What is “Ryzen+” ZEN+? After the very successful launch of the original “Ryzen” (Zen/Zeppelin – “Summit Ridge” on 14nm), AMD has been hard at work optimising and improving the design: “Ryzen+” (code-name “Pinnacle Ridge”) is thus a 12nm die shrink that can also includes APU – with integrated “Vega RX” … Read more…
What is “Ryzen+” ZEN+? After the very successful launch of the original “Ryzen” (Zen/Zeppelin – “Summit Ridge” on 14nm), AMD has been hard at work optimising and improving the design: “Ryzen+” (code-name “Pinnacle Ridge”) is thus a 12nm die shrink that can also includes APU – with integrated “Vega RX” … Read more…
What is AVX512? AVX512 (Advanced Vector eXtensions) is the 512-bit SIMD instruction set that follows from previous 256-bit AVX2/FMA3/AVX instruction set. Originally introduced by Intel with its “Xeon Phi” GPGPU accelerators – albeit in a somewhat different form – it has finally made it to its CPU lines with Skylake-X … Read more…
What is NUMA? Modern CPUs have had a built-in memory controller for many years now, starting with the K8/Opteron, in order to higher better bandwidth and lower latency. As a result in SMP systems each CPU has their own memory controller and its own system memory that it can access … Read more…
What is “Threadripper”? “Threadripper” (code-name ZP aka “Zeppelin”) is simply a combination of inter-connected Ryzen dies (“nodes”) on a single socket (TR4) that in effect provide a SMP system-on-a-single-socket – without the expense of multiple sockets, cooling solutions, etc. It also allows additional memory channels (4 in total) to be … Read more…
What is “Threadripper”? “Threadripper” (code-name ZP aka “Zeppelin”) is simply a combination of inter-connected Ryzen dies (“nodes”) on a single socket (TR4) that in effect provide a SMP system-on-a-single-socket – without the expense of multiple sockets, cooling solutions, etc. It also allows additional memory channels (4 in total) to be … Read more…
What is “SKL-X”? “Skylake-X” (E/EP) is the server/workstation/HEDT version of desktop/mobile Skylake CPU – the 6-th gen Core/Xeon replacing the current Haswell/Broadwell-E designs. It naturally does not contain an integrated GPU but what does contain is more cores, more PCIe lanes and more memory channels (up to 6 64-bit) for … Read more…
What is “SKL-X”? “Skylake-X” (E/EP) is the server/workstation/HEDT version of desktop/mobile Skylake CPU – the 6-th gen Core/Xeon replacing the current Haswell/Broadwell-E designs. It naturally does not contain an integrated GPU but what does contain is more cores, more PCIe lanes and more memory channels: Server 2S, 4S and 8S … Read more…
What is FP16 (“half”)? FP16 (aka “half” floating-point) is the IEEE lower-precision floating-point representation that has recently begun to be supported by GPGPUs for compute (e.g. Intel EV9+ Skylake GPU, nVidia Pascal) while CPU support is still limited to SIMD conversion only (FP16C). It has been added to allow mobile … Read more…
Why test GPGPU performance Intel Core Graphics? Laptops (and tablets) are still in fashion with desktops largely left to PC game enthusiasts and workstations for big compute workloads; most laptops (and all tablets) make due with integrated graphics with few dedicated graphics options mainly for mobile PC gamers. As a … Read more…
What is “Ryzen”? “Ryzen” (code-name ZP aka “Zeppelin”) is the latest generation CPU from AMD (2017) replacing the previous “Vishera”/”Bulldozer” designs for desktop and server platforms. An APU version with an integrated (GP)GPU will be launched later (Ryzen2) and likely include a few improvements as well. This is the “make … Read more…
What is “Ryzen”? “Ryzen” (code-name ZP aka “Zeppelin”) is the latest generation CPU from AMD (2017) replacing the previous “Vishera”/”Bulldozer” designs for desktop and server platforms. An APU version with an integrated (GP)GPU will be launched later (Ryzen2) and likely include a few improvements as well. This is the “make … Read more…
What is AVX512? AVX512 is a new SIMD instruction set operating on 512-bit registers that is the natural progression from FMA/AVX (256-bit registers). It was first introduced with Intel’ “Phi” co-processor (Intel’s answer to GPGPUs) and now a version of it is making its way to CPUs themselves. Why is … Read more…
What is RyuJIT? “RyuJIT” is the code-name of the latest CLR of .Net 4.6 as included in Windows 10 (with updates available for Windows 8.1, 8, 7) that includes a variety of performance optimisations as well as new features like vectorised/SIMD native support. Why do we need .Net Vector support? … Read more…
