AMD Kaveri official reviews

[Khenglish]

None of you seriously want AMD to close up the CPU shop. Yeah, sure, we'd do so well with Intel being the only CPU maker in town

They don't. What they're saying is that AMD has gotten so bad at CPUs they might as well save the money and focus it all on GPUs instead. People don't test Intel CPUs to see if they beat their competitor, AMD; they test them to see if they beat Intel's previous generation. AMD CPUs are not competition and it wouldn't matter if they stopped making new ones or not.

The only reason why AMD can compete with Intel at all on the low end is because Intel's market share is so large that they can just ignore AMD and release crippled crap like the i3 and milk the market. If AMD was true competition the i3 would not exist. The i3 is an intentionally sandbagged i5 with 1/4 of the cache disabled and stupidly low clocks. The i5 costs no more to make than the i3. Do you really think Intel disables 1/4 of the cache for i3 because of defects? Look at a die shot of how little of the processor die is cache on a quad core:

https://semiaccurate.com/assets/uplo...ellDieShot.png

My rough math puts the cache as 1/8 of the die area. This is an even smaller % on the dual core models for the i3 and i5 since the IGP and system agent are just as large, but the cache and cores take half as much area. What are the odds that a defect is in 1/10th of the processor die? Virtually none since Intel doesn't produce anything at less than 90% yield.

The real reason why the i3 (the only processor AMD can currently match the performance of) exists is so intel can charge more for the i5 and i7. If AMD released something good Intel would suddenly turn every i3 into an i5, the i7 would drop to the i5 price range, and they would develop a new top end product to replace the i7. Since AMD puts zero pressure on intel though we've has no significant improvement since sandy bridge.

Intel is not competing with AMD. Intel is competing with itself.

[ilkkahy]

amd cant design their way out of a paper bag. i second the motion that amd close up cpu shop, at this point its just embarrassing. Steamroller was supposed to be bulldozer done right? i dont like this new amd, we dont even know what comes after XV? so now we must wait to see if xv is amds ace in the hole? yeah that's not going to happen.

You are living in the past man. You might not like this new amd but after these console deals now they are doing better than long time. This is said by Rory Read in 2012: "We have to have our eyes forward, we have to be a predator, Read says. You ve got to scan the savanna, looking for opportunities. With Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, Nvidia and Texas Instruments in the market, the last thing AMD needs to do is fixate on Intel.". Clearly amd has changed their strategy and now its finally starting to pay off. Intel is in its own class what they are doing so it would be very stupid to try beat them in their own game. They would go bankrupt.

[PatRaceTin]

New internet cafe cpu !!!!

[Andrew LB]

7850k with 290x dual graphics thanks to mantle! This could be _very_ interesting. Due to less of a CPU bottleneck (thanks to mantle as well) and dual graphics, this might actually be faster than Intel highend + 290x. Due to the big speed differences of the two GPUs, I'm thinking this isn't using AFR. Check it out! What do you guys think?

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj0_6Rb...%3DNj0_6RbCHA4

You can't Xfire 7860k with 290x. only the R7-240 and R7-250 work with that chip.

[Andrew LB]

You are living in the past man. You might not like this new amd but after these console deals now they are doing better than long time. This is said by Rory Read in 2012: "We have to have our eyes forward, we have to be a predator, Read says. You ve got to scan the savanna, looking for opportunities. With Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm, Nvidia and Texas Instruments in the market, the last thing AMD needs to do is fixate on Intel.". Clearly amd has changed their strategy and now its finally starting to pay off. Intel is in its own class what they are doing so it would be very stupid to try beat them in their own game. They would go bankrupt.

Amd isn't making very much on those consoles considering they only make about $15 per chip once they've paid TSMC, licensing, R&D, etc. So basically if Sony has sold 4 million PS4's so far, that's $60 million. Which is nothing in this business.

[kl0012]

HSA Acceleration





Transcode Acceleration




One thing is clear about the AMD Kaveri: when it accelerates, it is capable of ludicrous speed against the competition.




http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages...review,13.html

First screen seems like a fake, because currently Windows (and linux) does not support HSA (no drivers, API, developing tools e.t.c). Second screen is not much informative because Video Encoding acceleration was used for AMD chip only, but not for Intel chips (Quick Sync).

[informal]

First screen seems like a fake, because currently Windows (and linux) does not support HSA (no drivers, API, developing tools e.t.c). Second screen is not much informative because Video Encoding acceleration was used for AMD chip only, but not for Intel chips (Quick Sync).

1st screen is not fake, the website is just clueless so they labeled it as "HSA". LibreOffice uses opencl acceleration on the iGPU and the speedups are real, AMD even used this application in their slide deck presentation for Kaveri launch.

