AMD might bring back the 16-core Threadripper with Genesis Peak

[Pete Flint]

Something to look forward to: AMD's Ryzen Threadripper 5000 series, Genesis Peak is expected to be announced in the coming weeks and a recent leak suggests that the 16-core version of the HEDT chip might make a comeback. This is anomalous since their Ryzen 5950X already boasts 16-cores, so assuming the information is legitimate, we'll have to see if AMD's assessment about demand for this core-count plays out.

As with previous Ryzen generations, AMD will be following up its successful Ryzen 5000 series launch with Genesis Peak, its line of high-end desktop (HEDT) Threadripper CPUs leveraging the new Zen 3 architecture.

In the first two Threadripper incarnations, the lowest tier HEDT part AMD sold was a 16-core, 32-thread chip, boasting more cores than the highest-tier, 8-core consumer parts. The following release cycle saw the 16-core, Ryzen 3950X enter the top of the consumer category, with the next best chip being Castle Peak’s 24-core, Threadripper 3960X.

It seems during this cycle however, AMD might be keen to bring back the 16-core Threadripper SKU while still selling the Ryzen 5950X, its 16-core consumer chip. The information comes from a tweet by Yuri Bubliy, otherwise known as 1usmus and developer of Clock Tuner for Ryzen, who published a HEX code riddle, that when converted to ASCII, reads “Genesis 16 cores.”

I think some of you will want to solve this riddle.

47454e4553495320313620434f524553

— Yuri Bubliy (@1usmus) January 1, 2021

If this proves right, we can assume that AMD has found a sweet spot at the 16-core mark, but enough of the market demands the high caches, quad channel support, and other professional features that come with HEDT chips and the TR4 chipset that they feel is worth making both SKUs. That said, we do not know if Genesis Peak will support the current TR4 chipset, or if AMD will require something new this cycle.

Another mystery will be the naming scheme of this rehashed chip since the Ryzen 5950X has already taken the nomenclature that the Threadripper x950X once held.

Time will tell once it is released, and we pray AMD doesn’t make it more confusing for consumers than it has to be. As this is an early leak, there is no sign of a release date, but AMD is expected to talk about Genesis Peak this month at CES 2021.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/88140-amd-might-bring-back-16-core-threadripper-genesis.html

 

[yRaz]

If memory channels, motherboard features or PCI-e lanes are more important than cores than a 16core threadripper absolutely makes sense. And lets not forget, 16 cores is still a stupid amount of cores even if it has become common place

 

[Irata]

If this allows AMD to sell two Zen 3 chiplets for a higher price, why not ?

This may even tempt some to spend a bit extra and get a 16C Threadripper instead of a 5950x ‚just because‘.

 

[MasterMace]

I'm thinking customers arent liking spending $750-800 on a CPU (5950x) only to find out they spent all that extra money without receiving any of the HEDT benefits, as it's still on the mainstream boards. Imagine building a $4000 rig and having it limited to mainstream boards. The bottom end HEDT for AMD is $1400, which basically says AMD is defining HEDT's price at over $7000.

Want more than 24 pcie lanes, or quad channel memory, or more than 8 native SATA ports? you'll need to spent $1400 on a CPU -and- $450 on a motherboard minimum.

I liked AMD bringing in competition, but their pricing scheme this generation is ****ed.

 

[yRaz]

I'm thinking customers arent liking spending $750-800 on a CPU (5950x) only to find out they spent all that extra money without receiving any of the HEDT benefits, as it's still on the mainstream boards. Imagine building a $4000 rig and having it limited to mainstream boards. The bottom end HEDT for AMD is $1400, which basically says AMD is defining HEDT's price at over $7000.

Want more than 24 pcie lanes, or quad channel memory, or more than 8 native SATA ports? you'll need to spent $1400 on a CPU -and- $450 on a motherboard minimum.

I liked AMD bringing in competition, but their pricing scheme this generation is ****ed.

I don't really care about the SATA ports, but the PCIe lanes really bother me. Throw a graphics card in, am M.2 drive and some add in card and you've used them all. For me I've always had a boot drive, games drive and my storage drive. 250gb ssd for boot, 1tb m.2 for games and 2x4tb HDD raid for storage.

 

[Squid Surprise]

I look forward to seeing the 5990....

 

[nodfor]

I don't really care about the SATA ports, but the PCIe lanes really bother me. Throw a graphics card in, am M.2 drive and some add in card and you've used them all. For me I've always had a boot drive, games drive and my storage drive. 250gb ssd for boot, 1tb m.2 for games and 2x4tb HDD raid for storage.

