenRidge. So I hope there will be more than "just" gaming. (compiling app-office/libreoffice on Gentoo for example )

I expect this session will be fairly focused on largest market segments (the ones that insist on DRM rather than the ones that avoid it). On a positive note, though, the Zen core is also targeting the server business where Linux is a much larger piece of the pie. Not sure if that will go as far as covering coreboot today though but I would doubt it.

For chuckula, my recollection is that we are more likely to have the actual designers speaking on the CPU side, and in fact we are getting back to doing more of that on the GPU side as well.

[Las_]

Nice bridgman!

[darkbasic]

Not sure if that will go as far as covering coreboot today though but I would doubt it.

Wait a moment... are you saying that Zen will have coreboot support!?

[Adarion]

Thanks, John. It will be rather late here, so depending on my level of tiredness I'll risk a glance or not (and trust Michael's coverage). Yes, of course having coreboot mentioned in a PR event is probably a dream of mine, but hey, I won't give up hope so soon.

Moreover I'd like to add that no person (even in the Windows-gamer world) would insist on any sort of DRM - that's just something the content industry/mafia likes to force upon users. (most often it's a play protection that keeps you from enjoying your correctly licensed content - I'm long done and fed up with DRM in games, region codes and all that mess)
Quite a bunch of games came without DRM (e.g. also sold on GOG) and afaik sold quite fine.

[juno]

The links for those interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8R7frtLDBk

https://www.twitch.tv/amd

[dibal]

Wait a moment... are you saying that Zen will have coreboot support!?

The last CPUs from AMD had good documentation: http://developer.amd.com/resources/d...uides-manuals/

I'm not a Bios or Coreboot developer, but these docs seems sufficient to implement something like coreboot.

[bridgman]

I'm not aware of any specific plans for coreboot, just saying that I don't expect we would talk about them today unless it's a longer session than I expect.