AMD: Volcanic Islands R1100/1200 (8***/9*** series) Speculation/ Rumour Thread

[fellix]

The IEEE-754 standard already defines a maximum of 128 bits (quad-precision) for binary and decimal values and to this date only few exotic IBM main-frame processor architectures support native QP math. The rest of the IHVs don't bother beyond an optimized macro sequencing routine.
For a massive parallel architecture, like GPU, such thing will be a huge overkill.

I personally wouldn't mind a native 80-bit FP (extended precision) implementation though, mostly because of the spacious mantissa range.

 

[tunafish]

Slow down folks. IF nv is rebadging the 28 nm chips, there is no way in hell AMD is ready to put out 20 nm monsters. Screams fake.

Actually, AMD consistently has several months worth of lead on bringing out chips on new processes. That wouldn't be new at all.

 

[lanek]

Slow down folks. IF nv is rebadging the 28 nm chips, there is no way in hell AMD is ready to put out 20 nm monsters. Screams fake.

Even if i agree, thoses specs look too good for be true ( its not the first time AMD double the amount of SP anyway ( 4870>5870 on VLIW4 ), And if im too really doubtfull about the 20nm rumors, Nvidia is releasing their gpu's this month.

They release the 760TI and 770 only because they think, they can take advantage of the TitanLE ( GTX 780 ). ( without TitanLE, Nvidia would surely not even release thoses 2 cards or not under the 7xx name ( with maybe ~10% gain over the 680 for the 770, and performance around the 670 for the 760TI, if they was just launch thoses 2 cards, peoples will crucify them ).

 

[ninelven]

with maybe ~10% gain over the 680 for the 770, and performance around the 670 for the 760TI, if they was just launch thoses 2 cards, peoples will crucify them

Not if they MSRP for $100 less.

 

[lanek]

Not if they MSRP for $100 less.

Yes, but seriously, thoses cards are out since a year. They should allready cost 100$ less of the initial price. As for my comment, they could too call them GTX 685 and GTX 675 at this point and sold them for 50$ less. What is coming next ? a GTX 760 made of GTX660TI, and a GTX750TI made of GTX 660 ? . Outside the TitanLE thoses card look pointless. ( And again, i wait to see the price of it ).
( I can allready imagine the AIB coming with their initial overclocked 680 and 670 for 60-70$ more )

Ofc, i base this on the rumored spec, and if someone who have not a card from the last generation want to upgrade at this time, i will ofc push him on one of thoses cards. ( 670-680 will become EOL anyway and be replaced by thoses 2 cards )

 

[moozoo]

There must be a lot of HPC scientific applications that rely on the x86's 80 bit precision and hence still require huge CPU core counts. Adding fp128 to a gpu would solve that.

quad is a reserved keyword in opencl I assume with a view to future use.
greater than double precision is also useful for mandbrots viewers etc.

I'm writing what is in effect a numerically integrated solar system ephemeris in opencl. For that I'd very much like greater than double precision. JPL use quad precision, most others use 80 bit or offer it as an option.

 

[arijoytunir]

Readable image

Looks like 8 Bulldozer modules, and 16 CU's

so i have caculated it .

there are
- 16 parallel compute unit arrays
- each of these compute unit consists 64 cores
- so there are total 1024 cores
- 8 module cpu ( steamroller )
- 8 X 72bit - 576bit !!
so wheres the info of 4069 cores and 512bit bus coming from ?

its clearly an APU !

 

[lanek]

They have mix 2 "leaks " " Rumors"... this is why. Now, i dont think the 4096SP is true, let alone the 512bits bus.

 

[arijoytunir]

its like having a hd 7850 with a 16 core steamroller or jaguar cpu ! this could be what amd said about selling a cutdown version of the ps4 apu !

" well the cpu is more powerful and the ddr3 < gddr5 ."

 

[Wynix]

so i have caculated it .

there are
- 16 parallel compute unit arrays
- each of these compute unit consists 64 cores
- so there are total 1024 cores
- 8 module cpu ( steamroller )
- 8 X 72bit - 576bit !!
so wheres the info of 4069 cores and 512bit bus coming from ?

its clearly an APU !

No site seems to care, they are all just regurgitating the same shit without checking the authenticity of it, which is clearly fake.

 

[iMacmatician]

so i have caculated it .

there are
- 16 parallel compute unit arrays
- each of these compute unit consists 64 cores
- so there are total 1024 cores
- 8 module cpu ( steamroller )
- 8 X 72bit - 576bit !!
so wheres the info of 4069 cores and 512bit bus coming from ?

From what some people are saying, since the parallel CU arrays are arrays, each of them consists of 4 CUs, with 64 cores per CU (apparently 4 cores are represented as one rectangle in the diagram), so that's where the 4096 cores come from.

For the "512-bit" bus, maybe people saw the 8 rectangles and assumed 8 x 64-bit = 512-bit.

 

[3dilettante]

The 512-bit can come from using non-ECC DDR3 RAM, however, at this point I don't know if there's a point in discussing something people are saying was made up on a forum as a technically flawed hypothetical.

 

[AlexV]

The fact that that made up bonkers diagram is being taken seriously saddens me. It clearly has too few ARM cores on board to be legit. Also, it needs more un-obtainium for its octo-precision processing needs.

 

[nutball]

The fact that that made up bonkers diagram is being taken seriously saddens me. It clearly has too few ARM cores on board to be legit. Also, it needs more un-obtainium for its octo-precision processing needs.

Don't forget the eDRAM. It needs more eDRAM.

 

[AlexV]

Don't forget the eDRAM. It needs more eDRAM.

I'm quite sure it uses Z-Ram ('sup Arun!). This has been AMD's big secret all along, they've bet the company on Z-Ram and had to suffer the punishment until it was truly ready. Now, it finally is!

 

[Babel-17]

Don't fear the Z-Ram? Or an I the only one hearing the cowbell?

 

[pjbliverpool]

its like having a hd 7850 with a 16 core steamroller or jaguar cpu ! this could be what amd said about selling a cutdown version of the ps4 apu !

" well the cpu is more powerful and the ddr3 < gddr5 ."

Kaveri is already a cut down PS4 APU, this APU is far beyond the PS4 and also obviously fake.

 

[3dilettante]

I wouldn't categorize Kaveri as being a PS4 APU. The CPU cores aren't the same, and depending on the disclosure of certain details as to the shared memory space and demand paging for the PS4, the GPU and northbridge may not be the same, either. It's possible some of the scheduling and cache bypass tricks may be an Orbis-only deal.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Yeah I was only talking from a high level, i.e AMD x86 cores, GCN cu's, unified gddr5 memory and HSA compliant. While not strictly a cut down PS4 it could be considered close enough for casual statements like this to be made. Tbh i'd be suprised if we see something much closer to the PS4 in the PC space, certainly something with 4096 SP's doesn't qualify ;-)

 

[rpg.314]

There must be a lot of HPC scientific applications that rely on the x86's 80 bit precision and hence still require huge CPU core counts. Adding fp128 to a gpu would solve that.

Not even close.

HPC uses dp.