AMD’S NEW HORYZEN

A deep dive into AMD’s latest architecture

A deep dive into AMD’s latest architecture, where we find out what makes Ryzen such an interesting proposition.

It’s not very often that we see such a monumental shake-up of the industry as we have with Ryzen. And God only knows, it’s something for which we’ve been clamoring. Since AMD’s departure from high-end and even mainstream performance in 2012, Intel’s stranglehold on the consumer marketplace has stagnated development, whilst simultaneously pushing prices everskyward for the same number of cores that we’ve been getting for the last 11 years.

That’s not to say it was entirely Intel’s fault—after all, AMD didn’t wish to be in this position with its FX chips, and neither did Intel particularly expect its Core architecture design to be so successful. However, with little threat and no need to innovate, core count and IPC performance across Intel’s range stuttered, with—besides enhanced connectivity support—single-core performance improving by less than ten a meager 8 percent on average, year to year, with every new generation of mainstream chips. So, what’s to blame? Incrementalism, board members, and investors. A lack of competition brought us to where we are today, because it’s far harder to ask for a greater R&D budget when you have no rivals than when you do. And it’s why Ryzen, as a whole, has arguably had more hype and fanfare than any other processor launch over the last 20 years.

For the first time since 2009, consumers are back in a position where there’s choice in the market. It’s no longer simply a case of asking which Intel chip you can afford, but back to that old dilemma of whether you go team red or team blue. And, boy, have we missed that choice. Ryzen is nothing short of phenomenal. Its single-core performance is in line with Intel’s 2011-3 Broadwell-E chips, and its multicore performance is easily capable of outclassing its Intel counterparts—at a fraction of the cost.

The big question, then, is how has AMD managed to do this? And how does Ryzen’s architecture actually operate? Read on to find out more.