2017: The year of the CPU

in #hardware7 years ago (edited)

Before I begin, this is an involved topic, and I assume you are well versed with the semiconductor industry. It's no detailed analysis though. I shall avoid pictures to avoid clutter and achieve a better flow of commentary.

Context

It has been a fairly stagnant decade for the CPU industry. The battle was heating up in the early 2000s, with AMD firing on all cylinders. Intel made many mistakes, to make matters more interesting. The result was, by 2005, AMD's Athlon 64 line was superior to Intel's Pentium in every way.

Of course, as is often the case with AMD, better products never equal market share. Thanks to extremely shady tactics by Intel, they continued to have much higher revenues and thus development budgets. Later, Intel was deemed to have broken anti-trust laws across the world, and were imposed the maximum possible fines by EU EC and US FTC alike. It finally settled with AMD half a decade later. But by then, the damage as done. Intel may have paid close to $10 billion in fines, but it was a strategic expense - it has probably yielded over $100 bn in the long run. Such is the folly of capitalism.

Intel gave up on their Pentium line, and transitioned their mobile architectures to high-performance desktop. In 2006, they released a revolution - Core 2. Immediately, Core 2 outperformed AMD's now aging Athlon 64 X2. AMD took a massive gamble next - to integrate 4 native cores and an IMC on to a single die. The Phenom X4 was an engineering feat, but fell behind Intel's more practical Core 2 Quad - which was basically two Core 2 Duos glued together. Furthermore, AMD's manufacturing division was slipping behind Intel's fabs - them alone backed by R&D budgets several times the entirety of AMD's market cap.

A year after Phenom, in late 2008, Intel basically copied everything Phenom introduced, but this time with a manufacturing process that could handle it. Thus was born the Core i line. For the next decade, there was basically no competition. Intel commanded the prices they wanted, segmented the market as they liked. AMD took another gamble at doing something different with Bulldozer, and well, failed again. By the early 2010s, everyone had written off AMD as imminently fighting for bankruptcy. Meanwhile, the Intel juggernaut continued rolling on, relentlessly.

A glimmer of Zen

Not only did AMD not go bust, around 2012-14, they quietly started hiring top CPU designers from around the world. Jim Keller joined AMD, back from Apple, to lead development of Zen. Mark Papermaster took over AMD's CTO role - also previously at Apple. On paper, that sounds insane - why would the top CPU engineers leave the biggest company in the world to join a dying one?

Occam's razor - there was something exciting going on at AMD. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the ultimate underdog to shove it to the ultimate goliath.

AMD starting talking about Zen in 2015, claiming unprecedented gains from Bulldozer. Granted, that's a low starting point, but the numbers made people sit up and take notice. Of course, most dismissed it as nonsense, it was simply not possible AMD could bridge an insurmountable gap with a fraction of the resources. Yet, AMD was not doing anything different this time - they were designing something to compete with Intel head on. No over ambitious innovations, or forward thinking designs - just something reasonable that'll work for the present.

On the other hand, Intel was getting complacent. The first Core i7 920 was a 4 core / 8 thread CPU at $300 in 2008. Core i7 7700 was a 4 core / 8 thread $300 CPU in 2017.

Return of the Jedi

The above title is an in-joke - I'll offer a hefty upvote if you get this reference and comment about it :)

In March 2017, Ryzen 7 released doing exactly what a seemingly crazy Jim Keller saw coming when none of us could. The ultimate underdog beating an abusive, dominant goliath.

At the same price, Ryzen 7 offered 8 cores / 16 threads - a near 2x bump over Core i7 7700. Amazingly, it did so at similar power consumption as well.

This is a milestone, and a turning point for the entire CPU industry. What came next was an absolute whirlwind of a year.

AMD goes for the jugular with Threadripper and Epyc

Remember how Intel beat AMD in 2007 by gluing two Core 2 Duos instead of going for a native four core die? Well, it's the exact reverse this time around. Intel has enormous 28 die CPUs for the server market that cost a fortune to manufacture. AMD, however, simply glued 4 of their Ryzen dies to create a behemoth 32 core CPU at a fraction of Intel's cost. Better still, they extended this concept to the desktop, releasing a 16 core / 32 thread CPU for $999. That is insane, considering Intel was peddling a 10 core CPU for $1800 at the time!

