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| Ripping threads with AMD. (Source: Siora Photography) |
AMD has been demonstrating the scalability of the Zen core design with Epyc, Ryzen, and now Threadripper processors for over two years now, and doesn’t seem to be slowing down. The result has been design win after design win, entry into segments the company hasn’t been in for many years, and newfound respect from the industry.
With the introduction of the Threadripper Pro 39xxWX, AMD has blown the top off of the workstation market in multiple vectors. The largest memory space: 2 TB DDR5, the most cores at 64 per processor, highest clock in a workstation processor (4.3 GHz), and, a tier-one hero OEM partner, Lenovo, with others on the way. (See story at TechWatch).
The new Threadripper is a great proposition for customers. With that large memory space and high core count, the Threadriper eliminates the need for an additional processor for many workstation applications resulting in big savings and better performance.
I wonder why AMD’s share price keeps going up?
AMD introduced four new Threadripper segments with the Pro and 85 possible configurations.
| AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro | Cores/threads | Clock: Boost/base, GHz | Total (l2+l3) cache, MB |
| 3995WX | 64/128 | 4.2/2.7 | 288 |
| 3975WX | 32/64 | 4.2/3.5 | 144 |
| 3995WX | 16/23 | 4.3/3.9 | 128 |
| 3045WX | 12/24 | 4.3/4.0 | 128 |
| AMD Threadripper Pro product categories. (Source: AMD) | |||
AMD says the 3995WX can outperform two Intel Xeon 8280s by 27%, and on Xeon 3275 by 136%, running Cinebench R20 NT. Cinebench Release 20 reflects the overall advancements to CPU and rendering technology.
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| AMD Threadripper Pro 3995WX beats the cinemarks out of Xeon. (Source: AMD) |
The Cinebench R20 Single-Core Score tells you how fast the CPU is when only a single Core is used. This is often a good metric for Software and Viewport snappiness and overall active work performance.
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| Lenovo’s new ThinkStation 620 powered by AMD Threadripping processor. (Source: CDC) |
Lenovo says they worked with AMD to develop an air-cooled design.
Lenovo and their subcontractors designed the motherboard that is used in the Lenovo ThinkStation P620 workstation. As of now, AMD doesn’t have any plans to release the design to COTS mobo suppliers and will only offer it to qualified OEMs and maybe some SIs. AMD also introduced a new chipset for the 39xxWX, the SWXS.
What do we think?
AMD has beaten Moore’s Law’s; flattening the curve by going to a chiplet design. If one Zen chiplet has 8-cores, then there are 8 such chiplets in the Threadripper Pro, plus some other bits. A smaller die, even at 7 nm, will give a higher yield per wafer. If AMD has a robust and high-performance network fabric that allows all those die to sing in harmony, on time, and in tune, then the scaling opportunities are exciting. Where Amdahl’s law will kick in, we don’t know, but surely AMD does. And that asymptote may be somewhat mitigated by caches, which AMD has expanded in the Pro.
AMD is definitely on a winning track and should be able to parlay this Zen design for the next four to five years.