Don't know that much about HEDT, but since even for an RTX 3090 PCI3.0 x16 is "enough", can't you have a GPU use 8x instead of 16x on a PCI 4.0? Without losing more than 2-3% perf? And free up those PCI 4.0 slots?

 

[QuantumPhysics]

What good is all those cores if the games coming out don't use them?

 

[nnguy2]

I'm thinking customers arent liking spending $750-800 on a CPU (5950x) only to find out they spent all that extra money without receiving any of the HEDT benefits, as it's still on the mainstream boards. Imagine building a $4000 rig and having it limited to mainstream boards. The bottom end HEDT for AMD is $1400, which basically says AMD is defining HEDT's price at over $7000.

Want more than 24 pcie lanes, or quad channel memory, or more than 8 native SATA ports? you'll need to spent $1400 on a CPU -and- $450 on a motherboard minimum.

I liked AMD bringing in competition, but their pricing scheme this generation is ****ed.

Imagining spending all that money to buy a 3080 only for nvidia to come with 3080ti with almost double the ram...

 

[yRaz]

Don't know that much about HEDT, but since even for an RTX 3090 PCI3.0 x16 is "enough", can't you have a GPU use 8x instead of 16x on a PCI 4.0? Without losing more than 2-3% perf? And free up those PCI 4.0 slots?

Let's use a 5800x and a 3080 for this example and use the MSRP. The idea of loosing 2-3% performance after paying $450 for a cpu to power my $700 graphics card just because I have too many m.2 cards is absurd.

Maybe someone can explain this to me, but what on a CPU is physically limiting how many PCIe lanes you can have? If a 5600x can have the same amount as a 5950x then I say nothing. 24PCIe lanes seems like an arbitrary number and people paying big money for CPUs shouldn't be limited by it. For someone with a 5600x 24 lanes might be fine. If I'm paying a $1000 for a 16 core cpu then maybe 24 lanes isn't really enough

 

[Squid Surprise]

Don't know that much about HEDT, but since even for an RTX 3090 PCI3.0 x16 is "enough", can't you have a GPU use 8x instead of 16x on a PCI 4.0? Without losing more than 2-3% perf? And free up those PCI 4.0 slots?

If you’re paying that much, “enough” is not enough.... you should be able to enable everything...

 

[Squid Surprise]

What good is all those cores if the games coming out don't use them?

This is for HEDT.... if all you’re doing is gaming, you are wasting your money....

 

[Gars]

Not every one here is gamer, right?
some of us are enthusiasts, looking for the pure performance - combining the right parts for the best purpose
I believe, that the people learn from the mistakes they made (like me), and they need to make an informed choice before buying
but the more important is that they read all the stuff here, and that made their choice informed - both the TechSpot articles and the comment section.

 

[ColdSoup]

What good is all those cores if the games coming out don't use them?

Is this meant to be a rhetorical question?

Gaming is not the only use for a CPU.

 

[Tom Yum]

Let's use a 5800x and a 3080 for this example and use the MSRP. The idea of loosing 2-3% performance after paying $450 for a cpu to power my $700 graphics card just because I have too many m.2 cards is absurd.

Maybe someone can explain this to me, but what on a CPU is physically limiting how many PCIe lanes you can have? If a 5600x can have the same amount as a 5950x then I say nothing. 24PCIe lanes seems like an arbitrary number and people paying big money for CPUs shouldn't be limited by it. For someone with a 5600x 24 lanes might be fine. If I'm paying a $1000 for a 16 core cpu then maybe 24 lanes isn't really enough

The IO controller on the 5000 series Ryzen processors is limiting you to 32 PCI-E lanes, and AM4 pinout is further limiting you to 24. Epyc use a much larger IO core (416mm2 versus 125mm2 for Ryzen) that provides the 128 PCI-E and quad channel memory controllers. Threadripper uses the same IO core as Epyc, though likely using failed Epyc IO cores that can't provide the full 128 PCI-E lanes to improve yield.

AM5 may increase available PCI-E lanes but unlikely, there seems very little need for increased IO at the consumer level (especially with Gen4), and if it is important to you, that is why Threadripper and Epyc exist.

 

[DonquixoteIII]

"That said, we do not know if Genesis Peak will support the current TR4 chipset.... we pray AMD doesn’t make it more confusing for consumers..."

ROFL...

 

[yRaz]

The IO controller on the 5000 series Ryzen processors is limiting you to 32 PCI-E lanes, and AM4 pinout is further limiting you to 24. Epyc use a much larger IO core (416mm2 versus 125mm2 for Ryzen) that provides the 128 PCI-E and quad channel memory controllers. Threadripper uses the same IO core as Epyc, though likely using failed Epyc IO cores that can't provide the full 128 PCI-E lanes to improve yield.

