GPU and CPU news and discussions

[Tadasuke]

We now know Ryzen 9 7950X performance and it's pretty good:



There's a substantial improvement over 5950X and for $100 less, after 2 years. I think it's a decent CPU for both entertainment and work.

[Tadasuke]

How to make your CPU as fast as a GPU - Advances in Sparsity with Nir Shavit:


Tesla Dojo AI Supercomputer Deep Dive and Analysis:

[Tadasuke]

Next gen VR is going to be nuts never mind the gaming graphics!

Without DLSS 3.0 (upscaling + interpolation), even the 4090 struggles with heavier ray-tracing or with 8K without ray-tracing.

[Tadasuke]

Samsung DRAM roadmap:


Capacity per die will double in 6 years and speed will double in 5. Perhaps we can expect (slightly) faster progress in GPU memory (HBM4, GDDR7). Moore's Law has slowed down since 2011. There's no new paradigm.

[Tadasuke]

*after heavy overclock, which doesn't translate linearly to gaming performance and increases wattage by a lot

power efficiency sweet spot is 50-60% of 4090's power limit

[Yuli Ban]

The RTX 4080 12GB is a fantastic graphics card, but it’s not named right. Having two GPUs with the 4080 designation is confusing.

So, we’re pressing the “unlaunch” button on the 4080 12GB. The RTX 4080 16GB is amazing and on track to delight gamers everywhere on November 16th.

If the lines around the block and enthusiasm for the 4090 is any indication, the reception for the 4080 will be awesome.

Good move.

[Tadasuke]

There's now information about upcoming AMD Genoa 96 cores, which can be compared to existing server CPUs:

[Tadasuke]

I wouldn't be surprised if Nvidia in 2023 released "World's First 100 Teraflops GPU" named Titan Ada, with 100 tflops and 48 GB of VRAM for $2999. It would be great for AI (for gaming too). That seems like something they would do. Its power draw would be really high (without undervolting and reducing the power limit) and the size would be large as well.

[Tadasuke]

MediaTek showed their newest SoC - Dimensity 9200. It is better than the previous one (Dimensity 9000) and you can read all about it here. It is again on TSMC's 4nm production process, but uses newer architecture on 17 billion transistors.

[wjfox]

Nvidia investigates melting graphics card cable reports

2 days ago

Graphics card-maker Nvidia is investigating reports its latest cards may be causing power cables to melt.

Social-media users posted photos online appearing to show damage to the cable used to power the Nvidia RTX 4090, launched in October 2022.

They claimed the graphics card, which retails for £1,699, was "melting" the adapter supplied in the box.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-63635379

[weatheriscool]

Japan to Manufacture 2nm Chips With a Little Help From IBM

Japan's bid to become a major producer of the most advanced chips in the world received a boost this week thanks to a new partnership with IBM.

As the Japan Times reported(Opens in a new window) last month, eight Japanese companies including Toyota, Sony, NTT, SoftBank, Kioxia, Denso, NEC, and MUFG Bank joined forces and invested in a new company called Rapidus. The goal of Rapidus is to research, develop, design, and manufacture advanced logic semiconductors in Japan, and it has the backing of and subsidies ($500 million) from the Japanese government to help it do so.

Yesterday, IBM announced(Opens in a new window) it will be partnering with Rapidus to further develop and implement IBM's 2nm node technology. The desired end result being to allow Rapidus to manufacture 2nm chips in its Japanese fabrication facilities. As part of the agreement, Rapidus scientists and engineers will work at the Albany NanoTech Complex in New York with IBM researchers, as well as at IBM Japan in Tokyo.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/japan-to-man ... p-from-ibm

[weatheriscool]

MSI is waiting until next year to announce its 7900 XTX and 7900 XT GPUs
Did they go on holiday early?
https://www.techspot.com/news/97009-msi ... 0-xtx.html

Recap: AMD launched the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT last Tuesday and all their regular board partners participated, bar one. MSI was conspicuously absent and has almost entirely ignored the new generation, prompting fans to ask when the company plans on releasing its custom designs for the GPUs.

MSI has hardly acknowledged the two new AMD GPUs despite them being on the calendar for more than a month. Its website still hasn't been updated and continues to proudly advertise the 6950 XT. MSI's only comment on the new generation is a retweet of an AMD promotional video with a caption saying that the GPUs will be available soon.

Define "soon."

As the rumors started to swell last week, Andreas Schilling from HardwareLuxx.de shared his understanding that MSI was waiting until next year to unveil its custom cards. He says that MSI has chosen not to use any AMD reference designs this generation, including the standard reference design that AMD encourages all its board partners to resell with their logos slapped on the side. MSI has sold reference designs like that in the past.

It's strange that MSI is so far behind. It's often one of the first companies to share pictures of its prototypes. In our testing, the reference designs for both the 7900 XTX and 7900 XT seemed pretty good -- the former peaked at 80c and the latter at 76c during an hour of strenuous gaming while the fans stayed under 2,000 RPM and the clocks and volume held at a reasonable level.