The result was Threadripper cleaned house, and was for the first time in over a decade, the fastest desktop CPU in the world.

The server and professional market was more challenging, with Intel's corrupt practices having firmly entrenched corporates. Even so, Epyc offered remarkable value, often offering twice the performance of Intel for the same price. The game was well and truly on!

Intel's knee-jerk reaction

It was clear that Intel had been caught well and truly napping with their pants down. Intel had no answer to Threadripper, so they did something unthinkable. They brought their massive server Xeon dies to the Core market!

Thus came a barrage of Core i9s, rushed to the market. The top i9 managed to take the lead back from Threadripper, but at a 80% higher cost, and using more power. Even so, the lead was iffy at best. It was a power play, one Intel had to make.

The Empire Strikes Back

Intel had to respond in the mainstream market too. For the first time ever in Core i history, the mainstream $300 Core i7 saw a boost in core count. Coffee Lake came with 6 cores / 12 threads, and with a significant clock speed advantage, the Core i7 8700K is a formidable product - Intel's best in many years. It competes well with Ryzen 7 in multi-threaded workloads, while being significantly faster in lightly threaded workloads.

The new Core i3 at $120 is basically the same as the old Core i5 7600, which cost double the price! An incredible change for Intel.

Yet, while all of this is impressive on the surface, cracks are starting to appear. Firstly, there's nothing new about this Coffee Lake. Indeed, the Core i3 is basically the old Core i5, and the Core i7 is the old Core i7 with 2 extra cores slapped on.

It was clearly rushed, too, with affordable motherboards still missing and not due till Q1 2018.

Mobile sees a revolution too

The 15W TDP mobile CPU has the highest volumes in the industry. It finds home in a vast majority of laptops today, save for some high-performance niche products which go with 45W instead.

As with the desktops, the 15W line of Core i CPUs had been stuck at 2 core / 4 thread since the very beginning. The 8th gen saw an incredible boost to 4 core / 8 threads. Mind you - this is not a 100% uplift, as the 4 cores have to throttle to stay within the 15W budget. Still, this so an unprecedented uplift, never seen before by Intel.

Make no mistake, though, this is not Intel being consumer friendly. Nope, this is very much being scared shitless by Ryzen Mobile. Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 for notebooks brings the same 4 core / 8 threads as Intel to the 15W TDP. Incredibly, the early benchmarks show Ryzen 5 actually beats equivalent Core i5 while costing less. While there are no Ryzen 7 laptops out yet, it's likely it will be in the same ballpark as Core i7 laptops.

However, it is in the GPU side of things where Ryzen 5 with Vega 8 thoroughly trounces even Core i7. The performance differentials are alarming - often as high as twice the performance. Games that were totally unplayable on Intel are now suddenly fluid on AMD. It's night and day. Ryzen 7 with Vega 10 will open that gap further.

I don't expect AMD to gain much market share in notebooks - Intel is far too deep in bed with the OEMs - but this has surely shaken things up.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em

There have been rumours about this for years, but no one actually believed them. The unthinkable, that with partner with AMD.

Yet, it is happening. Intel knows they cannot compete with AMD on the GPU front, so they have no licensed AMD GPUs to go along their CPUs in a single package. This will no doubt find its way into Dell XPS 15 or MacBook Pro 15 next year.

There was another stunning announcement - Intel had poached AMD's GPU head Raja Koduri away, to create new GPU architectures in-house for Intel. That AMD-Intel collaboration is seemingly a ticking time bomb. Though Raja Koduri - again, of Apple and AMD fame - is a tour de force in the industry, building a high-performance GPU from the ground up has proven to be insanely hard. Yet, Intel is now serious about pouring billions into it. It may just happen.

