AMD CEO: Threadripper Is Alive and “Moving Up”

[Tsing]

With the standard Ryzen lineup getting more and more cores and greater performance, some have begun questioning the fate of AMD’s Threadripper CPUs, whose claim to fame is monster core counts. A recent change in the ETA of the third-generation product sparked further speculation, but Dr. Lisa Su has put uncertainties to rest.

AMD’s CEO told reporters at Computex that Threadripper is alive and well. It is, however, going through what sounds like a substantial upgrade: “If mainstream is moving up, then Threadripper will have to move up, up—and that’s what we’re working on,” Su said.

“You know. it’s very interesting, some of the things that circulate on the Internet—I don’t think we ever said that Threadripper was not going to continue—it somehow took on a life of its own on the Internet,” Su said, speaking to a small group of reporters following her keynote. “You will see more [Threadripper] from us; you will definitely see more.”

 

[alxlwson]

I read this earlier today. It is interesting that they removed it from the roadmap without so much as a whisper.

I do imagine that the new ORNL project is going to be taking a significant number of EPYC chips for the foreseeable future so perhaps that is where the endevor is

 

[Grebuloner]

You don't want to say too much when the stock market is listening.

I think that just like Zen 1, all the chiplets in Ryzen 3k and Epyc are the same, and TR might get its own I/O chiplet to save on fab costs, so while there is that gigantic order in play, the base manufacturing can support everything. That said, isn't high-margin enterprise always prioritized over the rest of us?

 

[bbenz3]

I never did understand the hype train that got rolling about killing off TR. There are too many features that Ryzen doesn't have that are available under TR and I just didn't see them creating a workstation line of Epyc processors.

 

[Grebuloner]

Well, they kinda did. The P suffix was uniprocessor which made its way into several workstation builds. Had about the same level of comparison to the 2P product stack as Intel's W-2xxx line to Skylake-SP.

The hype as I saw it was "ZOMG, 16 cores on mainstream??? TR is 16 cores, too! TR is dead LOL!!!1!", made by people who forgot about TR2's 2990WX and could never understand like AMD/Intel that there will always be a place in our HEDT hearts and wallets for the most cores and memory channels we can afford.

 

[bbenz3]

Well, they kinda did. The P suffix was uniprocessor which made its way into several workstation builds. Had about the same level of comparison to the 2P product stack as Intel's W-2xxx line to Skylake-SP.

The hype as I saw it was "ZOMG, 16 cores on mainstream??? TR is 16 cores, too! TR is dead LOL!!!1!", made by people who forgot about TR2's 2990WX and could never understand like AMD/Intel that there will always be a place in our HEDT hearts and wallets for the most cores and memory channels we can afford.

I have a TR 2950 build and with the purpose it was built for couldn't got to anything but a server for a replacement. Not enough memory on the lower tiers. Additionally with M.2 SSD drives you can very easily run out of PCIe Lanes.