AMD unveils strategy for next phase of growth

AMD last month detailed the next phase of its long-term growth strategy, which is focused on delivering products and technologies for a combined US$60 billion market for PCs, immersive devices, and data centres.

"Our long-term technology roadmaps position AMD to take advantage of the major shifts in the technology industry and deliver significant financial returns," said AMD President and CEO Dr Lisa Su. "We are entering the next phase of our growth strategy through ramping our phenomenal new products across a diverse set of markets. AMD is the only company with the combination of high-performance computing and graphics technologies required to deliver truly immersive and instinctive computing experiences."

AMD ushered in a new era for high-performance server processors and the data centre with EPYC. EPYC aims to revolutionise the dual-socket server market while simultaneously reshaping expectations for single-socket servers. Previously codenamed 'Naples', this new family of high-performance processors for cloud-based and traditional on-premise data centres will launch in June with widespread support from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and channel partners.

AMD's upcoming high-performance consumer and commercial Ryzen processors leverage the company's high-performance x86 Zen core architecture to deliver advanced feature sets, increased efficiency, and leadership performance on demanding PC workloads.

"Strong adoption of our AMD Ryzen processors shows customers are ready and excited for the innovative performance and features we deliver ─ and we're just getting started," said Jim Anderson, Senior VP and GM, AMD Compute and Graphics business group. "Our upcoming AMD Ryzen processor lineup builds on the foundation we have set to drive our further expansion into the high-performance desktop, premium consumer notebook, and commercial markets."

Upcoming AMD client compute processors include:

Consumer desktop PC solutions
AMD said it expects Ryzen-powered Windows-based systems from the top five OEMs to launch in Q217. Ryzen Threadripper, a Zen-based CPU with up to 16 cores and 32 threads with a new platform with expanded memory and input/output (IO) bandwidth, designed for the high-end desktop (HEDT) market. It is scheduled for summer 2017 (editor's note: Q2 to Q3). Ryzen 3 desktop CPUs are scheduled for availability in Q317.

Consumer notebook PC solutions
Ryzen Mobile APUs (codenamed 'Raven Ridge') will integrate a four-core, eight-thread Zen-based CPU and high-performance Vega graphics to deliver an expected 50% increase in CPU performance and over 40% better graphics performance, at half the power consumption of the previous generation. Launching in 2H17, Ryzen Mobile APUs are designed for premium 2-in-1s, ultraportables, and gaming form factors.

Commercial PC solutions
Targeted for commercial, enterprise, and public sector implementation, Ryzen PRO processors are designed to deliver multi-threaded performance for premium business PCs with workstation-class performance, silicon-level security, and reliable solutions with enterprise-class support and top-to-bottom manageability. Ryzen PRO desktop solutions are slated for availability in 2H17. Ryzen PRO mobile is planned for 1H18.

AMD additionally announced the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition, its first graphics card based on the high-end Radeon Vega architecture and as a premier solution for both machine learning and advanced visualsation. With 64 compute units (4,096 stream processors), Radeon Vega Frontier Edition delivers an estimated 25 TFLOPS of FP16 and an estimated 13 TFLOPS of FP32 peak performance and is designed to handle the most demanding design, rendering, and machine intelligence workloads. Radeon Vega Frontier Edition will be available for purchase in Q217.

AMD also the next-generation processor, graphics, and platform technologies that will power future high-performance server, client, graphics, and semi-custom products. Its roadmap incorporates technologies than can deliver substantial performance and energy efficiency gains, accelerate the adoption of AMD technologies, and expand the computing capabilities of a wide range of systems.

"Our engineering focus remains on delivering a steady drumbeat of new high-performance CPU and GPU architectures that build on the strong foundations we have set with Zen and Polaris to drive broader adoption of our products," said Mark Papermaster, Senior VP and CTO, AMD. "Infinity Fabric is the secret sauce within each of our products that allows us to bring together our leadership x86 CPUs and graphics in an efficient way to deliver breakthrough products to meet the needs of the most demanding workloads."

AMD's next-generation roadmaps include:

• AMD will follow up its current-generation Zen architecture with the 7nm Zen 2 and Zen 3 CPU architectures that combine smarter design with process technology advances and are expected to enable significant performance and performance-per-watt gains.
• AMD plans to follow its Vega architecture with the introduction of Navi and its subsequent next-gen architecture, both of which are expected to be built with 7nm process technology.
• In addition to adopting advanced transistor nodes, AMD will use a combination of on-chip integration, software, and system design engineering innovations to continue to create smarter architecture designs that achieve improved performance and energy efficiency. 
• Starting with new 2017 product introductions, future AMD products are also planned to harness the power of AMD Infinity Fabric technology to efficiently create highly-scalable systems-on-chips (SoCs) and platforms that meet the growing demand for high-performance compute and graphics technologies.

 Notes

• Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs as of May 15 2017 with the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition graphics card, Intel Xeon E5 2640v4 2.4Ghz 10C/20T, Dual Socket, 32GB per socket, 64GB Total, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, ROCm 1.5, and OpenCL 1.2. The NVIDIA Tesla P100, was tested on a system comprising of Intel Xeon E5 2640v4 2.4Ghz 10C/20T, Dual Socket, 32GB per socket, 64GB Total, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with CuDNN 5.1, Driver 375.39 and Cuda version 8.0.61. When using the DeepBench Benchmark, Radeon Vega Frontier Edition completed in 88.7 ms and the Nvidia Tesla P100 completed in 133.1 ms. PC manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results. Performance may vary based on use of latest drivers. VG-9
• Testing conducted by AMD Performance Labs as of May 12, 2017 on a test system comprising of Intel E5-1650 v3 @ 3.50 GHz, 16GB DDR4 physical memory, Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit, Radeon RX Vega Frontier Edition / NVIDIA Geforce TitanXp, AMD graphics driver 17.20/NVIDIA graphics driver 382.05 and Samsung 850 PRO 512G solid state drive (SSD).
• Benchmark Application: SPECViewperf 12.1 catia-04 viewset: Radeon RX Vega Frontier Edition score: 135.78, NVIDIA Geforce TitanXp score: 107.29. Performance Differential: (135.78-107.29)/107.29 = ~26.55% faster performance on Radeon RX Vega Frontier Edition. PC manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results. Performance may vary based on use of latest drivers. RPVG- 001
• Benchmark Application: SPECViewperf 12.1 creo-01 viewset: Radeon RX Vega Frontier Edition score: 83.94, NVIDIA Geforce TitanXp score: 65.20. Performance Differential: (83.94-65.20)/65.20 = ~28.74% faster performance on Radeon RX Vega Frontier Edition. PC manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results. Performance may vary based on use of latest drivers. RPVG- 002
• Benchmark Application: SPECViewperf 12.1 sw-03 viewset: Radeon RX Vega Frontier Edition score: 114.88, NVIDIA Geforce TitanXp score: 67.75. Performance Differential: (114.88-67.75)/67.75 = ~69.56% faster performance on Radeon RX Vega Frontier Edition. PC manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different results. Performance may vary based on use of latest drivers. RPVG- 003