By: Heikki Kultala (hkultala.delete@this.iki.fi), October 31, 2015 2:19 pm
Room: Moderated Discussions
juanrga (nospam.delete@this.juanrga.com) on October 31, 2015 6:20 am wrote:
> Heikki Kultala (hkultala.delete@this.iki.fi) on October 30, 2015 3:45 pm wrote:
>
> > > The real reason why AMD Zen is stuck with 128bit units can be cache/memory bottlenecks or Skybridge
> > > (pin and inside compatibility of both K12 and Zen) or simply saving die space or .
> >
> > The width of the FPU's has nothing to do with the external pins of the
> > processor. There are zillion different-width buses between them.
> >
> >
>
> Textbook-example of straw-man fallacy.
>
> You took my sketchy description of the Skybridge project,
> then cherry-picked the "pin" part, ignored the "and inside" part, and wrote giving the impression
> of refuting my argument, while actually refuting an argument which was not advanced by me.
no, just a point to counter _one part_ of your argument, not your whole argument.
> I will try again to explain my argument.
>
> Skybridge was AMD project for pin and inside compatibility between ARM and x86 products. Pin
> compatibility would produce a socket compatible for both the ARM and the x86 SoCs from AMD.
>
> Inside compatibility would produce a set of ARM and x86 cores easily interchangeable
> inside the SoC for simplifying AMD business (specially the semicustom division).
> You can get the concept on this diagram applied to 'small' cores
>
>
>
> Same about 'big' cores, indeed Zen was presented as the "sister core" of K12.
>
> AMD couldn't release a K12 core with 128bit SIMD units and a Zen core with 256bit SIMD units
> within the Skybridge project, because that hypothetical Zen would require wider datapaths,
> wider memory units, higher cache throughput,... ruining the lego-like replacement.
They would only need wider datapath between L1 cache and LSUs when widening the FPU.
And L1 is part of the core.
Datapath between L1 and L2 caches is completely different thing. They need not to be same width than datapaths between L1 and LSUs.
So it's very easy to have the different cores having same L1DL2 width but different LSUL1D width and different datapath width.
The one thing that should match with the different cache levels is the cache block size(to make coherence easier etc.) And that has been same 64 bytes for most processor cores for the last >15 years.
> But Skybridge was finally canceled. Thus maybe the reason for Zen
> having 128bit units is some of those other reasons mentioned above.
Skybridge was cancelled much later than at the point when the FPU width of Zen was chosen, You do not change that kind of things late.
> Heikki Kultala (hkultala.delete@this.iki.fi) on October 30, 2015 3:45 pm wrote:
>
> > > The real reason why AMD Zen is stuck with 128bit units can be cache/memory bottlenecks or Skybridge
> > > (pin and inside compatibility of both K12 and Zen) or simply saving die space or .
> >
> > The width of the FPU's has nothing to do with the external pins of the
> > processor. There are zillion different-width buses between them.
> >
> >
>
> Textbook-example of straw-man fallacy.
>
> You took my sketchy description of the Skybridge project,
> then cherry-picked the "pin" part, ignored the "and inside" part, and wrote giving the impression
> of refuting my argument, while actually refuting an argument which was not advanced by me.
no, just a point to counter _one part_ of your argument, not your whole argument.
> I will try again to explain my argument.
>
> Skybridge was AMD project for pin and inside compatibility between ARM and x86 products. Pin
> compatibility would produce a socket compatible for both the ARM and the x86 SoCs from AMD.
>
> Inside compatibility would produce a set of ARM and x86 cores easily interchangeable
> inside the SoC for simplifying AMD business (specially the semicustom division).
> You can get the concept on this diagram applied to 'small' cores
>
>
>
> Same about 'big' cores, indeed Zen was presented as the "sister core" of K12.
>
> AMD couldn't release a K12 core with 128bit SIMD units and a Zen core with 256bit SIMD units
> within the Skybridge project, because that hypothetical Zen would require wider datapaths,
> wider memory units, higher cache throughput,... ruining the lego-like replacement.
They would only need wider datapath between L1 cache and LSUs when widening the FPU.
And L1 is part of the core.
Datapath between L1 and L2 caches is completely different thing. They need not to be same width than datapaths between L1 and LSUs.
So it's very easy to have the different cores having same L1DL2 width but different LSUL1D width and different datapath width.
The one thing that should match with the different cache levels is the cache block size(to make coherence easier etc.) And that has been same 64 bytes for most processor cores for the last >15 years.
> But Skybridge was finally canceled. Thus maybe the reason for Zen
> having 128bit units is some of those other reasons mentioned above.
Skybridge was cancelled much later than at the point when the FPU width of Zen was chosen, You do not change that kind of things late.
