How AMD Zen Almost Didn't Make It | Stories of Ryzen, ft. Unreleased CPUs

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Күн бұрын

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This didn't make the final cut for our upcoming, in-depth lab tour of AMD's testing & engineering campus in Austin, Texas, but the stories told (and the unreleased products shown) were too interesting to cut entirely -- so we branched out the discussion. This covers some of AMD Zen's history from a side conversation with Amit Mehra and Bill Alverson at AMD, discussing the many challenges of initial bring-up, products that get pitched and some that don't make it to market, and how Zen almost didn't make the original showing in 2016. AMD's Ryzen CPUs launched to the public in 2017, but this content looks at the behind-the-scenes of what led up to that launch.
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TIMESTAMPS
00:00 - How Zen Almost Didn't Make It
02:20 - The History of Zen
04:17 - ALL HANDS ON DECK
07:43 - Betting the Company
10:57 - The Only One in the World
11:32 - Raven Prototype Laser Problems
13:09 - How X3D Came to Be 16-Core X3D
15:27 - Fusing Explained
16:38 - Unreleased Threadripper
17:18 - Bill Shows Unreleased X3D Performance
19:22 - How an Idea Gets Produced
21:52 - Conclusion for Now
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Host, Writing, Editing: Steve Burke
Camera Operation: Mike Gaglione
Camera, Editing: Vitalii Makhnovets

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@GamersNexus Жыл бұрын

Check back soon for the big lab tour video! Help fund our travel coverage and unique behind-the-scenes discussions! The best way to support our work is through our store: store.gamersnexus.net/ -- grab a Modmat for PC building, a toolkit, a coaster pack, and more! Like our content? Please consider becoming our Patron to support us: www.patreon.com/gamersnexus GamersNexus pays for all of its own travel for on-location coverage. Learn more in our ethics statements and policies here: gamers.nexus/ethics-statements/travel-hotels-amp-events

@xpyr Жыл бұрын

I'm so glad I found your channel after going to LTX 2019.

@Dan-Simms Жыл бұрын

Oh man I can hardly wait for this lab tour to be uploaded, never have I ever wanted to tour a place more.

@Themunit1 Жыл бұрын

awesome, going to stock up on the new coasters for the collection :D btw. mini-ITX-mainboard coaster for big ltt-waterbottles when? :D

@SkillisForNoobs Жыл бұрын

I really love this videos talking with passionate engineers. Seeing the passion they've put into their products is amazing. Keep up the good work!

@forgingfire5831 Жыл бұрын

For reference the original demo for the x3d was a 5950x. Also funny to see they had a nvidia card on a bench

@owensparks5013 Жыл бұрын

I have a feeling this is going to mean more to potential AMD customers than a decade of plastic PR nonsense.

@Mcnooblet Жыл бұрын

I bet majority of customers could care less if a company tickles their sack, compared to creating a quality product that is a great value.

@joemarais7683 Жыл бұрын

I’m actually not so sure. Most people buying a cpu really don’t give a damn about these borderline BTS pieces and really only look at marketing materials and benchmarks, that is if they’re even considering switching brands with gamers specifically don’t do anyways.

@The1commenterguy Жыл бұрын

The enthusiasm they're rubbing off is piercing me 💘

@hunn20004 Жыл бұрын

The Intel engineers are also meganice....but the PR team is just horrendous... They should just let the engineers run both companies and the PR.

@dondraper4438 Жыл бұрын

Not just customers, this is literally computing history. I may not buy an i7 920 in 2023, but knowing that it was the precursor to a decade long dominant stranglehold on x86 is something special. It may not matter to the average person, but those breakthroughs got us to where we are today.

@LordLiquidBaconII Жыл бұрын

It's really cool that AMD allowed their staff to talk about with GN, this really shows how far GN has come!

@doubledigital_ Жыл бұрын

and amd!

@GewelReal Жыл бұрын

@@doubledigital_ Yeah! All those fat margins!

@dgillies5420 Жыл бұрын

Seriously, the best video I have ever seen on this channel !!

@ChairmanMeow1 2 ай бұрын

It says a lot of positive things about AMD as well

@WeirdSeagul Жыл бұрын

what a fantastic video, very rare to get this type of conversation. stuff like this is usually way way later after the engineers have retired

@GamersNexus Жыл бұрын

Agreed! Really glad AMD allows their team to exercise discretion and speak like this.

@labor4 Жыл бұрын

thought this too. unfiltered

@wishusknight3009 Жыл бұрын

I think this may be because LIsa Su is an engineer herself. And perhaps understands how interesting this is.

@itsz2458 Жыл бұрын

@@GamersNexus kzfaq.info/get/bejne/o5aHodqA09Kcm40.html

@ssl3546 Жыл бұрын

@@wishusknight3009 Those two engineers already went to GN's office, they are media-facing. The stuff they showed is cool but either already public knowledge or (talking about Zen A0 bring-up) very old and not especially proprietary.

@KenS1267 Жыл бұрын

Zen has shaken up the computer industry more than anything in at least a decade and perhaps two. The engineers at AMD have every reason to be extremely proud of their design.

@metamon2704 Жыл бұрын

This can not be said enough, if it hadn't been for ZEN we would still be running 4 core cpus.

@KenS1267 Жыл бұрын

@@metamon2704 Not just on the desktop. Look at what Zen has done to the workstation and server world. Prior to Zen the absolute top of the Xeon stack was a Xeon Platinum chip at 28 cores and 56 threads that Intel sold for $13k USD each. Right now you can get a an Epyc 128 core 256 thread CPU for just under $12k USD that performs faster on a per core, per thread and on an IPC basis as well as a per watt basis which really matters in the data center.

@YaKillaCJ Жыл бұрын

6 cores Mainstream, 12 cores Hedt and 24 core Server. Well server may have been lucky and gotten a 32 core Xeon.