AM5 may increase available PCI-E lanes but unlikely, there seems very little need for increased IO at the consumer level (especially with Gen4), and if it is important to you, that is why Threadripper and Epyc exist.

Seeing as how you didn't understand what I was trying to say I will spell it out very plainly for you. I shouldn't have to drop $2000+ on a threadripper system if I want to run an extra NVME SSD. This is even more ridiculous when you consider the 5950x puts you in threadripper system territory pricewise. Yes, it might be on the IO die but AMD just seemingly choose a number. It's not that anything about the number of cores or pins has anything to do with the number of PCIe lanes.

It was one thing when AMD was the "budget underdog" so allowances could be made. However, They're competing on the highend price of things with highend prices. There really isn't any room for them to recycle IO dies at this price point considering everything basically runs on the PCIe bus now.

 

[Tom Yum]

Seeing as how you didn't understand what I was trying to say I will spell it out very plainly for you. I shouldn't have to drop $2000+ on a threadripper system if I want to run an extra NVME SSD. This is even more ridiculous when you consider the 5950x puts you in threadripper system territory pricewise. Yes, it might be on the IO die but AMD just seemingly choose a number. It's not that anything about the number of cores or pins has anything to do with the number of PCIe lanes.

It was one thing when AMD was the "budget underdog" so allowances could be made. However, They're competing on the highend price of things with highend prices. There really isn't any room for them to recycle IO dies at this price point considering everything basically runs on the PCIe bus now.

Well, you asked what on the CPU limited PCI-E lane availability, I just explained it to you. As to whether AMD should offer more lanes on the 5950X whilst somehow still maintaining AM4 compatibility (I'm assuming that is one of your requirements given you aren't happy to pay for a sTR4 motherboard), when I would have thought that was pretty obvious. AM4 has only ever supported 24 lanes, that is all it is wired for. To support more would require a new socket. When AM4 was released, intel only supported 20 lanes on its consumer boards. Intel still only support 20 from the CPU on consumer boards. So I'm not sure what you expect AMD to do, they are already offering more lanes from the CPU at a higher PCI-E gen (until Rocketlake), and they offer HEDT solutions for those that need more. More lanes would increase the cost of the IO die, yet I'm assuming you don't want the price of this theoretical 5950x to go up, which leads to the conclusion that you want AMD to offer more lanes than they already do, more than intel provides, purely because they are the underdogs? That seems quite entitled. Do you get annoyed at Toyota for not selling a Camry with a Ferrari-engine and carbon fibre chassis for $25k?

 

[yRaz]

Well, you asked what on the CPU limited PCI-E lane availability, I just explained it to you. As to whether AMD should offer more lanes on the 5950X whilst somehow still maintaining AM4 compatibility (I'm assuming that is one of your requirements given you aren't happy to pay for a sTR4 motherboard), when I would have thought that was pretty obvious. AM4 has only ever supported 24 lanes, that is all it is wired for. To support more would require a new socket. When AM4 was released, intel only supported 20 lanes on its consumer boards. Intel still only support 20 from the CPU on consumer boards. So I'm not sure what you expect AMD to do, they are already offering more lanes from the CPU at a higher PCI-E gen (until Rocketlake), and they offer HEDT solutions for those that need more. More lanes would increase the cost of the IO die, yet I'm assuming you don't want the price of this theoretical 5950x to go up, which leads to the conclusion that you want AMD to offer more lanes than they already do, more than intel provides, purely because they are the underdogs? That seems quite entitled. Do you get annoyed at Toyota for not selling a Camry with a Ferrari-engine and carbon fibre chassis for $25k?

Well if you look at threadripper vs threadripper pro they do show you that they can easily add more PCIe lanes on the same socket. So 1) AMD either doesn't sell HEDT products on their AM4 sockets or 2) They put a new IO die on that adds more PCIe lanes. When paying $1000 for a CPU they should be able to bury the cost of the IO die in there somewhere. I would liken this to Ferrari selling you $200,000 sports car with a Camry engine.

And my point with "for those that need more" is that the industry is putting everything on the PCIe bus now, the average consumer now needs more PCIe lanes.

 

[Tom Yum]

Well if you look at threadripper vs threadripper pro they do show you that they can easily add more PCIe lanes on the same socket. So 1) AMD either doesn't sell HEDT products on their AM4 sockets or 2) They put a new IO die on that adds more PCIe lanes. When paying $1000 for a CPU they should be able to bury the cost of the IO die in there somewhere. I would liken this to Ferrari selling you $200,000 sports car with a Camry engine.

And my point with "for those that need more" is that the industry is putting everything on the PCIe bus now, the average consumer now needs more PCIe lanes.