ARM joins the party

To make matters worse for Intel, Qualcomm Snapdragon now officially finds its way into Windows PCs. Of course, Microsoft tried this with Windows RT, and Google has had ARM Chromebooks too. However, those early efforts were utter failures due to compatibility issues. Now, ARM processors can run legacy Windows apps through an emulation layer. Of course, performance will be far superior on Intel and AMD, but perhaps ARM can differentiate with lower costs and long battery lives.

Indeed, the first ARM powered laptops claim a ridiculous battery life of over 20 hours in ultra thin form factors.

Intel will fall further behind

Coffee Lake may seem like a stunning success, but it's only a temporary one. Intel has reached the end of line with 14nm processors. Their 10nm process has been an absolute disaster, and by their own admission, they won't release a desktop part on 10nm till 10nm+. That's 2019 at the earliest, more likely 2020.

Meanwhile, for AMD, the first generation Ryzen 7 was a worst-case baseline. It was made on a borrowed 14nm process from Samsung, which is designed for mobile chips - not high-performance CPU. Intel has pretty much played their hand, for now.

In early 2018, AMD is set to release Ryzen+ at 12nm. This is only a minor evolution, but should be enough to leapfrog Coffee Lake. However, things get interesting in 2019 with Ryzen 2 and 7nm. This will be the first Ryzen made on a high-performance process, that takes all the learnings from the first generation. Without any doubt, AMD is going to command a significant lead throughout much of 2019, till Intel finally responds with a 10nm Ice Lake.

On the other side, Qualcomm's focusing on more powerful ARM SoCs to take on Intel.

Don't worry about Intel though, they'll do what they do best. Brute force their way into shady deals, and continue raking in the cash with inferior products. In addition, rampant consumer ignorance means they'll continue to thrive. Over time, through sheer amount of resources, they'll catch back up to AMD.


It's been an insane year for the CPU industry. More has happened in 2017 than the last ten years combined. I have deliberately edited out the mobile stuff, as this was getting too long and unwieldy.

What do you think? Will Intel fight back and crush the AMD rebellion?

PS: Hint about the Star Wars reference. A certain iconic technology publisher used to make Star Wars themed reviews for CPUs.

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Thanks once again @liberosist for your excellent writeup. I have found it to be one hell of a roller-coaster this past year, with myself batting for the orange team since 2011. I find it quite astounding that Intel didn't have insider knowledge or leaks from AMD when the architecture was being worked on, that they would have then been able to work on their competition.

I personally was going to buy into Vega or Polaris, but found that the performance gains were not worth the investment. Plus with the age of the GPU miner pushing up prices ridiculously, I still am chugging along with my R9 380 quite fine.

I think that AMD has a good wedge now, that it may be able to continue the fight against the empire.

I had a GTX 680 before (really regret that purchase, 7970 turned out a much better GPU). I bought an RX 480 as a stop-gap. I was tempted to get a GTX 1070, but couldn't get myself to buy Nvidia again. This year, bought a Vega 56. I must say, it's a huge jump from RX 480, let alone R9 380. ?That said, it's overkill for 1080p/60, so it depends on your gaming needs. Mine is 4K/~50fps with Freesync, so Vega 56 makes a huge difference.

My needs these days are spending my money elsewhere. I frankensteined my components together from my last build with the Ryzen 7. My 380 can actually still drive games quite well, even on a 2560x1440 screen.

The thing that stops me buying a new gpu is the huge jump that would incentivise me, as well as non-crap games, (non-EA) like a new Elder Scrolls game (I Wish). But at the moment, all I play is Factorio, which needs could more than GPU.

And yes, I do have a HTC Vive, but the games are gimmicky, overpriced and short to warrant me actually using it, and therefore needing the higher end GPU to drive the 90fps.

I feel that largely apart from AMD with Ryzen, games and innovation have largely been stagnating.

This is when also looking at the Mobile Phone market. The phone has 6gb ram (ok...), It's got a 30% faster CPU (like I notice these days), it had an 8k screen (exaggeration but still true, also it's not needed in my view, 1080p is just fine)

The huge leaps we used to see isn't really there anymore, it's more.... Incremental. I think we are ready for the next True era, the age of the implantable, wearable, contact lens type thing with full FOV, power, and AR supported, like if the hololens, magic leap, Vive, mobile phones all had a Frankenstein baby, which turns into something beautiful.