[LordEC911]

You can't Xfire 7860k with 290x. only the R7-240 and R7-250 work with that chip.

While you may not officially be able to crossfire them that doesn't mean you aren't able to offload certain tasks/calculations to the APU.

Amd isn't making very much on those consoles considering they only make about $15 per chip once they've paid TSMC, licensing, R&D, etc. So basically if Sony has sold 4 million PS4's so far, that's $60 million. Which is nothing in this business.

LoL. So you are going to add up all the costs, up front, and then find the profit margin based on that? Good one.
They are making a good chunk of change off their SOCs...

[Sparky]

Amd isn't making very much on those consoles considering they only make about $15 per chip once they've paid TSMC, licensing, R&D, etc. So basically if Sony has sold 4 million PS4's so far, that's $60 million. Which is nothing in this business.

That is still $60 million they didn't have before. Sometimes you need all the little "nothing" pieces to add up for the big number you know. Come on.

[tajoh111]

While you may not officially be able to crossfire them that doesn't mean you aren't able to offload certain tasks/calculations to the APU.


LoL. So you are going to add up all the costs, up front, and then find the profit margin based on that? Good one.
They are making a good chunk of change off their SOCs...

That 15 dollar figure has been thrown around by some analysts.

Actually, its been explicitly said by AMD to be in the mid-teens.

http://www.geek.com/games/each-ps4-s...-much-1577855/

So 15 percent sounds about right. This makes complete sense when you consider that revenue grew and gross margins dropped 4 percent over last quarter.


Below is not a response to lordECC. More so Andrew LB.

None the less AMD making 60-100million off SOC sales depending on how many xbox ones sell is good news. The biggest effect it will have is it will keep them afloat. The desktop and generally PC market is changing for the worse. People are upgrading less and growth has slowed tremendously(shrinking in some segments). Without these consoles sales and the slow down in the market, AMD would continue to lose 10's of millions to hundreds of millions a quarter and it can't afford to do that. They would have to fold as they have too little cash in the bank.

However combined with the huge labor cuts over the last couple years and the sustainable and modest income from consoles revenue, they have turned losing 74 million loss the previous quarter and the 157million loss a year earlier into a modest 48 million dollar income. Makes this type of profit sustainable which consoles could possibly do and AMD has a future which is good for everyone.

It won't help them compete yet and the HSA part is a huge gamble, but one thing I suspect is Intel's process advantage is going to shrink more and more every year. It's getting harder and more expensive to get smaller and smaller and eventually TSMC and heck, even global foundaries might get close to Intel. With Intel's lack of improvements to IPC recently(even with a new architecture0, AMD could get much closer to Intel in a few years. It won't do it with bulldozers based architecture, but it could with its next. Remove the process advantage Intel has and AMD gets closer. This will take time and the consoles deal gives AMD this time.

What it needs is Intel to screw up and Intel to get arrogant and comfortable in its position. And currently Intel is doing this, with the lack of performance improvements of its processors and it cancelling big projects like their Arizona Fab plant, AMD may have a chance to capitalize in the future.

[AbortRetryFail?]

So.
If AMD has a new desktop APU that can cut back 30%+ in watts, and lose little GPU power...

the Haswell refresh is met with a collective yawn ...

another Bay Trail Fail ...

When mobile Kaveri at 15-25w whips the llama's arse ...

How butt-hurt will Intel and nVidia be ??

[stuffme]

Most disappointing releaser for months. Better manufacturing process, lower clocks and idle power draw goes up 10w. What kind of evolution is that? I guess AMD is redefining how to fail in tech industry on all aspects?

[Khenglish]

Most disappointing releaser for months. Better manufacturing process, lower clocks and idle power draw goes up 10w. What kind of evolution is that? I guess AMD is redefining how to fail in tech industry on all aspects?

The process is if anything worse, not better since SOI was dropped. I would vote for worse. The benefit of dropping SOI is it simplifies design and manufacturing complexity. SOI kills off all leakage through the base of the semiconductor. Base leakage is the reason why intel adopted finfet transistors, and they only mostly eliminate this leakage. Without using SOI or tri-gate transistors AMD now has a lot of leakage that intel doesn't.

If kaveri was kept on 32nm SOI I expect that clocks would not have dropped compared to richland. In the future though we may see the benefits of dropping SOI with more complex CPU designs.

[Vassili]

Amd isn't making very much on those consoles considering they only make about $15 per chip once they've paid TSMC, licensing, R&D, etc. So basically if Sony has sold 4 million PS4's so far, that's $60 million. Which is nothing in this business.

