AMD Tech Day at CES: 2018 Roadmap Revealed, with Ryzen APUs, Zen+ on 12nm, Vega on 7nm
by Ian Cutress on February 1, 2018 8:45 AM ESTOver the years we have seen various attempts from AMD and Intel to try and help improve storage performance on their mainstream platforms. Because of the solid user experience benefits that solid state storage can bring, these attempts come in two forms: to make the most of a small amount of super-fast storage, or to expand the amount of super-fast storage available. Most attempts at this have been laborious, such as Intel’s caching technology that allows a SSD or 32GB of Optane Memory to act as a quick read/write cache for a rotational drive.
AMD’s latest attempt to boost the storage performance is Enmotus FuzeDrive, a collaborative piece of software that is designed to combine several storage devices into one big disk. The principle is fairly simple: take any combination of rotational hard drive, SATA SSD, NVMe SSD, and even DRAM, and this software will create a single drive that addresses them all. The software and drivers will manage what data goes where for quicker access, rather than it appearing as one big JBOD.
The obvious red flags from the press were about DRAM, which we were told will only act as a read-cache from prepared data taken from the other drives. The other flag was about if one drive in that system fails, whether all the data is lost. The answer was a likely yes, and so the risk of such a system might be in-line with a JBOD array or similar to a RAID-0, but without the predictable speedup a RAID-0 array might bring.
Predictive caching technologies to help speed up read/write access times are, on paper, a good idea. Some SSDs already do this, by having a small amount of fast SLC cache to act as a write buffer, which the controller can then move the data around to empty the cache when the drive is idle. The difference between having something like a controller manage an embedded system and a general software package in play is that the embedded system has to work for a single drive, albeit millions of units. That arrangement is going to be as defined and engineered as much as that SSD vendor wants it to be. For a software package, it has to work across a variety of environments that might be badly configured, or in situations that the software might not be able to identify properly. As the software stretches over three or four different drives, it sounds like a potential failure in the making of one of those drives decides to die.
AMD lists several benefits of FuzeDrive: no Windows reinstall required, drives can be added to the pool at any point, or removed from the pool if sufficient spare space exists. Pools with DRAM added can be configured manually if some more DRAM is needed. AMD lists that in its testing, comparing a 500 GB hard-drive to a system with a Samsung 960 Pro added to the pool, they recorded a 578% faster Adobe Premiere launch, and a 931% faster Adobe Photoshop launch.
I could see FuzeDrive being useful in two particular scenarios: If a user as a small (32-128 GB) NVMe drive and a 1TB SSD/HDD, a single pool can be made. Users with a single large drive (SATA or HDD) could use the software to add DRAM, enabling an automatic RAM disk.
Enmotus FuzeDrive will be available for Ryzen Desktop systems, and will cost $20.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
131 Comments
View All Comments
haukionkannel - Monday, January 8, 2018 - link
Vega 7nm is for mobile first, so that is the priority in gpu. Only the desktop version in 2019.jjj - Monday, January 8, 2018 - link
Nor quite. Vega on 7nm is a SKU aimed at machine learning that samples in late 2018. That means volume in 2019 and other SKUs later , if there are other SKUs- I am unclear if AMD stated that there are other SKUs or that's an AT assumption.There is a possibility that Navi hits high end in 2019 and Vega lives bellow but that's kinda silly as AMD needs to be in a huge rush to replace Vega with something that is more competitive.
haukionkannel - Monday, January 8, 2018 - link
True. The machine learning chips Are the top priority I was just quessing that mobile part would Also get upgrade. My bad...So next Vega goes against machine learning Volta. Maybe Nvidia neither will release normal Volta, only those calculate monsters to AI projects. That would be interesting.
jjj - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link
Vega 7nm is 2019 for volumes it seem, Volta V100 will be replaced by something new likely this year and again in 2019- at the very least there will be one update.What Nvidia will do in consumer is unclear as there is no pressure on them to spend on releasing new things. The Intel+AMD part is problematic in laptop so likely they'll address that segment soon with something new.
Pinn - Monday, January 8, 2018 - link
Lisa is my waifu. I'm fine with my wife and daughter reading this.StevoLincolnite - Monday, January 8, 2018 - link
Ugh. No Navi until 2019. So AMD's graphics are guaranteed to be terrible for another year.Pinn - Monday, January 8, 2018 - link
and nvidia is guaranteed not to release volta for consumers.. fun.Xajel - Monday, January 8, 2018 - link
I was really hoping for a low power 8C/16T Ryzen CPU's, these can be used in SFF & laptops with dGPU already... these will be for those who want more CPU performance than GPU, or they need both CPU & GPU power.A5 - Monday, January 8, 2018 - link
You'll probably have to wait for 7nm for that. Current thermal budgets in laptop designs just aren't going to get you usable 16T performance from 35-45W.neblogai - Monday, January 8, 2018 - link
Table of Ryzen Mobile CPUs has all Raven Ridge APUs with '1MB per core'. But this is not true for R3 2200U, which still has the same 4MB of L3: http://www.amd.com/en-us/press-releases/Pages/ces-...Also- I still hope that is a Banded Kestrel die. On that topic, Joe Macri, when asked about RR use for fanless designs back in October, said it would not work too well, and would have to be clocked real low; when asked if they are building a different chip for that fanless market- answered only broadly- 'we love PCs,.. we want you to find AMD everywhere where PC is'. So I'm not sure- does that still mean only Stoney Ridge (if it qualifies for fanless), or a new die. Just looking at the AMD's below average power efficiency in RR laptops at browsing and playing video- maybe AMD knew they are simply not ready for fanless, and need to put in more work. But I still wish they released Zen 2C/4T 3CU - if not low power- then at least for even cheaper normal laptops. After all- Raven Ridge is not very small die at 210mm2, and a very cheap ~110mm2 die with 2c/4t Zen could also be successful.