[weatheriscool]

Desktop GPU Sales Hit 20-Year Low
By Anton Shilov
published 2 days ago
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/sales ... 0-year-low

Demand for graphics cards significantly increased during the pandemic as some people spent more time at home playing games, whereas others tried to mine Ethereum to get some cash. But it looks like now that the world has re-opened and Ethereum mining on GPUs is dead, demand for desktop discrete GPUs has dropped dramatically. In fact, shipments of discrete graphics cards hit a ~20-year low in Q3 2022, according to data from Jon Peddie Research. 

The industry shipped around 6.9 million standalone graphics boards for desktop PCs — including the best graphics cards for gaming — and a similar number of discrete GPUs for notebooks in the third quarter. In total, AMD, Intel, and Nvidia shipped around 14 million standalone graphics processors for desktops and laptops, down 42% year-over-year based on data from JPR. Meanwhile, shipments of integrated GPUs totaled around 61.5 million units in Q3 2022.

[weatheriscool]

Apple Supplier TSMC Starts Mass Production on 3nm Chips

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/12/29/ts ... on-begins/
Thursday December 29, 2022 4:30 pm PST by Juli Clover

Apple supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) today started mass production of next-generation 3-nanometer chips that will be used in future Apple devices like iPhones, reports Bloomberg.

3nm apple silicon feature

[Tadasuke]

I will let you all decide on your own whether Moore's Law works or not:

1989: Intel 386; 275 000 transistors, $299
1999: AMD Athlon 500; 22 million transistors, $299
2009: AMD Radeon 5870; 2.154 billion transistors, $399
2019: AMD Radeon 5700 XT; 10.3 billion transistors, $399
2023: AMD Radeon 7900 XTX; 58 billion transistors, $999

Additionally:
2017: Nvidia GeForce 1080 Ti; 11.8 billion transistors, $699
2023: Nvidia GeForce 3070 Ti; 35.8 billion transistors, $799

2008: Intel i7-920, 731 million transistors, $284
2023: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X, 9.97 billion transistors, $349

[Tadasuke]

If your priority is energy efficiency, then for tower PC, AMD Ryzen 7900 ($429) and power limited, downclocked Ryzen 7950X ($599) are currently the best in energy efficiency. For laptops, Ryzens 7735U, 7736U, 7840HS, 7845HX, 7940HS and 7945HX are currently the best in energy efficiency. Laptops with new Ryzen APUs will be gradually released over the rest of this year. Some high-end Ryzens also have the fastest integrated graphics, much faster than the mobile Intel Raptor Lake.

[Tadasuke]

Frore Systems with founder and CEO Seshu Madhavapeddy https://www.linkedin.com/in/seshumadhavapeddy created a revolutionary new solid state cooling device called AirJet. You can watch a video (from CES 2023 that took place in Las Vegas) about it here: https://youtu.be/YGxTnGEAx3E

Frore Systems has reinvented thermal technology with its AirJet chip (only 2.8 mm thickness), that doubles active heat removal with a silent (21-24 dBA) solution, that provides greater performance and is potentially dust-proof.

Air is sucked in from the top of an AirJet via a series of vibrating membranes, which then “squirt” the air down onto the processor’s heat spreader up to 200 km/h. It’s kind of like a showerhead, so the air comes through the top, and it’s pushed down through the sieve. And these shower jets are impinging on the copper heat spreader on the bottom. Heat transfer happens, when these pulsating jets of air are hitting the copper heat spreader. They extract heat from the copper heat spreader with very high efficiency, and then the air exits.

The potential here is enormous. One of the biggest limiting factors in the performance of thin laptops is the thermal profile: you simply can’t shove a desktop-class chip into a laptop and run it at full performance without making it thick as a brick (or setting it on fire). But with solid-state cooling at a fraction of the size of even the most advanced conventional active cooling systems, those limitations start to disappear.

In a laptop, there wouldn't be any vents at the bottom (only on the sides) which could be problematic, when a laptop is placed on a pillow or on a mattress, blocking the exhausts. Frore Systems are currently engaged with several OEMs, and they expect we will see products in the market in 2023. This next-gen cooling solution is the largest addition to laptops and desktop PCs since the introduction of M.2 SSDs on November 1st, 2013 (which were really available later, in 2014).

[wjfox]

Very cool (pun intended).

[Tadasuke]

I made three comparisons between CPUs that are around 10 years apart. So we can look at the differences and appreciate the progress. I've chosen products which are more affordable, instead of choosing some high-end ones. Current counterparts are better in every area, but one could wish that the improvement was greater. If you still have the 2013 ones, then it might be a good time to upgrade.

[Tadasuke]

I prepared three more comparisons of CPUs released in about 10 years interval. Different products, different price points, both Intel and AMD. Performance improvements, according to PassMark, tend to be between ~4 and ~7x. Not bad, but not great either. Definitely, if someone has the old 2012-2013 product, they would feel a substantial improvement after upgrading, especially if they have a cheaper older CPU like the i3. Two cores are nowadays suited only for the lightest work. Old Bulldozer/Piledriver cores were a bit weird, because two of them shared floating-point units which are separate from the integer pipelines. There is no traditional HEDT anymore, there are Threadripper Pro instead.