Linux kernel source code reveals more secrets of AMD Zen

AMD Zen logo and devilish Tux

Some time ago, the news about some clues of the operation of the AMD Zen microarchitecture thanks to the code provided in the Linux kernel to support it. And it is that Zen is awakening great interest because from AMD they have made a superhuman effort, canceling all the projects they had planned and focusing their efforts on Zen, learning from the mistakes of previous microarchitectures. For now, it is estimated that it has a 40% improvement in IPS compared to the current microarchitecture.

AMD has in mind to go back to what it was and stand up to Intel and recover the market share of its best times. For that, a very powerful partner has been sought, Samsung, its factories are the most advanced and will provide the 14nm FinFET manufacturing technology (something that Intel has been failing lately and has been forced to delay and suspend projects due to problems with its manufacturing technology). Additionally, AMD has recruited some hot minds that Lisa Su has returned to the green company after losing them in the past, in addition to other top-tier experts.

The company has been restructured And instead of operating as 10 times its actual size, as before, it now operates as a small and agile business. And the minds I'm talking about weigh heavily, like Raja Koduri, a GPU expert who left AMD for Apple and has now returned. Mark Papermaster also worked for Apple, IBM and PA Semi, working on projects such as the PowerPC microprocessor or the powerful POWER, now he also joins AMD. But the icing on the cake is Jim Keller (a few days ago recruited by Elon Musk for Tesla Motor), who also went to Apple to lead the ARM Ax Series SoCs and there are few people who know as much about high-performance chips as Keller.

That is why Zen should be a success and that is that now we have seen data from the 32 cores that Zen will reach, such as the codename Zeppelin in the message "AMD Zeppelin (Family 17h, Model 00h) you introduce an instructionsretired performance counter which indicated byCPUID.8000_0008H: EBX [1]. And dedicated Instructions Retired Register (MSR 0xC000_000E9) increments on once for every instruction retired.«. And the following patch has been provided for the Linux kernel, where "core_complex" is seen and which may refer to AMD's Compute Unit:

+core_complex_ide = (apicid & ((1 << c->x86_coreid_bits) - 1)) >> 3;

+per_cpu(cpu_llc_id, cpu) = (socket_id << 3) | core_complex_id;


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  1.   jorssoftware said

    ok