@gasoau Жыл бұрын

Litteraly put them back into the game

@warmtoiletseat5596 Жыл бұрын

@@transistorjump919 Nah, 2 cores Mainstream. 4 to 6 cores Enthusiast.

@DrakkarCalethiel Жыл бұрын

Can't wait for the full lab tour! Alone this segment was insanely interesting. So represhing to see huge companies open their doors for media and let the actual engineers talk, not just some crappy marketing guy. IMO, this IS the best marketing a company can do!

@ford24680 Жыл бұрын

100% agree.

@Accessless Жыл бұрын

AMD have had highs and lows through out their history but when you consider just how close the company was to the abyss Ryzen is almost a fable worthy tale of triumph.

@andersjjensen Жыл бұрын

They pretty much told the Grim Reaper "No. We're not ready yet".

@pulsed13 Жыл бұрын

Especially when you remember that the Radeon division isn't exactly doing well either (Polaris was released in 2017, but were getting crushed by NVIDIA's cards from 2016). Their initial attempt to rectify that didn't really work (Vega) too

@wingcommanderbob8268 Жыл бұрын

@@pulsed13 It did though. Vega's desktop gaming iteration wasn't great but it was way more successful in datacentre (where the margins are absurdly high, comparatively) and evolved into the more modern CDNA family which competes pretty well against Nvidia

@Not_interestEd- Жыл бұрын

AMD bet everything on Zen and Radeon, and if it failed, Intel would've had free reign over the CPU market and probably never bother to make faster chips. This isn't a tale of triumph, this is a tale of slaying a God and multiple dragons overnight.

@lexwaldez Жыл бұрын

@@andersjjensen Not today.

@AshtonCoolman Жыл бұрын

This is the best PR AMD could have ever done. I love learning about their history and process in creating these parts. God bless these fellas for trying out X3D on AM4 for gaming. They changed the PC gaming world!

@aurunemaru Жыл бұрын

I can only imagine the look on their faces then the performance results came in, 5800X3D is a monster

@andersjjensen Жыл бұрын

@@aurunemaru "Uh, guys.... GUYS?!?... GUYYYYYS! WE'RE GOING TO WIN SO HARD NOW!!!!". I would have loved to be a fly on the wall at the after-work beer session that day!

@Sabrinahuskydog Жыл бұрын

@@aurunemaru Ehh not really "A monster" I would say. Some games it's quite a lot faster than the normal 5800X, but in a lot of games it's not faster at all. In the games where it is faster, yes, it is "a monster". Also: I own an X570 system and I have considered buying a 5800X3D but since AMD won't let us overclock it and my 5800X runs at 5050 Mhz under PBO when gaming then the 5800X3D locked at 4.5 Ghz would actually be a downgrade for me. If they would of allowed us to overclock the 5800X3D then it would of been amazing and the best AM4 processor ever. Now it's just "Ehh.. sometimes it's great, most of the time it ain't great."

@tilburg8683 Жыл бұрын

5800X3D does oc with pbo

@Sabrinahuskydog Жыл бұрын

@@tilburg8683 Nope. You are incorrect. We can not enable PBO with any X3D processor. Not the 5800X3D and not with any X3D chip from the 7000 series. Someone renting a room in my house bought a 5800X3D in a X570 motherboard and I spent weeks with them trying to overclock it and nothing worked. No PBO at all. Nothing. They can't be overclocked.

@Thx_And_Bye Жыл бұрын

The dual CCD X3D CPU really looks interesting. Love to see the lab tours!

@justvideos3216 Жыл бұрын

Poeple would have bought that. In my opinion it was a mistake to not release it.

@sirsia1st Жыл бұрын

@@justvideos3216 why are they still stress testing it though? i wouldn't think it's just so that guy has something to do. i'm thinking they're still going to release am4 2xCCDs.

@erkinalp Жыл бұрын

@@sirsia1st 5990X3D?

@shadow7037932 Жыл бұрын

@@justvideos3216 Eh, AM4 was a dead platform when they released the X3D on the consumer side. Wouldn't have made sense to add another SKU that could compete against the 58003X3D.

@paranoid9678 Жыл бұрын

@@shadow7037932 they could do it for zen 4 if it works on zen 3 allready

@caseyleedom6771 Жыл бұрын

Thanks for taking a risk to diverge from your normal video format/subject areas. This is a wonderful "History" and "How we got here" video. Kudos to everyone involved.

@vroomzoom4206 Жыл бұрын

I'd rather watch an engineer gush over what they are working on than some multimillion $ ad any day. This was fantastic.

@susanlolamitchell Жыл бұрын

Or flashy CEO keynote on 30 ft screen

@MurCurieux Жыл бұрын

100%

@arthurmoore9488 Жыл бұрын

Right. What gets me is everyone expects things to be perfect, and PR tries to sell it like that. Meanwhile, real engineers will admit things aren't perfect, but they'll also be the first to say that perfect is impossible.

@PegasusTenma1 Жыл бұрын

@@arthurmoore9488 agreed. anyone who’s done undergrad engineering will tell you that.

@jedi9577 Жыл бұрын

These behind the scenes videos are incredible. Lots of interesting/fun tidbits that most of us never know about. Zen A0 running 9MHz memory. Binning 1000s of chips to find only *2* that have the incredible ability to simply *work* at room temp. 3D cache on desktop being a happy accident. Laser etching damaging the cache on Raven Ridge. Unreleased products.

@ThisAintPizzaHut445 Жыл бұрын

Wow! I guess I expected AMD's operations to be more buttoned down. These guys were so down to earth and candid-- awesome to see!

@ironhead2008 Жыл бұрын

They're much smaller than Intel, and it seems they never lost that scrappy attitude.

@GewelReal Жыл бұрын

@@ironhead2008 creativity comes from freedom

@andersjjensen Жыл бұрын

@@ironhead2008 I'd take nerds over neck-ties or leather jackets any day.

