AMD: Zen 3 Speculation, Rumours and Discussion

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BRiT said:
I wish NVME would be a bit more like SATA, in terms of expandability. Specifically, where you can connect multiple NVME devices to the interface point (NVME PCI-Express Card or motherboard) and if you use one device at a time then it gets the full bandwidth.

I'm less concerned about maximum throughput on ALL NVME when ALL are used, as long as 2 NVME devices can get max performance at the same time. This way I can have one OS NVME and start with one GAME NVME, then when that runs low on space I can add in another one. It seems a silly when you upgrade storage space with NVME you discard the old NVME entirely. At least in most situations where you have limited number of NVME slots.
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You do get pretty much that, the rest of the devices behind chipset shouldn't hog up much of the bandwidth at all, unless you're downloading full blast from some 10 Gbit network, so one NVMe x4 behind chipset should be just fine (and I stress, again, that at least some motherboard manufacturers recommend installing the NVMe drive first to the slot behind chipset, then to the CPU connected one, since it'll likely work cooler there and be less likely to throttle. I was pretty shocked myself when I heard this)
 
Yeah, but I want NVME expansion to be like hard drive expansion, just plug another one into your drive cage and you're good. For like upto 8 drives. Most MB have what, 3 slots NVME if it's the x570? So if you have those filled, you have to remove one to replace with larger capacity.
 
BRiT said:
Yeah, but I want NVME expansion to be like hard drive expansion, just plug another one into your drive cage and you're good. For like upto 8 drives. Most MB have what, 3 slots NVME if it's the x570? So if you have those filled, you have to remove one to replace with larger capacity.
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Motherboard manufaturers should split more PCIe lanes for SSDs.
Right now you can connect old NVMe drives through USB adaptor (claims 800MB/s throughput).
 
Rikimaru said:
Motherboard manufaturers should split more PCIe lanes for SSDs.
Right now you can connect old NVMe drives through USB adaptor (claims 800MB/s throughput).
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It’s all about cost really. Threadripper offers increased I/O capabilities at a reasonably modest cost. It makes sense to have standard components designed to cater to standard needs +-2sigma. So if you want substantially different capabilities, you either go for the niche tier of building blocks, or augment your standard box to solve your problem. How much storage do you want and why?
If I understood BRiT correctly, he wanted the modularity of connecting SATA drives. That’s not going to happen as long as we slot the SSDs directly into the motherboard. But why? Assuming we still want the cheap standard component base system, if it is because he doesn’t want to waste the capacity of old M.2 drives, well plug them into an external cabinet that connects to USB or thunderbolt, which allows 10 20 or 40 Gb/s respectively. (God I wish USB4 was universally adopted right now). If you want to build something extremely fast by RAID-0 over a lot of drives - well that can’t be done in current PC architecture no matter what connecting scheme you use, so that cannot be a justification for having more M.2 connectors.
At the end of the day the current standard compromise is reasonable - you can connect a couple of fast drives to the motherboard, and if you want to connect more without needing the highest bandwidth, you plug them into your I/O standard of choice. That should serve +-4sigmas or so. Beyond that you go to more server oriented hardware platforms.

I think manufacturers like this. There is nothing really stopping them from implementing a system where they provide 32 PCI-lanes and you insert PCIx4 drives as you buy them, but it would add fractionally to the cost for everyone, and they would loose some high margin business selling dedicated hardware to a niche that can pay more. (Kind of like 10Gb Ethernet.) The SATA ports provided serve those that desire tens of TB in their box, but the trend is away from that to remote storage, either in NAS form if you’re oldfashioned or cloud storage.
 
BRiT said:
Yeah, but I want NVME expansion to be like hard drive expansion, just plug another one into your drive cage and you're good. For like upto 8 drives. Most MB have what, 3 slots NVME if it's the x570? So if you have those filled, you have to remove one to replace with larger capacity.
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Or use a PCIe x16 slot which can accommodate 4 NVMe drives.
 
Still seems a bit excessive for something where not all NVMEs will be used at the same time, so no need for 16 lanes or even 8 lanes of PCIe 4 connection. I was thinking something more like a SATA Port Multiplier or HBA Expander, where you can add more devices without requiring substantial need for higher bandwidth.

As to why, so they can be treated more like hard drives. One doesn't entirely throw out the old hard drive when they run out of space. They simply add another one to their system.

I guess one solution is to pick up a NVME to SATA adapter and live with the slower speed even when that's the only device you're using. Or to do as Entropy said, and get an external device and try for 40 Gb/s
 
Today, the fastest consumer standard for external I/O is thunderbolt 3, although SSDs old enough to be pushed off the motherboard by upgrades probably are well served by 20 or even 10Gb/s M-2 USB enclosures. They go for $25 or so and up, with the usual fine print squinting needed to sort out exactly what USB version is supported. (My 500GB SATA SSD that suffered this ignoble fate lives in an enclosure that cost a hair over $10.)
I won’t buy anything new that doesn’t sport a few USB4 sockets. Quick standardised I/O buys longevity.
 
hoom said:
Lisa Su says "Zen3 on track to launch this year" (near the end)

Quite a lot of wiggle room in the actual words.
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This was like 3rd or 4th time this year AMD confirmed it.
Also they've specifically confirmed that Milans will start shipping in Q4
 
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Entropy said:
I won’t buy anything new that doesn’t sport a few USB4 sockets.
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You have usb4 sockets?
 
Davros said:
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You have usb4 sockets?
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Nope, hence why I want to buy them. (Or preferably TB4, which is USB4 but with better odds of actually doing its job as expected.)
Since I don’t enjoy to spend time, energy and money on buying and selling computer gear, I prefer to buy when technology takes a step in the staircase. In terms of I/O that will be USB4/TB4. If you build a traditional PC box you can usually arrange to have a hopelessly inaccessible port in the back by plugging in a dedicated PCIe card, but USB4 is high enough bandwidth that you might have to steal half the PCIe lanes of the graphics card to free up resources.
It’s just simpler to wait until the geese get in line and it comes with good motherboard support, which it probably will roughly along with DDR5 which is the real technolgy step I’m waiting for before I might assemble a new gaming PC.
In general, PC technology moves slowly enough now that unless you love tinkering, you can benefit from extrapolating quite far, and in longer timespans I/O connectivity starts to matter. For laptops it’s even more important, obviously, as you’re typically stuck with what you got at purchase, and the only way you can add new capabilities to the system is via those ports. Hence up to date, high speed I/O matters.
 
Hopefully quite a lot more than 'just made CCX's 8 cores'.
And that has been rumored/known from the earliest rumors.

From the link in NBIO section what do they mean by 'Two 8*16 PCIe controllers', surely not actually 256 PCIe lanes? Or they're mostly used for other IO stuff?
 
hoom said:
Hopefully quite a lot more than 'just made CCX's 8 cores'.
And that has been rumored/known from the earliest rumors.

From the link in NBIO section what do they mean by 'Two 8*16 PCIe controllers', surely not actually 256 PCIe lanes? Or they're mostly used for other IO stuff?
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Didn't mean it's the only change, but it's the big change regarding caches.
Don't know what's up with the "Two 8 x 16 PCIe controllers" (typo maybe?), there's still 24 lanes total from the CPU, 4 for NVMe, 16 for gfx and 4 for chipset.
 
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