Computex 2019: AMD announces next-gen leadership products
AMD today again made technology history with the announcement of high-performance 7nm-based computing and graphics products that are expected to deliver new levels of performance, features and experiences for PC gamers, enthusiasts and content creators. During the first-ever Computex opening keynote, AMD President and CEO Dr Lisa Su announced:
- “Zen 2” – The new “Zen 2” core, powering the next-generation AMD Ryzen and EPYC processors, widely outperforms the historical generational performance improvement industry trend, delivering 15% more IPC, and features significant design improvements including larger cache sizes and a redesigned floating point engine.
- 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen desktop family – The new lineup of 3rd Gen Ryzen desktop processors introduces a new category of Ryzen 9 desktop processor with the flagship 12 core/24 thread Ryzen 9 3900X. The family has rounded out with 8 core Ryzen 7 models and 6 core Ryzen 5 models, and all 3rd Gen Ryzen desktop processors are supported by the world’s first PCIe 4.0 readiness.
- AMD X570 chipset – The world’s first PCIe 4.0 supported X570 chipset for socket AM4 offering the broadest ecosystem readiness in AMD history, with over 50 new motherboard models as well as PCIe 4.0 storage solutions.
- RDNA gaming architecture and AMD Radeon RX 5700-series – RDNA, the next foundational gaming architecture designed to drive the future of gaming, delivers incredible performance, power, and memory efficiency in a smaller package compared to the previous generation Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture. RDNA will power the upcoming 7nm Radeon RX 5700-series graphics cards, which feature high-speed GDDR6 memory and support for the PCIe 4.0 interface.
- Datacenter updates – A demonstration of a 2nd Gen AMD EPYC server platform showed a 2nd Gen EPYC-based processor outperformed two Intel Xeons by more than 2x on the NAMD benchmark. Additionally, AMD and Microsoft Azure announced the achievement of previously unobtainable levels of performance for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) using an Azure HB cloud instance running on a 1st Gen AMD EPYC-processor-based system.
- Dr Su was joined by fellow technology leaders Microsoft Corporate Vice President of OS Platforms Roanne Sones, Asus Chief Operating Officer Joe Hsieh, Acer Co-Chief Operating Officer Jerry Kao and a host of other significant industry players to showcase the breadth and depth of the AMD high-performance computing and graphics ecosystem.
“2019 is off to an incredible start for AMD as we celebrate 50 years of innovation by delivering leadership products to push the limits of what is possible with computing and graphics technology,” said Dr Su. “We made significant strategic investments in next-generation cores, a breakthrough chiplet design approach, and advanced process technologies to deliver leadership 7nm products to our high-performance computing ecosystem. We are extremely excited to kick-off Computex 2019 together with our industry partners as we prepare to bring our next generation of Ryzen desktop and EPYC server processors and Radeon RX gaming graphics cards to market.”
AMD High-Performance Desktop Updates
Continuing its path of PC leadership and industry firsts, AMD announced the 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen desktop processor, the most advanced desktop processor in the world 3 with ground-breaking performance across gaming, productivity, and content creation applications. Based on the new “Zen 2” core architecture with AMD chiplet design approach, 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen desktop processors are expected to offer more performance-critical on-die cache than ever before to unleash elite gaming performance. Additionally, all 3rd Gen Ryzen desktop processors are supported by the world’s first PCIe 4.0 PC readiness for the most advanced motherboards, graphics, and storage technologies available, setting a new standard of performance and providing the ultimate consumer experience. With the 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen desktop processor family, AMD introduced a new category of Ryzen 9 desktop processor with the flagship 12 core/24 thread Ryzen 9 3900X. Pushing the high-performance envelope for socket AM4 by offering leadership performance1, the family is rounded out with 8 core Ryzen 7 models and 6 core Ryzen 5 models.
During the keynote, Dr Su showed various live demonstrations highlighting the leadership performance of the 3rd Gen Ryzen desktop processors versus competitive production parts:
- Ryzen 7 3700X vs. i7-9700K with real-time rendering: The Ryzen 7 3700X offered 1% more single-threaded, and 30% more in multi-threaded performance.