@iAmCodeMonkey Жыл бұрын

@@andersjjensen LOL, you can be a nerd and wear a leather jacket. Source: me.

@andersjjensen Жыл бұрын

@@iAmCodeMonkey I know. I ride my MC in full leather gear, but I do not consider myself "a leather jacket". I also wear a neck tie when I can't avoid it.

@pyroslev Жыл бұрын

So, I literally just installed a 5800X3D into my system and I can say thank you to this very happy and giddy guy. The performance I'm getting is well and above what I needed but that I can use it at all is great. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

@thrace_bot1012 Жыл бұрын

you're welcome son

@JamieTDC Жыл бұрын

Scary to think of AMD not being around, as Intel would of had us on 4 cores 8 threads still and on 14 ++++++++ nm process lol

@amvlabs5339 Жыл бұрын

AND charged premium prices for it

@ricsip Жыл бұрын

@@amvlabs5339 Dont want to ruin the party, but amd and intel are both equal. Publically traded mega corps, run not by engineers but by bussinessman (or woman). I bet you'd find equally awesome engineers inside intel, who would share equally interesting behind the stage stories about their own products. Also if you didnt realise, as soon as amd got back into the winning position in the desktop and server race, they immediately made their own unpopular decisions (price increase as soon as zen became popular and performant, ceased the hedt lineup in favor of the more costly threadripper pro etc etc etc). Also if you ask many of the small companies, who are amds bussiness partners e.g. in the embedded market, you'd hear the not-so-nice stories about how badly amd neglects many of their partners. Or a more close to PC desktop users topic: when have you ever seen an AGESA changelog, that properly describes changes made to the firmware? Even the motherboard makers have no clue what amd does in these updates. So yes, while nice to see such engineer interviews, you shouldnt forget that the whole company itself still stinks exactly the same way as intel does. Neither of them are really "better" than the other.

@ChibiTheEdgehog Жыл бұрын

@@ricsiphow to miss the point 101

@ricsip Жыл бұрын

@@ChibiTheEdgehog what is the point?

Жыл бұрын

*would have, not of.

@BraveInstance Жыл бұрын

AM4 has been such a good value proposition. I'm just about to upgrade and realised I can put off a full rebuild by getting a 5800x3d.

@dodolurker Жыл бұрын

Yup. I had a R5 3600 for a few years and this winter I thought about upgrading. And since my motherboard only needed a BIOS update to support 5800X3D, I went with that and I'm happy.

@2528drevas Жыл бұрын

I made the same decision. I upgraded to a 5800X3D and a 6900XT and feel pretty good about not jumping straight into AM5.

@zf8496 Жыл бұрын

@@dodolurker same decision too! im waiting for my 6700XT to arrive!

@dodolurker Жыл бұрын

@@zf8496 Very nice! I decided on a 6800 (non-XT), found a good deal on a new card.

@Alex-zi1nb Жыл бұрын

i was considering 5800x3d but going to just invest in am5 since amd proved themselves imo with am4 and this way ill get ddr5 and all the new pcie crap

@picblick Жыл бұрын

The amount of respect I have for those guys as well as AMD to actually allow this sort of interview is hard to put into words. Absolutely awesome!

@billalverson6168 Жыл бұрын

Thanks! More details to come in the upcoming videos. We hope to be able to share more in the future... we have LOTS more :-) take care!

@tiestofalljays Жыл бұрын

I credit Ryzen’s release with getting me more interested in PCs. It pushed me to learn more about how CPUs actually work, etc. I seem to remember people online saying it “won’t compete with Intel.” Probably was that User Benchmark site trying to astroturf lmao. I’ve been running exclusively AMD CPUs in my primary PC since 1st gen Ryzen :). As a result, I’ve only upgraded my motherboard once. Currently running a mini ITX x570 + Ryzen 9 5900X under an NH-D15. I have fond memories of my Haswell Intel CPU (I’ve still got it in an HTPC, paired with 16gigs of DDR3 and a GTX 1650 4gig haha) and I’ll probably use it until it dies. Yeah sure, a Ryzen ‘APU’ would be far more efficient, but I have this on-hand, and it’d take awhile for electricity costs to break even if I were to swap it out. That Haswell chip was my first ever actual CPU purchase (first time I built a PC). Had just been using laptops before that lol.

@SIPEROTH Жыл бұрын

Wow! Similarities. I have an old i5 Haswell built around a cheap Asrock motherboard(still has the basics) I still use with a 1650 4GB as well. I started with the integrated graphics because when I built it I had no money for a GPU but I wanted 16GB of ram. Then I bought a 1050Ti when they were released for just 150 euro along with a faster hard drive(SSD's still felt too expensive back then) . My God it felt amazing like my PC got wings. Was pretty pleased for a good 4 years. But I started wanting a little more boost so just before the virus mess I found a 1650 cheap at 120 euro and an SSD at a big discount and created a new upgrade around that. Threw the SSD, the 1650, another 16Gb of ram and a new cheap cooler that still manages a few decrees lower than the standard Intel one. Got with it like that until this day. I now just built my first Ryzen system around a 4500. I found it dirt cheap, new with cooler under 70 euro so I got it along with an 80 euro AM4 motherboard. Got an Arc750 and an RX6600 for it as well. Both very cheap cards around 200 something. For now I have the Arc750 in it because it made more sense since it needs Resizable par. Yes is not the strongest rizen built but everything cost very little and am still going from an old 4 core to a newer 6 core and stronger GPU. The difference is there. I am not gonna abandon the old system yet though. I am thinking of giving it one last boost by going to ebay to get the Haswell i7 top chip for it. I checked and they are really cheap now. Just a small fraction of their original price. Then I can put the RX6600 in it or some Nvidia 1660ti or super, without it getting very bottlenecked.