Threadripper Pro uses the same socket as Threadripper, because both use the same (physical) socket as Epyc which already supports 8 memory channels and 128 PCI-E lanes. The only difference is purely artificial, there is a ID pin that senses the CPU ID, and prevents SP3 boards using Threadripper and vice versa. That has no bearing on AM4 which has never supported more than 24 PCI-E lanes from the CPU. Remember, AM4 has 1331 pins, sTRX4 has 4094 pins, more than 3 times as many.

It seems that your issue is with AMD selling a 16 core CPU on AM4, and that somehow that means AMD should automatically increase the number of PCI-E lanes for some reason because 16 cores = HEDT (in your eyes). That is not how AMD see it, for AMD Threadripper = HEDT, AM4 = consumer, and Epyc = server. That us consumers have the choice of high performance CPU's on consumer hardware to my mind should be welcomed. Intel will happily sell you a more expensive, lower performance 10980XE if you really want to live that >10 cores = HEDT dream.

 

[mikaelad]

Doesn't the current Threadripper family already range from 12 cores to 64 cores and include the 16 core model?

At least the Lenovo P620 is offered with the following CPUs:
Threadripper PRO 3945WX = 12 cores
Threadripper PRO 3955WX = 16
Threadripper PRO 3975WX = 32
Threadripper PRO 3995WX = 64

 

[Irata]

What good is all those cores if the games coming out don't use them?

Multi tasking? Not having to worry much what else is running in the background is a nice convenience, IO also takes up CPU capacity and those are all things that imo are not reflected in sanitized benchmarks.

Yes, it might be on the IO die but AMD just seemingly choose a number. It's not that anything about the number of cores or pins has anything to do with the number of PCIe lanes.

It was one thing when AMD was the "budget underdog" so allowances could be made. However, They're competing on the highend price of things with highend prices. There really isn't any room for them to recycle IO dies at this price point considering everything basically runs on the PCIe bus now.

But AMD has already been offering better IO as others have pointed out. You get four additional PCIe lanes from the CPU plus high speed USB ports from the CPU that the competition does not offer.
If you have X570, you have double the bandwidth from the CPU to the chipset which gives you additional lanes for nVME or Sata drives.

All the extra lanes need to be mapped to the socket pins and traced on the mainboard, so I don‘t think it‘s an arbitrary number.

 

[theruck]

What good is all those cores if the games coming out don't use them?

MS Office will hapily use them all

 

[Austinturner]

I'm thinking customers arent liking spending $750-800 on a CPU (5950x) only to find out they spent all that extra money without receiving any of the HEDT benefits, as it's still on the mainstream boards. Imagine building a $4000 rig and having it limited to mainstream boards. The bottom end HEDT for AMD is $1400, which basically says AMD is defining HEDT's price at over $7000.

Want more than 24 pcie lanes, or quad channel memory, or more than 8 native SATA ports? you'll need to spent $1400 on a CPU -and- $450 on a motherboard minimum.

I liked AMD bringing in competition, but their pricing scheme this generation is ****ed.

You may not like it, but they are not targeting the same customers, ryzen targets people for whom the performance of their workstation cpu doesn’t change their business’s profitability (amateur streamers, gamers etc). Threadripper targets people who make more money from higher cpu performance (professional production studios/ independent producers, engineers running simulations etc), therefore both amd and intel will try to switch to value based pricing where they take a share of the extra profit buyers can make with their product’s extra performance.

So what if its $7k if you make an extra $50k profit in the two years you operate it?

in this scenario as a chip maker you MUST limit the performamce of the consumer line to make sure that most professionals can make more money using your pro line, if you didn’t limit PCI-e for example, a bunch of professionals could be happy with a 5950x which is priced in the competitive consumer category.

 

[Makste]

Threadripper Pro uses the same socket as Threadripper, because both use the same (physical) socket as Epyc which already supports 8 memory channels and 128 PCI-E lanes. The only difference is purely artificial, there is a ID pin that senses the CPU ID, and prevents SP3 boards using Threadripper and vice versa. That has no bearing on AM4 which has never supported more than 24 PCI-E lanes from the CPU. Remember, AM4 has 1331 pins, sTRX4 has 4094 pins, more than 3 times as many.

It seems that your issue is with AMD selling a 16 core CPU on AM4, and that somehow that means AMD should automatically increase the number of PCI-E lanes for some reason because 16 cores = HEDT (in your eyes). That is not how AMD see it, for AMD Threadripper = HEDT, AM4 = consumer, and Epyc = server. That us consumers have the choice of high performance CPU's on consumer hardware to my mind should be welcomed. Intel will happily sell you a more expensive, lower performance 10980XE if you really want to live that >10 cores = HEDT dream.

Well done. In my view, all your responses in this argument, are very informative.