Sidenote.. my comment seriously diverged from the original purpose...
Lol

Incredible analysis! Color me an ignorant consumer who learned a lot. The future depends not on Jedis, but whether Intel's products are made with an Achilles heel that blows the whole thing up if AMD knows just where to hit it.

Intel had simply become too complacent, and let AMD catch up. Intel is still scrambling, but they will fight back. They are simply too big to fail, they'll retain their market lead, and return earnings an order of magnitude higher than AMD. AMD simply doesn't have the marketing budget to compete with Intel. Put that much money into it, and you can't fail, and Intel won't. That said, I just hope this time the anti-trust commissions keep Intel in check before it's too late, and AMD continues exploiting their agility advantage (being a much smaller company).

The other thing is that if a smaller actor comes along to introduce something new, Intel would have the cash to buy it up. In the US market, I wouldn't bet on antitrust regulation keeping anything in check. There's a Republican president and historically they don't regulate too heavily there, except that this administration has shown they want big deals to go their way politically.

Historically, FTC has been fair in regulating the semiconductor industry. They are very slow, but they eventually get it right. But yeah, under Trump anything is possible. Fortunately, the European Commission is badass, and will never let it happen.

AMD wins most of the awards
Intel gets all the money
AMD did really well this year. I'm very excited to see what they have planned for 2018!

I'm afraid you're spot on. Intel will continue getting all the moneys. 2018 will be quieter, but Ryzen+ will be a minor but welcome update. Basically just a refined version. Things will get really interesting in 2019 with Zen 2 though!

I really enjoyed this post! It has been an intersting time for the market, and it is exciting to see it unfold. I am veey curious what the inside joke is! I was just assuming that It was a reference to the parralled sagas in the star wars universe and the amd/ intel battle. The empire would be intel and the rebels would be amd. They seem to perfectly mstch those roles and their tinelines also match up very well. The return of the jedi was a victory for the rebels and changed the tide, but was not the end of the war. Amd's Ryzen did the exact same thing. They finally got an edge on intel and they changed the direction of the market entirely! The battle continues! If you have more to add I would love to hear :) great post! :)

Hah, the parallels are plain to see, but I actually have something specific in mind. Let's hope someone gets my reference.

I hope so! I am very curious! :) very good post!

Excellent article. I have always been an AMD fan, both as someone who supports the underdog, and based on my experiences back in the early days when I bought one of the early Athlon sub $1k computers, which handily outperformed my father's Pentium based machine costing $700 more. It is exciting to see the processor wars back on.

AMD has never gone down easy, and I don't expect them to start now!

I always tend to support the underdog. It's hard to be a fan of a corporation, but poor AMD does deserve all the help they can get. The first PC I built was an Athlon too! I was all on Intel before that, as that's all you got with the pre-built systems here. Luckily, Intel can't bribe them any more to keep AMD out. Seeing laptops by HP and Acer run Ryzen is a good step forward, but still a long way to go to catch up to Intel.

Is socket 754 Episode 2? ;)

I have always loved AMD processors starting with an Athlon as my second desktop PC. I think I always liked the underdog nature of them, but never knew the ins and outs as you've just explained them. Personally I think this kind of competition is absolutely necessary in any marketplace, but especially in computing. That's not to say partnerships ruin that either, I think there's a lot to be said for pushing forward together instead of apart.

The main thing though is that I think over the last ten years consumers have been - by and large - satiated in their demand for ever more powerful processors. I wonder how much the rise of Crypto and mainstream mining etc have lead to an increased demand for cutting edge kit?

Either way I'm even more excited to see what's next after reading this article :) Thanks for sharing, I really enjoyed it!

Competition is necessary, but it must be kept in check to stop the larger corporation from abusing their power. That is what Intel have always done. If that regulation is lax, then competition will vanish.

Mining has disrupted the graphics card market, but hasn't had any impact on the CPU market.