@SvDKILLSWITCH Жыл бұрын

It feels oddly candid for AMD employees to rather publicly acknowledge the existence of both client Chagall for sTRX4 (Threadripper 5000) and client dual-CCD V-Cache chips for AM4 and go "yeah we had 'issues' bringing them to market". It's not really "new" info in the sense that we already more or less knew they were canned for business reasons, but it's interesting to hear it directly from the horse's mouth. Great video, looking forward to seeing the rest!

@tbob2224 Жыл бұрын

Yeah, while I'm super happy to be able to go from a 1600AF to a 5800X3D I can't help but feel like TR users were thrown under the bus.

@canaconn2388 Жыл бұрын

@@tbob2224 they were

@90sMillenial Жыл бұрын

Wow. These behind the scenes in pushing Zen into the market is wild! I already appreciated the engineers and talent that go into these chips. But listening to these crazy stories that went into bringing AM4 to production gave be a much deeper respect.

@filmboy18 Жыл бұрын

It's crazy to hear how close it was to failing.

@wishusknight3009 Жыл бұрын

@@filmboy18 I don't think it would have failed, but the company was running out of time. Delaying the launch of ZEN by one year could have been too little too late until the money ran out to produce them.

@ironhead2008 Жыл бұрын

@@wishusknight3009 They got lucky with the GPU division at the time: they were fairly competitive and I've heard that's what kept them afloat for a bit before Zen.

@ronnie3626 Жыл бұрын

@@ironhead2008 they also produced the APU for the Xbox One and Playstation 4 consoles. AMD Jaguar was not the best in terms of performance but there was nothing more suitable. I am not sure but I think AMD GPUs were competitive back then.

@andersjjensen Жыл бұрын

@@ronnie3626 To be competitive AMD had to price aggressively. They were making a trickle of peanuts that only slightly delayed the fact that they were eating up all the cache they made from selling their fabs. AMD ran in the reds for 8 years straight. If Zen had been delayed they would have croaked.

@Oguz286 Жыл бұрын

Just yesterday I had a conversation with a professor at our university who worked at AMD on the Phenom chips and his stories about the technical details of the chips are very similar to what Amit and Bill shared in this video. It's also really cool to hear these stories because I can relate as a digital ASIC engineer. It's nice to hear I'm not the only one who has to deal with weird problems and trying to figure out how to make a chip work when there are deadlines :D

@MrSchn3ll Жыл бұрын

No Fluff, just realness and passion. This is what sells to enthusiasts, not marketing nonsense.

@billalverson6168 Жыл бұрын

Thanks to everyone for the awesome comments and support! We certainly hope to be able to do more content like this going forward, and the community feedback is definitely very helpful. I'll read every single comment, but won't have time to reply to all unfortunately. We really do appreciate your enthusiasm and feedback! Maybe your comment becomes a future feature :-) Thanks again.. take care all!

@silentdude56k Жыл бұрын

That's great to hear! I wish I had more to add than my own "thank you" for working with GN on these pieces. I cannot overstate how much I love candid interviews with engineers like this. Being able to connect the dots between what was publicly known at the time and internal struggles, successes, and side projects is just something else. I'm glad you seem to be enjoying this as much as we are. My plan was to go AM5 but my old rig decided to bite the dust a few months too early. Being "forced" to build an AM4 rig as a replacement instead wasn't so bad though ;) Loving my 5800X3D!

@TheSorrowedMan Жыл бұрын

You guys are awesome, thanks for sharing your passion.

@reconciliation86 Жыл бұрын

You make he hopeful, thanks so much for your efforts over there!

@billalverson6168 Жыл бұрын

@reconciliation86 😀 thx.. take care!

@Kenneth_James Жыл бұрын

I love how excited Amit is while telling this story. It's infectious.

@PXAbstraction Жыл бұрын

It's so cool seeing people enthusiastically tell stories of something they're clearly so passionate about. So engaging to watch.

@Aggnog Жыл бұрын

Would be really sad to not have gotten ryzen, we'd be at the 10th intel refresh running 1% faster than 5 years ago with 4 cores.

@hoilst265 Жыл бұрын

On the 14+++++++++++++++++++++nm node!

@joemarais7683 Жыл бұрын

Which would also mean we would probably have even more terrible gpus since there’d be no incentive to implement things like RT or DLSS when there’d be no cpu resources for the overhead.

@Aggrofool Жыл бұрын

Just bought my Zen 4 CPU, enjoying it so far, hope this CPU can last me years.

@jtd8719 Жыл бұрын

Totes jelly, Steve. Thanks for allowing us to live vicariously through your 'kid in a candy store' tour. I love that moment when you are told "I had the company's only best working silicon in my backpack on my way to Computex." Big props to AMD for allowing you and their engineering staff to be so candid on the record.

@offspringfan89 Жыл бұрын

You can't go wrong when you have a very knowledgeable host like Steve and excitted employees, specially Amit who was really engaged and honest. I wouldn't mind hearing more war stories of AMD from him. This was amazing, can't wait for the full video. kudos for AMD for letting Steve do the tour and interview engineers instead of marketing/PR staff.

@unifairsum21 Жыл бұрын

People dont normally think about the things people had to go through to make it work they just buy it I always find behind the scences videos fascinating because it shows you just how much work goes into something it's a shame we don't see it more often

@3dprintedodubunga405 Жыл бұрын

I work at the Intel equivalent of this lab. Always wondered how AMD's looked.

@offspringfan89 Жыл бұрын

Cool, hope Intel allows Steve to do a tour as well.

@gabrielvarela5 Жыл бұрын

do you guys get free CPUs for working there? I´ve always wondered that hahaha

@0LoneTech Жыл бұрын

@@gabrielvarela5 It happens, certainly. In particular artifacts like this first batch processor aren't of much use to the company but an amazing conversation piece. I was given a first gen production model of an ASIC system I codesigned (silly thing had over a hundred pipeline stages... the AS was no joke), and just this week struggled with memory system bringup on a more general device. You don't usually get some sort of free snack bar of as many devices as you'd like, but can often get an occasional device by asking nicely.

