Leo Says EP 27 - AMD need higher clocks, Intel 9th Gen, GTX 2060, 64 Core EPYC

Leo is back after a bit of a break, and he has a lot to say. You know he means it. (yes its October 5th, its a typo in our titles - someone wanted to get into the beers this weekend early. He has been flogged and tied to a pole in his underwear).

00:15 Introduction
00:33 Supermicro Refutes Claims in Bloomberg Article - tiny Chinese spy chips
08:06 Nvidia RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti are here - with waterblocks!
09:21 Microsoft has updated Windows 10 with DirectX Ray Tracing
10:22 RTX 2070 is coming on 17th October - Then GTX 2060?
11:31 Shadow Of The Tomb Raider - rubbish?
12:13 Intel is about to launch 9th Gen. and Z390
15:14 AMD is moving EPYC to 7nm with ‘up to 64 cores’
17:07 And what about AM4 ?
18:22 AMD really needs higher clock speeds

LEO’s Notes for Leo Says 27


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies?srnd=premium-europe

http://ir.supermicro.com/news-releases/news-release-details/supermicro-refutes-claims-bloomberg-article

Bloomberg has run a story about Supermicro motherboards contaminated with tiny Chinese spy chips that were supplied to the data centres of Amazon and Apple in 2015.

Apple ditched Supermicro as a partner in 2016 for various vague reasons and says it is nothing to do with this recent report.

These chips were, apparently hidden between the layers of PCB and came out of the factories of four Supermicro sub-contractors.

The chips would bypass the Baseboard Management Controller and give full access to the server so an attacker could upload software or restart the server. This approach would involve a massive number of chips and motherboards as the attacker has to hope they will gain access to a useful server, rather than one hosting the message board for a bunch of dull forums.

Supermicro’s share price down 40-50 percent
Apple, Amazon and Supermicro deny the story.
Apple has gone so far as to say it is not operating under a gag order.


Nvidia RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti are here

Microsoft has updated Windows 10 with DirectX Ray Tracing

RTX 2070 is coming on 17th October - Then GTX 2060?

Now we just need the games developers to patch their games and we might get to see Ray Tracing in action.

Leo was not blown away by Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Intel is about to launch 9th Gen. and Z390
The i9-9900K will have 8 cores and 16 threads and we expect clock speeds approaching 5GHz which should trounce AMD 2nd Gen. Ryzen 7.

Indeed Core i7-9700K with 8 cores and 8 threads ought to be impressive, provided clock speeds are nice and high.

Will Core i5-9600K also be soldered?

Intel is spending US$1 billion to add supply of 14nm parts which is additional to the US$14 billion they had already committed to spend in 2018.

In 2019 AMD is moving EPYC to 7nm with ‘up to 64 cores’, most likely debuting at 48 cores.
We now have Threadripper with up to 32 cores using four chiplets at 12nm which clearly has the potential to become 32 cores on two chiplets with 7nm technology. This would surely help performance as it would allow all the cores to have access to system memory.

And what about AM4?
Will the Picasso APU use 12nm as expected, which would be a tiny improvement on Raven Ridge.
It would be such a shame to wait for Renoir for the 7nm part. An 8-core APU with Vega graphics would be an interesting proposition.
When AMD moves to 7nm they could deliver a 12-core or 16-core Ryzen on AM4.
More importantly, Intel would be unable to offer a counter.

For the time being I hope that AMD concentrates on clock speed as the 4.0GHz ceiling is limiting and anything that lifts them towards 5GHz would be welcome.