I thought I might have the return of the Jedi thing figured out, I thought you were referring to each ‘episode’ of AMDs evolution :)

Competition is definitely a necessity, that’s Why we have monopoly laws, although I’m not sure they aren’t being breached the world over already!

That's not it. You'll notice I used it for an Intel thing too :) It's quite obscure, actually, when I think about it.

Damn! I think I'm definitely stumped in that case!!

Just like Blackberry back in the day, Intel has the corporate sponsorships, and big names backing them. If AMD can break into any of those contracts / relationships that Intel has, and expand their market share in the corporate space, they will be golden. Until then, Intel will succeed with the MODERATELY inferior products (although, they do have superior products as well), with the larger price tags.

The harsh reality is, AMD can't break that. They simply don't have the money or mindshare. The best they can do is carve a profitable niche for themselves as the second player in the market.

This is not like BlackBerry either, Intel has a shit ton of money and really solid tech. They will continue dominating.

I have been following this market segment myself closely. The Threadripper is cutting edge tech. I am a big believer in AMD and I am astounded that their stock price has dropped so low recently. They are massively undervalued right now, in my opinion.

They are, yes. I bought some AMD stock by proxy when the Jim Keller news started coming. The price was around $3. Yes - still undervalued. Whether market sentiment will change, I don't know. Intel simply has an enormous mindshare, and it's hard to reverse that.

I honestly have been waiting for AMD to come back for a while (not a fanboy, I just like an underdog story). It's been well documented that whenever AMD and Intel are fighting it out trying to outdo each other, that's when real innovations come, and we as consumers are the ones who reap the benefits, last year I was going to get a 7700K but when I read a little about Ryzen when they first released it I knew I should wait.
Then it came out and it was really good, a consumer grade processor with 8 cores and 16 threads for 400 bucks, unlocked and overclockable from the get go, and the I read that, as you said, that was a worst case scenario for AMD, ooh, I got really pumped for what's coming, all of that with out taking into account that inter has been churning out the same bullshit for years with just minimal increments on their products just because they knew they could.

I think Intel is ganna have to perk up and get their act together, otherwise AMD is gonna plow over them in the span of a year or two. 2019 is gonna be crazy!!!! Crazy good :)

That is certainly true of any market - competition is wonderful! As long as it's fair, of course. The last time, Intel went full mafia.

I'm reasonably confident AMD will take a clear lead in 2019. Intel will certainly fight back strongly, but for the short term, AMD has to make hay while the sun shines.

Agreed! :) I am looking into getting a new computer for my work and I'm going to build it, and Ryzen right now seems like the best option, the fact that the AM4 socket will be in use for at least 4 years is very encouraging :)

AMD have always been good with that! They only move to new sockets when they need to. AM4 looks it'll be supported till DDR5 comes out (AM5 then). A fresh change from Intel, who seem to have a new incompatible socket every year or two...

That's the second reason I didn't pull the trigger on an intel based system before, now with coffee lake, I was tempted again, it is a very powerful processor but it's just more of the Intel shenanigans we're used to seeing now, coffee lake has the same LGA 1151 socket as the previous Z270 chipsets, but will only work on Z370 chipsets because older Z270 boards are "electrically incompatible".

Knowing that I can get a Ryzen system now, and update the processor in three to four years time with something that will be way superior and not have to buy a brand new motherboard for it to work helped me to stop and do the research.

As soon as I have saved up enough I'm getting a Ryzen system.

And all of this not even taking into account the threadripper vs X299 discussion, which is just as crazy/disconcerting :)

It gets worse for Intel from here. It looks like Intel 10nm has slipped until at least H2 of next year, which will put TSMC and GlobalFounders ahead of them on process.

Is the Jedi the legendary Jim Keller, who returned to AMD after designing the A series processors for Apple?

Yes, and like I mentioned, Intel has admitted themselves that high-performance desktop parts won't launch till 10nm+. We are looking late 2019 at the earliest! Till then, Intel is stuck on Skylake architecture (reused in Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake) and 14nm++. I'm betting they'll just slap on two more cores to Coffee Lake and call it a day till 10+ finally ships.

As for the reference - nice try, but it's actually a bit more obscure :)