Will the underdog of the microprocessor market finally prevail?
By Abhijit Asad
The desktop/laptop microprocessor market has been dominated for nearly two decades by silicon giant Intel, and only one rival has managed to put a noticeable dent in their armor during this entire time. Advanced Micro Devices, popularly known as AMD, first started making consumer-grade CPUs since the mid-’90s, launching the K5 processor as a direct competitor to Intel’s new Pentium series of fifth-generation CPUs. Following the success of the K5, AMD subsequently released the new K6 family of CPUs, which proved to be stiff competition for their Intel counterparts, and it was with the K6-2 that AMD really managed to stand out as Intel’s main opponent.
Building their momentum steadily, AMD went on to make several much-loved processors that would go down in history for their innovative nature, including the first consumer-grade 64-bit processor, which ushered in a new era of computer technology for the entire industry. Over time, they amassed a dedicated user base, which only grew further after they acquired graphics technology titan ATI and began developing GPUs (graphics processing units, or graphics cards in laymen’s terms) of their own. ‘Team Red’ (thus nicknamed because of their fiery red branding scheme) was becoming a very big deal indeed.
However, Intel wasn’t planning on taking this barrage sitting down, and they stepped up their game considerably, developing immensely capable yet efficient processors that delivered superior performance compared to AMD’s chips, while consuming less energy and emitting less heat. Fortunately, Intel’s higher pricing of its processors allowed AMD to take over a considerable portion of the budget market, where it continues to reign supreme as a shining example of ‘you get what you pay for’. While AMD’s processors (as well as their GPUs, for that matter) are not lacking in power, for quite some time, they have been ridiculed for their absurd power consumption and absurd heat emission levels, which can potentially cause computer motherboards to start melting. Dedicated AMD users often compensate for this using high-end cooling solutions, but that merely covers up part of the problem instead of making it actually go away.
Building their momentum steadily, AMD went on to make several much-loved processors that would go down in history for their innovative nature, including the first consumer-grade 64-bit processor, which ushered in a new era of computer technology for the entire industry.
However, AMD has been making some big changes lately, as clearly evidenced by the arrival of their new Polaris series of graphics cards, which are not just powerful, but are also considerably more efficient and run much cooler than their predecessors. AMD has also been mentioning a new family of CPUs that they have been developing for quite some time to replace its existing range of room heaters ‒ codenamed Zen. However, it should be noted that the CPUs will be marketed under an entirely new brand by the name of Ryzen, which is subtly reminiscent of the company’s Radeon range of GPUs. The Ryzen CPUs are being targeted primarily at the desktop and server computing markets, and are built keeping performance in mind, with even the slowest among their lineup being clocked at base frequencies of 3.4 GHz or higher.
While clock frequencies alone is not a sure-shot indicator of performance, it has been confirmed that the Ryzen family CPUs will have eight cores each, capable of simultaneously handling 16 process threads, in stark contrast to Intel’s more orthodox quad-core 8-thread offerings (not considering the prohibitively expensive ‘Extreme Edition’ i7 CPUs, which are more enthusiast-grade than consumer-grade). It is expected that Ryzen CPUs would play an instrumental role in helping octa-core CPUs becoming mainstream, which means it is safe to assume that processor technology would take a massive leap forward, both in terms of speed and multiprocessing.
It should be noted that the Ryzen series will not be AMD’s first foray into octa-core territory, as evidenced by some of their old FX series of processors. However, the FX series was notorious for their inefficiency, and Intel’s i7 chips had safely mopped the floor with them in terms of performance despite having half the number of cores. In order to minimize power drain and thermal output, the Ryzen processors have been designed from the ground up to be far more efficient, and they will also make use of an entirely new and optimized motherboard architecture called AM4 instead of attempting to recycle technological artifacts from the previous generation in the name of establishing backward-compatibility. This much-needed move would make it possible for AMD to establish a level playing field and compete evenly with Intel on all markets, be it for super-stable computers for office use or enthusiast machines built for overclocking.
It should come as no surprise that Ryzen utilizes several new proprietary technologies. One of them, SenseMI, will allow it to respond rapidly to changes in voltage, speed and temperature and adjust the power consumption accordingly for load and idle states. Another technology, Precision Boost, sounds like an overclocker’s dream come true, because it allows for precise scaling of CPU frequency in tiny 25-MHz increments (as opposed to typical 100-MHz increments), allowing an overclocker to find the perfect sweet spot for his/her processor and squeeze maximum performance from it without sacrificing stability in the process.
One of the most interesting features of Ryzen CPUs is that it can take full advantage of advanced cooling solutions, and ramp up its performance accordingly to take advantage of the added headroom. In a sense, this means that they would be capable of automatically overclocking themselves under ideal thermal circumstances without requiring any sort of initiative or intervention on the part of the user. And if that’s not all, the CPU will also make use of a neural network-type predictive system to observe the software instructions which it has to execute the most frequently, and adjust its internal pathways accordingly over time to enable their swiftest execution.
Ryzen’s benchmarks are also very promising, as they have shown that they can go head to head with an Intel i7-6900K Extreme Edition CPU and deliver equivalent levels of performance, while costing substantially less.
While the actual Ryzen CPUs are yet to be released into the hands of reviewers (and eventually consumers), what we have learned about them to date seems to be extremely promising, and if they come to be true, Intel is up for some very tough competition indeed. While this has already raised the expectations of AMD devotees without question, the recent reveal of further details on the Zen microarchitecture along with leaked performance benchmarks have led even to Intel enthusiasts becoming cautiously excited about the possible appearance of a proper competitor to Intel’s CPUs in a long time, especially after the relatively lackluster performance of their Kaby Lake series of chips.