@KoRbA2310 Жыл бұрын

Ireland or US?

@tarfeef_4268 Жыл бұрын

@@gabrielvarela5when I was there, I was working on GPUs so not quite the same, they were too rare and proprietary to let out of the lab. But there was an internal store with like half off parts. Problem was they were never in stock 🙃 Did get other goodies from the lab before I left though. Just not unreleased silicon, dGPUs were heavily under wraps back then.

@Quizack Жыл бұрын

This is such an amazing surprise! This is why I buy AMD. Look at the passion in their eyes. The failing underdog got Intel to stop resting on its laurels and start competing again. What a great video. Thank you Steve and team!

@billalverson6168 Жыл бұрын

Thanks for the kind words! When I was 10, I told my dad I would be an engineer at AMD. It's been an absolutely wild ride and I wouldn't change a thing!

@ford24680 Жыл бұрын

I love seeing the spirit and excitement from employees as they explain how they got something done. I loved seeing HEDT threadripper actually exists, even if it never launched. This was such a cool video.

@Noobochok Жыл бұрын

Honestly, this is one of the best videos on this channel. Just chit-chatting with a manufacturer about their product history and how things came to be, what issues they had along the road, that's the best stuff you could ever hear about PC parts industry and is just somewhat cozy even. Big love to Bill and Amit.

@mufc1417 Жыл бұрын

Big up Amit , he was carrying AMD on his back, literally!!!

@AdamKoueider Жыл бұрын

The excitement engineers have for the tech that they've put their heart and soul into can't be recreated by any article. It needs to be seen and recorded in person. Thanks GN.

@Geo64x Жыл бұрын

It's already recorded inside a ton of PCs

@dangingerich2559 Жыл бұрын

I WANT that dual X3D CCD chip. I don't care if it doesn't help all that much, I just WANT it, like I want a Corvette.

@SpaceCakeism Жыл бұрын

While I was aware that AMD had bet their company on Ryzen, I wasn't aware of most of the story; quite intriguing to hear it directly from the people who worked on it, and experienced it. Thanks for the story, looking forward to the next pieces; just put together a new AMD system as well, so pretty hyped for this kinda content.

@raymondobouvie Жыл бұрын

I knew there are some stories behind any pivoting products that changes the company, the way Zen changed AMD. And people from company are vivid. Please more content like this - cause as trusted source you share the light on aspects that doesn't get into regular media.

@stevekristoff4365 Жыл бұрын

Really love this type of content. Talking to actual engineers/working devs and the challenges or 'war stories'. It's like our lunchroom conversations here at work. :)

@dreadlock17 Жыл бұрын

This is so cool. You can see the passion emanating from these guys

@billalverson6168 Жыл бұрын

Thanks! we really do love this stuff! take care

@Jay_the_Caffeinator Жыл бұрын

I laughed when I saw the bottle of Bawels near the wooden box on top of the cabinet. Ah, memories of a by gone Era. I am really looking forward to the rest of the lab tour. Thanks, Steve. 😊

@billalverson6168 Жыл бұрын

:-p I'm an OG from the lan party days.. what can I say!? See you at QuakeCon 2023?? I plan to hand out some AM5 CPUs. You heard it here first :-)

@Jay_the_Caffeinator Жыл бұрын

@billalverson6168 Oh, what I wouldn't give to be there for Quakecon. Sadly, I am on the other coast. I was always going underway when the LAN parties were going on then. God, I am old. Lol.

@WyrdieBeardie Жыл бұрын

This has to be one of the most enjoyable pieces (for me) that you've put out in a while. The rest of your videos are also amazing, but this one is chill, informal, approachable and details some of the history behind one of the greatest tech comebacks in history. Thank you for covering this. 😃

@mho... Жыл бұрын

Following & using AMD basically since they broke the 1ghz cpu wall back in the days! sure has been a rollercoaster since then 😉

@2528drevas Жыл бұрын

Same here. I was on a Intel 800EB when the 1Ghz T-Bird came out. AMD ever since.

@djlim4612 Жыл бұрын

Originally i was using Cyrixes (5x86, 6x86, MII), then sadly Cyrix went so i switched to my first AMD build, an awesome Athlon T-Bird. Been using AMD ever since :)

@ruxandy Жыл бұрын

My journey was: Pentium MMX 166 MHz, AMD K6-2 500 MHz, AMD Thunderbird 1.33 GHz, AMD Athlon XP "Thoroughbred" 2200+, AMD Athlon 64 3000+, AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+, Intel Core 2 Duo E7200, Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300, Intel Core I5 7600K, Ryzen 5 3600X, Ryzen 7 5800X3D. To this day, the upgrade from the K6-2 to the Thunderbird is the single biggest jump in performance that I've witnessed and probably ever will. Also, the upgrade to the Core i5 7600K came at the worst time possible and still regret it to this very day. 😅

@scoresandflames Жыл бұрын

@@2528drevas Don't forget the overclocked 600MHz Duron CPUs, many of them were doing 900-1100MHz.

@StachelyPigglyBottom Жыл бұрын

Man I adore content like this. So interesting to hear about the hurdles involved in CPU development. That laser etching issue is hilarious. What a ridiculous thing to try and debug. Can't wait for the next parts in this series!

@PhoticSneezeOne Жыл бұрын

I love when i get to see faces behind our beloved but anonymous tech products. Please keep them coming Steve!

