Four years ago, if you consulted the laptop market and told others that they wanted to buy a notebook with a processor code beginning with A, the other party would often be bitter. I advise you: “Don’t buy an AMD notebook, balabala” and finally shouted, “i3 silent seconds.”

But recently, I found that there are more and more friends around me discussing AMD notebooks. Many friends even said directly, “The new Ryzen 4000 is a bit fragrant. Start when the new machine comes out.”

In the past four years, how has AMD gradually reversed the word of mouth of the notebook market, and whether the Ryzen 4000 series can let AMD in the notebook market Salted fish turned over, we still have to get from APSpeaking of the U era.

The age of bulldozers: APU’s sad past

In AMD ’s strategy, to achieve low power consumption for laptops, traditional CPUs and GPUs must be integrated , AMD calls it “heterogeneous system architecture.” The final implementation into the product is our familiar APU.

AMD has a good idea. Heterogeneous computing can not only allow the CPU and GPU to exert their own advantages, but also improve system efficiency. One chip solves all problems is also a more cost-effective choice, users no longer need to buy a separate graphics card to get enough good graphics, video and gaming experience.

▲ Group photo of each generation APU

Although the idea is good, due to the low efficiency of the bulldozer architecture and the process of our own fab. AMD has been left behind by Intel. When Intel ’s fifth-generation Core entered the 14nm era in 2014, AMD ’s APUs had just used the 28nm process and have been used until the seventh-generation APUs.

▲ January 2017 CPU ladder diagram, there was not much difference in performance between FX 8800P and i3 6100H

How miserable is the seventh-generation APU, taking the highest-end FX-9800P at the time as an example, its performance is even better than Not on the i3 low-voltage processor next door.

At that time, AMD had sunk in the notebook to the bottom of the despise chain. Everyone heard of the APU, and when they saw FX, A10, A12 notebooks, without saying a word, turn around and leave. This type of notebook is also nicknamed a “learning special machine”-it is slow and slow, and it takes effort to play LOL.

▲ Supreme performance, have you ever been fooled by this logo?

The arrival of Ryzen, AMD Jedi Survival

Fortunately, in 2017, AMD finally launched the Zen-based Ryzen processor, and Grofont also finally used it. The 14nm process has initially caught up with Intel.

▲ Zen Generation

The Zen architecture has a 40% improvement over the previous bulldozer architecture on IPC, coupled with the core strategy of the CCX reactor. Intel squeezed toothpaste and brought notebooks into the 4C / 8T era. The original Ryzen is actually close to Intel products of the same level in multi-core performance, but it still lags a lot in single-core performance. The GPU architecture has been upgraded to Vega, and the core display exceeds the entry-level independent display level.

▲ Zen’s timeline

But due to the newer architecture, drivers, game optimization and other issues, the Ryzen APU with outstanding running scores has been used in practical applications and games. The scene is still not comparable to Intel. Although computer manufacturers such as Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo have launched computers equipped with Ryzen APU, consumers who have been hurt by “bulldozers” have not slowed down and did not regard AMD as an opponent of Intel. However, people also admit: AMD is in the notebook The computer field also has a battle with Intel.

But people expect more from AMD. They hope that AMD can put pressure on Intel to promote its rapid progress. Intel has been using the 14nm process for 5 consecutive generations of CPUs, and the new 10nm process has been slow to mass production. You must know that the next-generation mobile phone SoC is ready to enter the 7nm era.

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▲ Comparison of AMD and Intel process

Given the performance of Grofont in the development of 14nm process, AMD understands in the heart, waiting for Grofont’s 7nm process Launched, opponents are estimated to have used 5nm. After thinking about this, AMD decisively gave up the oil tank of Grofont and turned to embrace TSMC and Samsung.

In the first half of 2019, AMD released the second-generation mobile Ryzen processor, the Ryzen 3000 series. The architecture was improved to Zen +, and the process was upgraded to 12nm. The cache and memory latency of the first generation mobile Ryzen were optimized and improved, and the power consumption ratio was also improved a lot.

▲ Enter the 4C / 8T era

The performance of the second-generation mobile Ryzen is only 10% higher than that of the first generation, and the gap with Intel has further narrowed. It has even started to Eroding Intel’s share in the low-end market.

According to the previous script, Intel should make every effort at this time, announce the standard 10nm system, and step on AMD again Under your feet. However, the yield of Intel i5 / i7 series is too low on the 10nm process. Due to shipping pressure, 10nm processors can only be sold in low-power markets. Continue to use 14nm +++ process on high-end i5 / i7 / i9.

▲ Comet Lake-H for 14nm process

Although we know that Intel’s 10nm process is stronger than TSMC’s 7nm, and even comparable to TSMC’s 7nm improved process N7 + . But in the standard processor market, AMD’s 7nm process still has advantages.

Ryzen 4000, AMD ’s counter-attack for the mobile market

AMD just caught the time difference that Intel’s process technology has not yet fully popularized. It was released at CES 2020 earlier this year. Three generations of mobile Ryzen processors, that is, the Ryzen 4000 series announced all the details a few days ago, it is a comprehensive evolution of AMD mobile processors.

The entire system of Ryzen 4000 uses 7nm process. Compared with 14nm +++ process, it has obvious process advantages.