Both the PS3 and Xbox360 have sold 80 million each and still counting. Let's just say the PS4 and XboxOne will reach about 60 million each (low expectation), it wil be 120 million * 15 = 1,8 Billion. So that is 1,8 Billion of money, on low expectations, for a company that needs every penny. Plus: Free marketing, big Mantle-API support and shared R&D costs for both the CPU and GPU parts.

If I was a shareholder of AMD, I would applaud the company for this move, both generating money, market share and a very good strategic prospect.

[tajoh111]

Both the PS3 and Xbox360 have sold 80 million each and still counting. Let's just say the PS4 and XboxOne will reach about 60 million each (low expectation), it wil be 120 million * 15 = 1,8 Billion. So that is 1,8 Billion of money, on low expectations, for a company that needs every penny. Plus: Free marketing, big Mantle-API support and shared R&D costs for both the CPU and GPU parts.

If I was a shareholder of AMD, I would applaud the company for this move, both generating money, market share and a very good strategic prospect.

It depends how the contract is written. If it's based on a percentage of the cost off the soc. It will continue to shrink more and more in the future. Margins for products are typically the best when they are at the beginning stages of its selling point(and wafer yields can't be in the toilette) . The ps4 apu are rumored to cost 100 dollars. You think if components prices stayed the same, price drops would be possible? Eventually these chips are going to drop more and more in price and Sony won't pay 100 anymore. Eventually amd is going to make less and less off every chip.

To give you an idea of how much these things drop the original bom cost of the rsx graphic chip in the ps3 was 129 dollars in 2006. Three years later, the bom price in 2009 is 46 dollars. No doubts its even less now, I doubt amd is going to continue to be able to extract 15 dollars a chip for the lifetime of the console.

I agree 120 million is conservative. I think between the PS4 and xbox one, we are going to see somewhere around 200 million consoles. 180 million consoles. 100-120 million for the winner of the console wars, and 60-80 million for the loser. The Wii U looks like a write off at this point and I suspect sales somewhere around 25-35 million.

[FlanK3r]

Few results

1.455V for CPU, 1.3V for iGPU = 4544 MHz and 104x MHz iGPU, 30min stress test


Cinebenchr R11.5


3D Mark11, seems limitation of APUNB and memory. I think, this clocks of iGPU needs more juice from memory. 2666 MHz at least. But I have not good memory yet. Died...

[haylui]

Amd isn't making very much on those consoles considering they only make about $15 per chip once they've paid TSMC, licensing, R&D, etc. So basically if Sony has sold 4 million PS4's so far, that's $60 million. Which is nothing in this business.

$60 million is nothing...then I guess all the chip business is talking about trillion huh?

[LordEC911]

That 15 dollar figure has been thrown around by some analysts.

Actually, its been explicitly said by AMD to be in the mid-teens.

http://www.geek.com/games/each-ps4-s...-much-1577855/

So 15 percent sounds about right. This makes complete sense when you consider that revenue grew and gross margins dropped 4 percent over last quarter.

I hadn't seen that transcript so thank you.
I had seen some articles that were using a 3rd party design company that was estimating the costs and all the articles were using slightly different numbers for some reason.

Still, as they said on that call there is no reason why they cannot improve margins over time. Margins are typically worst at the beginning of production due to economies of scale.

[tajoh111]

I hadn't seen that transcript so thank you.
I had seen some articles that were using a 3rd party design company that was estimating the costs and all the articles were using slightly different numbers for some reason.

Still, as they said on that call there is no reason why they cannot improve margins over time. Margins are typically worst at the beginning of production due to economies of scale.

Except AMD doesn't manufacturer the chip's anymore. I think the only way margins improve is through yields and yields alone when you don't own the means of production. But I could see both Sony and MS putting stipulations in their contract that prevent huge margins. I.e as chips get cheaper to make, the price lowers for Sony and MS. I could see perhaps the percentage of gross margins improving over time a bit, but the actual amounts made per chip becoming worse as Sony/MS pay less. E.g The chip gets sold for 40 dollars after 3 years(using the ps3 example) and now AMD makes 8 dollars a chip. 20% margins but only 8 dollars profit. Higher initial pricing allows more room for money to be made. I think the golden time for AMD is going to be when these chips can be sold at 100 dollars.

AMD needed this console deal badly and its show's in the initial pricing of the chip. The PS3 RSX when it came out was 240mm2 and manufactured on a much cheaper process and it still cost sony $129 dollars. The die size of the PS4 which is a much more complex chip and more expensive to make(transistors become cheaper over time, not wafers which get more expensive) is 348mm2. Yet Sony is only paying 100 dollars.