@boomerboy8043 Жыл бұрын

Thanks Steve

@caseychaos3601 Жыл бұрын

This really is awesome to hear from these guys at AMD, and see the parts and the stories related to them. excellent content and I really hope we can see more videos like this in the future from engineers at other companies, especially those as enthusiastic as Amit was in this video

@leeksoup3199 Жыл бұрын

man this is really cool

@GuiGuib81 Жыл бұрын

i definitely remember my 1700x, hold it so many years, clocks were bad for gaming, but the core number was awesome for the price and also the temp was very impressive. I never left amd proc since.

@Strykenine Жыл бұрын

This is one of the coolest things you've done on the channel, and these guys are basically the kind of people who want and need your coverage. Thanks Steve!

@xellaz Жыл бұрын

I remember jumping on the zen ship when it first launched. I bought the Ryzen 8 core 16 threads 1800X for $500. It might not be as fast as the current ones now but it still runs great! My current one now is a 5950X on my main desktop pc and a 5900HX on my mini-pc. I'll be skipping the Ryzen 7000 series and probably won't upgrade for a while. My Ryzen 5950X just runs so good still. 💪

@David_Crayford Жыл бұрын

That was a great watch. Amit Mehra seems like a real character. I have worked with people like this who just love their job and are exciting to be with.

@billalverson6168 Жыл бұрын

I am very honored to have Amit as part of the OC team! He is a genuinely awesome dude! thx

@wishusknight3009 Жыл бұрын

When Zen first came out, I had similar feelings, I thought "this is not bad". And that it was a return to form. It was good enough to consider over intel stuff, even if just to support AMD.

@ssl3546 Жыл бұрын

For compiling C++ it was a godsend. Compiling QT from source took 24 hours even on Zen 1.

@TheGuyWhoDidUrM0M Жыл бұрын

I jumped right into 1st gen ryzen probably 2 months after release. To this date I'm still using the same x370 taichi board with a 5600X

@patlotpotlot6154 Жыл бұрын

@@TheGuyWhoDidUrM0Mwhat a good board, 2017 and still running to this day

@Dowlphin Жыл бұрын

@@TheGuyWhoDidUrM0M I went for a TR 1950X because I was into video rendering at the time. Still very potent to this day. I knew long before that buying a high end system once can be a worthy investment because less effort building one and lasts longer. Had an Asrock Taichi X399 suffer fatal damage after mere days (I don't assume it was the CPU) and had to replace both in part due to lacking support from Asrock. I could have saved money on RAM because aside from RAM overclock rarely ever being worth it, XMP meant more heat generated in the CPU's internal memory controller and thereby impairing the dynamic core overclocking which tries to max out the thermal limit. Plus I didn't want to risk nuking another system through heat load or whatever causes the first one to fail.

@stevenwest1494 Жыл бұрын

It's just a shame AM5 won't mature in the same way, as it's too expensive in mobo, and the memory controller seems to be lacking any upgrade path up. That very expensive X670 is limited to DDR5 6000mhz. You'd think Zen 5 would be a lot more with DDR capabilities, they're well behind Intel.

@Ben-Rogue Жыл бұрын

Seeing the real people behind the product, instead of the PR facade, is seriously cool!

@billalverson6168 Жыл бұрын

Thanks a lot! Take care!

@jeffsmith6659 Жыл бұрын

Ryzen has been a fun ride. My retired 1300x sits on the shelf since I couldn't bring myself to part with all my 1st gens. Great video...Way more fun than a keynote CEO AI sing-along.

@cursedowlsgaming5355 Жыл бұрын

Their is so much more to the story. I want to know more. This was extremely interesting to hear how these things came about. Especially with AMD specifically being they were all but dead in the cpu market. Crazy to think that demo was based off of a single working prototype

@J-Kimble Жыл бұрын

No wonder AMD parts are doing great. The passion going into them is amazing. I'm glad AMD leadership lets these guys do the exploration and actually listens to them when they have an outlandish (but cool) idea.

@oz5150 Жыл бұрын

AMD goated for allowing these interviews. Very cool stuff 👍

@miket64 Жыл бұрын

These conversations showing the processes and challenges behind the scene mean so much to me. Keep up with the great work. Chapeau!

@w00tDr Жыл бұрын

Awesome tour, looking forward to seeing more coverage. I was there in 2012 for AMD's Fan Appreciation Day - didn't get to go upstairs to see the labs, but it was a fun day with lots of demos.

@SeeMoreLevingthon Жыл бұрын

I am flabbergasted at how many people have a mixed reaction to this piece. It's incredibly engaging, interesting, and i would geniunely be happy to watch a documentary-style piece on the Zen-story alone, not to mwntion all thenother cool stuff at these labs. Steve, please get as much i fo as tou can, and share it! I hope im not alone in this but I do think this is an incredible story that deserves to be told.

@forestw785 Жыл бұрын

Love seeing this deep dive! It’s great getting answers to engineering questions that you typically only ever get from assumptions. I hope to see more on these prototypes

@MyAlteredSoul Жыл бұрын

These AMD videos have been my favorite tech content on KZfaq this year! Personal, informative, and nerdy enough to be interesting.

@Charlemagne89 Жыл бұрын

This is pretty cool. Makes total sense that they're looking at basically everything you can think of and more (5950X3D's definitely exist in the lab, so too did updated Threadripper parts, etc) but whether or not they get produced and sold is another matter entirely. It maybe seems like AMD is willing to hear customer feedback on various product ideas though, so I guess it's worth communicating back to them with things you might want. Chances are, whatever you think you want, someone already has a part mocked up in a lab like this anyway and is examining it. It's pretty cool to see these guys are obviously huge computer geeks and want to do cool shit, and that these are some of the guys that helped AMD get to the advanced stages it occupies today.

@jolness1 Жыл бұрын

Love this type of content! Has been so cool to watch the channel grow and that’s a testament to the relentless pursuit of accurate data and unbiased reviews. Even when doing so may hurt the ability to take advertising money from companies who others don’t call out.