Previously on the desktop-level Ryzen three generations, Zen 2 has comprehensive technology, packaging, single-core and multi-core Improve.

This includes inheriting SMT multi-threading technology, adding a new TAGE branch prediction, which reduces the false prediction rate of branch prediction. 30%, greatly improving hit accuracy and efficiency. The AVX2 instruction is also fully supported, the bit width has been increased from 128bit to 256bit, and the floating-point performance has doubled directly.

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Integer execution unitIn the scheduler, the scheduler increased from 84 to 92, and the physical registers increased from 168 to 180. From 6 to 7 transmissions per cycle, the efficiency and execution speed of the execution unit were further optimized.

The CCX module is separated from the I / O module and manufactured using different processes to reduce capacity pressure. The IF bus connected to the CCX module has also evolved to the second generation, improving parallelism, latency, and processor performance.

After a whole operation, the single-core IPC of the Zen 2 architecture has been greatly improved compared to the previous generation, and it has changed in one fell swoop.Ryzen single core performance is poor. Due to the CCX modular design, multi-core is also better than Intel

Of course, considering that the mobile terminal has more stringent requirements on the chip area, the Chiplets chiplet used by the previous desktop Ryzen Nuclear packaging cannot be used in laptops.

So AMD abandoned the Chiplets package structure on the Ryzen 4000 series, packaging CCX modules and IO modules on the same chip , IF bus connected to CCXAnd I / O. The nuclear display module is composed of 8 horizontal CUs. It is worth mentioning that the Ryzen 4000’s nuclear display uses a combination of Vega’s 3D operation module, Navi architecture encoding and decoding engine, and display feature module. The performance is relatively better than the previous generation. 59% improvement.

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▲ APU timeline

Because the Chiplets package is no longer used, the bus bandwidth and in-core latency of the three generations of mobile Ryzen have been significantly reduced. Coupled with the 7 nm process, the chip’s energy efficiency ratio has also been further improved.

Of course, single-chip packaging also has its disadvantages. Due to the chip size limitation, CCX can only have two groups at most, that is, 8 nuclear. As space is also required for Vega, there is no choice between L3 cache and CU units.

Under the stride of architecture and process, Ryzen 4000 has 15% better performance than the previous generation IPC, and single-thread performance has improved 25%, unit energy efficiency doubles directly. Among them, 15% comes from IPC performance improvement, 17% comes from design improvement and 47% comes from 7nm manufacturing process improvement.

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For notebooks, how much performance a processor can play depends not only on its number of cores, frequency specifications, but also It is important to look at its TDP and unit energy consumption ratio. The lower the unit energy consumption ratio of the processor, the longer the Boost time, and the more performance released.

Thanks to the higher power consumption ratio and single core performance, the RDP of 15W Ryzen7 4800U single-threaded performance ratio 3700U increased by 25%.

In terms of interface and channel support, the Ryzen 4000 blessed by Zen 2 finally supports the latest Wi-Fi 6, 4xPCIe channels, NVMe, USB-C, LPDDR4X 4266 memory can be regarded as supplementing A’s short board on the notebook side.

At the CES conference, AMD has compared the latest 10th-generation low-voltage processors of Intel with the 15W low-voltage Ryzen 7 4800U According to AMD’s tests, the 4800U has the advantage of a crushing level in the multi-core test of Cinebench R20 and 3D Mark.

On the standard processor used in mainstream games, the 8C / 16T Ryzen 7 4800H also easily beat the performance test. 6C / 12T i7-9750H. Even the i9-9880H, which is also the 8C / 16T, was shot down by the Ryzen 7 4800H.

Now, AMD has announced the top performance Ryzen 9 series, including 4900H and 4900HS, both 8C / 16T, with more CU units, increased the base frequency and Boost frequency, directly benchmarked the Core i9, challenging the position of the Intel mobile market leader.

According to AMD ’s official test results, Ryzen 9 4800HS (35W TDP) is multi-core in Cinebench R20, video decoding, image rendering, etc. In the project, they are stronger than the i9-9880H of 45W TDP.

AMD has launched a comprehensive attack, and the mobile market will change.

Step by step, AMD finally waited until this day. In the past two years, we have seen AMD’s rapid rise in the PC market, and its share is rising. However, in the notebook market, AMD is still unable to threaten Intel’s market position in thin and high-end notebooks because of its poor reputation and low performance-to-power ratio.

The advent of the Ryzen 4000 series has finally changed this situation. The Zen 2 architecture + TSMC 7nm process allows mobile three generations of Ryzen to With the same TDP, the performance is greatly improved, and the power consumption ratio is better. The outstanding paper performance not only made consumers yell “AMD Yes”, but also gave manufacturers more supply chain bargaining power, shaking Intel’s position in the mobile market.

In the past, only laptops that cost tens of thousands or even tens of thousands were eligible for the top of the 8-core 16-wire processor performance. Now Ryzen decentralizes this specification to less than 10,000 yuan, while pushing the industry forward, it does bring more benefits to consumers.

Branch alone is not spring.

AMD with Ryzen 4000 now has planted flowers in Intel’s back garden. How will Intel respond this year? See minutes.

Before I see the war, I want to applaud AMD: “AMD Yes!”.