- Ryzen 7 3800X vs. i9-9900K with Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds gameplay: The Ryzen 7 3800X matched the performance of the i9-9900K.5
- Ryzen 9 3900X vs. i9-9920X with Blender Render: The Ryzen 9 3900X beat the Intel i9 9920X by more than 16%.
3rd Gen AMD Ryzen Desktop Processor Line-up and Availability
AMD also introduced a new X570 chipset for socket AM4, supporting the world’s first PCIe 4.0 readiness, which exhibited 42% faster storage performance than PCIe 3.09, enabling high-performance graphics card, networking devices, NVMe drives, and more. With PCIe 4.0 doubling the bandwidth for motherboards with the X570 chipset over PCIe 3.0, PC enthusiasts can gain more performance and flexibility when building custom systems. The X570 offers the broadest ecosystem readiness in AMD history, with over 50 new motherboard models anticipated from ASRock, Asus, Colorful, Gigabyte, MSI, as well as PCIe 4.0 storage solutions from partners including Galaxy, Gigabyte, and Phison. The 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen desktop processors are expected to be available for purchase globally on July 7, 2019.
In addition, major OEMs and System Integrators, including Acer, Asus, CyberPowerPC, HP, Lenovo, and MAINGEAR reinforced strong ecosystem support for the new platforms by announcing plans to offer 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen processor-based gaming desktop systems over the coming months.
AMD High-Performance Gaming Updates
AMD unveiled RDNA, the next foundational gaming architecture that was designed to drive the future of PC gaming, console, and cloud for years to come. With a new compute unit10 design, RDNA is expected to deliver incredible performance, power and memory efficiency in a smaller package compared to the previous generation Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture. It is projected to provide up to 1.25X higher performance-per-clock11 and up to 1.5X higher performance-per-watt over GCN12, enabling better gaming performance at lower power and reduced latency.
RDNA will power the upcoming 7nm AMD Radeon RX 5700-series graphics cards which feature highspeed GDDR6 memory and support for the PCIe 4.0 interface.
During the keynote, Dr Su showcased the power of RDNA and one of the new AMD Radeon RX 5700-series graphics cards in a head-to-head comparison with an RTX 2070 card running a Strange Brigade gameplay demo, beating the competition delivering incredible ~100 FPS gaming. 13
AMD Radeon RX 5700-series graphics cards are expected to be available in July 2019. Learn more at the AMD E3 live stream event on June 10, 2019, at 3 pm PT.
AMD Datacenter Updates
The AMD datacenter business continues to gain traction with customers, winning in application workloads from the biggest cloud environments to exascale supercomputing, and capitalizing on the massive market opportunity for both AMD EPYC and AMD Radeon Instinct™ processors. During the keynote, Dr Su continued the anticipation around the next-generation AMD EPYC processors with the first public competitive demonstration of a 2nd Gen AMD EPYC server platform. The demonstration showed a 2P 2nd Gen AMD EPYC based server vs. a 2P Intel Xeon® 8280-based server running a NAMD Apo1 v2.12 benchmark test. The preproduction 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processor-powered server outperformed the Intel Xeon powered servers by more than 2x on the NAMD benchmark.14
Finally, Microsoft Azure announced the achievement of previously unobtainable levels of performance for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) using an Azure HB cloud instance running on a 1st Gen AMD EPYC-processor-based system. Leveraging the exceptional memory bandwidth of AMD EPYC, Azure HB scaled Siemens Star -CCM+ application across over 11,500 cores using a Le Mans 100 Million Cell simulation, well beyond the never before achieved 10,000 cores goal. “HB-series VMs on Azure is a game changer for HPC in the cloud. For the first time, HPC customers can scale their MPI workloads to tens of thousands of cores with the agility of the cloud and performance and economics that rival on-premise cluster,” said Navneet Joneja, head of product for Azure Virtual Machines, Microsoft Corp. “We look forward to this new Azure offering doing great things for HPC-driven innovation and productivity.”
The 2nd Gen AMD EPYC server processor family is projected to deliver up to 2X the performance-per socket15 and up to 4X the floating performance-per-socket16 over the previous generation. The 2nd Gen AMD EPYC server processor family is expected to launch in Q3 2019.