@C-M-E Жыл бұрын

It's almost overwhelming how much Austin has developed into the new mecca of tech to the point that you forget how many companies have relocated major offices there until you hear stories like this, or another long-forgotten colleague reaches out to say they're coming to see you soon... Yep, add another checkmark on the board!

@PHOBIAx57x Жыл бұрын

It kind of always was on the hardware side going back to the 90’s. Motorola, Dell, HP, Samsung and AMD were all here. Recently the big software companies have been moving in too so now it’s really taking off. I hate it, too many people now haha can’t wait to move out. It’s basically becoming California 2.0

@C-M-E Жыл бұрын

@@PHOBIAx57x I remember when Motorola came in, I think Dell was there before we arrived, but you're not wrong on the Kalifornia issues! You see it on the roads especially, like a license plate soup; a melting pot of bad habits. We're in the DFW area now which has become a smorgasbord of HQs and major distributor hubs. I'm sure it was great for 'the economy' but cost of living went up 400% in two years to where you can't even move laterally without taking a hit. Like we bought our house in 2011 when it was cheap, just under a hundred k and pretty much gutted it to modernize things through the years. Now you can't even look at the same size house, same year as ours, for less than 300K. Then you include what property tax has done, and insurance, mortgages, etc... Oy vey!

@Jzwiz 2 ай бұрын

Just now watching all the lab tours and stuff like this since im newer to your channel. Loving these videos so much

@Xyberlix Жыл бұрын

That was the fastest a 20 minute video has been for me in quite some time. These kind of interviews are just so fun and interesting to listen to. Wish it was at least twice as long. :P

@Schmidt_Smith Жыл бұрын

I AM REALLY EXCITED FOR FULL TOUR. Those stories behind the scenes are amazing!

@versita3827 Жыл бұрын

You can really feel their enthusiasm. I love it

@ShoutaFuwano Жыл бұрын

This was one of my favorite videos that you guys have released. It's interesting to hear these kinds of stories from the people who lived through it.

@D4RKWingsS Жыл бұрын

Its always great to see how the background of how products started, great work at choosing to do a video about such a topic and hope there will be more of this kind for other products.

@dennydravis8758 Жыл бұрын

Its weird to say, being how low key this entire video segment was, but this might be one of the most important conversations about AMD ever. Because its the facts from behind the curtain, not benchmarks or marketing, but the people who make those things happen.

@kimberlylewis5820 Жыл бұрын

Amit and Bill seem so down to earth and understand the DIY market. I hope we get some interviews with them.

@billalverson6168 Жыл бұрын

Thanks for your kind words! We are true enthusiasts, and we very often consider the community feedback as we develop new OC features in particular. We definitely hope to share more stories in the future. We have LOTS of stories :-) Take care!

@PegasusTenma1 Жыл бұрын

@@billalverson6168 great job on everything Bill and thank you for the 5800X3D. This thing is a monstrosity and crushes any game or workload I can possibly throw at it!

@drmohammedalmasri Жыл бұрын

The guy talks with actual excitement, he seems to both love his job and be a fan of GN!

@SmokedBarbecue Жыл бұрын

I really liked this computex because how some companies open to tour like this. Kudos to AMD, InWin and PowerColor (also others i am sure missed ) for making this possible.

@cozy_kat Жыл бұрын

I hope this has some coverage of AMD K12, such a shame that never made it to market

@jackrabbitping Жыл бұрын

I'd like to think they are working on arm chips now

@sihamhamda47 Жыл бұрын

Yeah I was hyped for that news back then, because it was giving the clue that the AMD K12 would be a potential "Apple M1 killer"

@dondraper4438 Жыл бұрын

@@sihamhamda47 Didn't really know about ARM back then so I was over the top that they went x86 instead. Ironically, Zen is WHY I started learning about CPU architectures/designs, and x86/ARM/VIA. Going from CMT to SMT also had me feeling a kid on Christmas Eve

@erkinalp Жыл бұрын

@@jackrabbitping Ryzen PSP has an ARM core in it.

@GregorMima Жыл бұрын

Cheers guys, amazing content. Really like AMD, imo they are the real engineering company. Hope they can fix their GPU dept!

@GamersNexus Жыл бұрын

Thank you for the support!

@JJfan48 Жыл бұрын

3:00 look how excited they are to mention the tray, love seeing companies so proud of their product like this, as they should be

@billalverson6168 Жыл бұрын

my guy, Amit! :-) thx

@BeardedFrog Жыл бұрын

This video was awesome! These guys were great. The stories about the history of how it all went down, and the back end stuff was truly fascinating (and often hilarious). Always been a fan without being as far as an illogically loyal fanboi of AMD. They have a lot of great down to earth people working there, and always have. I sort of grew up/got into PCs because of AMD. Back in high school overclocking and playing around with the Athlon XPs, trying to go for records volt modding my DFI infinity and so on. Iirc I managed 270 FSB with a 10x multi on a mobile 2500 athlon xp back when you could slot those in desktop boards. AMD was so much more approachable/entrance friendly than Intel at the time. Stuck with em till they became pretty much impossible to go with over intel (core i7 920 was about the time I went back to intel). Had a lot of good experiences with them and their support for a while, but had to jump ship at that point. Back on AMD currently though for my gaming rig. The 5900X was the first AMD proc I have bought since the 9950BE procs. Probably going to go to a 7800X3D system soon too. It's good for everyone that Ryzen became successful, and we have proper competition once again. If only we had that level of competition and closeness in the GPU segment. Anyway, I really loved hearing these stories, and they were very well told. It really felt like a movie/documentary style of history telling.

@jstriker90 Жыл бұрын

I love watching people explain stuff that they are truly passionate about. These arent the people that dictate price or marketing, instead they design the awesome tech that we all get to enjoy.