I bet with the bad economy(they weren't willing to take a big loss) and knowing AMD was in dire straits to sell something, the console players wrung the contract as thin as they could(which could be seen in the margins and initial pricing of these chips). MS and Sony still could have gone another way with Intel and Nvidia at higher cost. It would have stung and could raise the price of consoles another 100 dollars(which they could absorb or pass onto the customers) but they could do it. Without the console deal, AMD would of had another quarter where they lost 10-100's of millions and this would continue with the declining PC market, sooner or later AMD would have been bust without this deal.

The console deal is a durable lifeline for AMD but it isn't complete salvation. AMD will need to improve profitability in its other markets and I am not sure that the console revenue will generate enough extra revenue to generate the money needed for AMD's R and D efforts.

It kind of reminds me of Intel's payments towards Nvidia. With the heavy R and D cost of the tegra line, Nvidia would of had a significantly more difficult time funding it(and their cash reserves would suffer) if it wasn't for Intel's 1.5 billion dollars being paid to them over 6 years. They would of had more losses in some of their quarters and stock holders would be more anxious about loses resulting from Tegra and would probably get them to pull out. What it did for Nvidia is give them a buffer so they didn't have to go into their cash reserves, they don't have quarters with losses and it allows them to take risks.

AMD on the other hand had poor finances in the first place. Most of its outlets of income(particularly it's primary one, CPU's) was shrinking fast. What I see the console revenue doing in AMD case is it patches up the bleeding to the point where they can start working on projects rather than delaying them and stop the downsizing of the company which it continues to do to cut costs. Additionally, the console deal provides marketshare and a software/hardware platform for them.

[vario]

While im in no way defending AMD`s pathethic CPU decisions over past few years.You cant talk about AMD`s WINS with consoles like some kind of a FAIL.
Its hilarious as to what ends people go to beat on AMD.Yea AMD prolly doesnt make huge profits with PS4, but their are making some, and their making money also on X One and nintendo`s.

[Hornet331]

$60 million is nothing...then I guess all the chip business is talking about trillion huh?

essentially, yes.

[LordEC911]

*snip*

That is all speculation at this point.
You really think AMD would back themselves into a corner with this contract?

AMD didn't need to throw them a bone, they had the upperhand with the console-makers. AMD could make out like bandits as the associated costs come down.

[Dimitriman]

While im in no way defending AMD`s pathethic CPU decisions over past few years.You cant talk about AMD`s WINS with consoles like some kind of a FAIL.
Its hilarious as to what ends people go to beat on AMD.Yea AMD prolly doesnt make huge profits with PS4, but their are making some, and their making money also on X One and nintendo`s.

Thank you!

[tajoh111]

That is all speculation at this point.
You really think AMD would back themselves into a corner with this contract?

AMD didn't need to throw them a bone, they had the upperhand with the console-makers. AMD could make out like bandits as the associated costs come down.

AMD needed the console contract for survival, without it AMD would have bit the dust. It wouldn't be the first time AMD settled for too cheap. The instance that comes to mind is AMD's Intel settlement. 1.25 billion was a bargain. Particularly when you compare it to what Nvidia got. In both these instances, AMD settled even though it could have gotten more because they needed the money.

The console makers knew this and it's what allowed them to extract such low pricing on the console chip before hand. The 100 dollar price is a bargain compared to how much console makers had to pay before. The xenos chip was priced at 141 dollars, the rsx was priced at 129 dollars. The IBM chip cost 109 dollars and the cell processor cost 90 dollars. They are now paying 100 dollars for both. Its a big reason why the console makers were able to more or less break even at the get go which they could never do before. They cut the margins out from AMD and Intel/IBM and Nvidia didn't want to work with such low margins. This isn't speculation.

It's utterly optimistic to think they could make out like bandits from the console deal(which is speculation). Everyone knows its a low margin deal and the chips are going to sell for less and less over time similarly to existing consoles. AMD already had the console design wins of the xbox 360 and wii last generation, it didn't help them make out like bandits then. The wii U looks like an utter failure with its recent 2.8 million yearly sales, so an AMD chip could end up with just as many consoles as last generation.

However what the console deal does is give them a hardware base, particularly for gaming that allows optimizations in their architecture to translate into better performance for their products. This is one of the reasons AMD took the deal. Finances was part of it, but influence on software is another. Its a smart gamble, but a hand they had to play no matter what to survive.

[[XC] Lead Head]

Where are you getting these costs from. I find it HIGHLY unlikely the PS4/XBone chip costs anywhere near $100, especially when you consider that retailer markup is typically 50-100% (or more) on electronics.