@SAKTHITech Жыл бұрын

Would love to watch a similar piece on Intel Arc one day. Bringing up a GPU from scratch must not be an easy feat too

@farrez_gump Жыл бұрын

The last video with these guys was great , hopefully you can get them back at your Lab again for some OC stuff , RIP JAY

@adomingues00 Жыл бұрын

Loved the video, it's fascinating to actualy know about the creation process of products we have at home. The AMD guys were realy cool to listen, and makes the whole company look more like human beings instead of corporate PR-machines. I always love to listen to engineers more than Marketing people. Looking forward to the next videos.

@Faitzer Жыл бұрын

The amount of love they have for what they did and do is amazing, its contagious, it motivates me, it makes me happy, I love people like this, even if you don't understand much of the topic, or don't even like it, seeing people so happy and passionate for what they do is so great, I love these things, just look at Amit, he doesn't stop smiling talking about all of it ♥

@billalverson6168 Жыл бұрын

Thanks very much! I can assure you that we are true enthusiasts and really do love this stuff. I will never forget the very first time that I met Amit. He was in town, here in Austin, and heard about the crazy stuff we were doing in my lab... He stopped by the lab and I've simply never been able to get rid of him since 🙂 Be motivated and keep pushing! Take care

@Faitzer Жыл бұрын

@@billalverson6168 Wow, thank you so much for your response Bill! you are great, and contribute to things I love in such a meningful way, thank you for all you do and be sure that you motivate me to keep going and learning. I truly hope you have a beatiful day and life, you two rock :)

@ragincaveman Жыл бұрын

Thanks for the shout out Bill @20:36 :)

@TheMirkosch Жыл бұрын

I love this kind of videos where you talk to "the experts"/ the people actually doing the work. Be it this kind of behind the scenes or "just" a talk with der8auer! You(as in Steve) also have agreat way of doing this kind of videos, really looking forward to the whole video series coming up!

@brianm.595 Жыл бұрын

I bought 2 bulldozer parts to help amd get to this point. Before that i had a couple of athlon chips but the bulldozers, that was purely to help amd not go bankrupt. Intel would be charging us 2000 bucks a cpu today if there were no competition. This was a cool video, thanks for doing it.

@Dracossaint 11 ай бұрын

I get where your coming from, but don't do stuff like that for multi million dollar companies. Your time and money is more precious then that

@69Xerosis Жыл бұрын

Great insight! You can almost feel the pride and excitement they have in their work.

@billalverson6168 Жыл бұрын

Thanks a lot! we really do love this stuff :-) take care!

@HotBeeFF21 Жыл бұрын

For someone who bought Gen 1 Ryzen in April of 2017 and had 0 issues this is crazy to hear the stories of these engineers. Also bought AM5 April of 2023 and its been a pleasure. These guys work goes very appreciated. Amazing products.

@Nelthalin Жыл бұрын

Very nice to hear all. The story's behind the products and how difficult 8t can be to get chips running with early silicon. Already heard some story's about previous architecture buts it was nice to hear the story of Zen. Amd came a ver long way!

@cederian Жыл бұрын

Every time Jim Keller goes back to AMD they engineer something amazing that leaps generations or stop stagnation (x64 and high core cpus)

@dead-claudia Жыл бұрын

even in other companies, everything he touches becomes gold. in his short stint in apple, a4 and a5 kickstarted apple's mobile performance dominance. at tesla, the accelerators he helped design supercharged their self-driving performance. he's now the ceo of tenstorrent, an ai chip startup, and he's also concurrently working with sam zeloof on a unique fab design in atomic semi, so he's not likely returning to amd anytime soon

@LiLBitsDK Жыл бұрын

I for one are very glad Ryzen made it... Having had a 1700, 3600, 5600, very good processors... super interesting video for sure... shame they didn't do the 4 mem channel AM4 thingie :D

@buckhammer5897 Жыл бұрын

This is such a cool video. Seeing the people behind the scenes and the hype hits so much harder than watching any PR video at a conference.

@SaltyNomad Жыл бұрын

This is my favourite type of content, the video with KingPin is the best video I've seen. This and also the live stream when you opened all the cpu's everyone sent in. Such cool content.

@Power-Wiesel Жыл бұрын

Looks really exciting. Thanks for the video guys ❤

@BoxBoxBoxGaming Жыл бұрын

Bill and Amit are my new favorite people

@billalverson6168 Жыл бұрын

:-p Thanks for the kind words! take care

@maxsmith108 Жыл бұрын

Crazy how recent Ryzen came to life...only 2016, feels like just yesterday...and to see where this same line of chips is now is pretty nuts.

@pvtnewb Жыл бұрын

My first Ryzen part was a Raven APU and safe to say that I became a huge fan that day, several years ago. I've always been a single chip/no dGPU laptop user since most work that I do was more cpu-heavy, and that 2500U was a very awesome chip for its time and for the price, especially if you bump up the power limit.

@billalverson6168 Жыл бұрын

That first Zen APU wasn't without its own struggles, that's for sure. But as soon as it was mature enough, I set up a media center system at home for indepth dogfooding and it was a great machine. I updated to Cezanne just before release, using the Asrock Deskmini A300 , for the same purpose. The at-home testing spawned several enhancements as well. Both sysyems were excellent for media and emulation. Take care!

@Hairybarryy Жыл бұрын

They should still release the 5950X3D with dual CCD X3D. They would sell fast!

@scarletspidernz Жыл бұрын

nah it maybe Zen 5 8950X 3DX2 😁

@DFX4509B Жыл бұрын

I kinda like the idea of taking some of the design that's been going into the monster APUs that AMD's been playing with in the datacenters as part of the Instinct line, and scaling it way down for home gaming use, just replacing the CDNA3 IGP cores with RDNA3

@scarletspidernz Жыл бұрын

@@DFX4509B that's basically what the Zen4 dragon range and Zen5 fire/strix Apus will be, basically coming up to rx6500/rx6600 levels I believe,