AMD Moves From Infinity Fabric to Infinity Architecture: Connecting Everything to Everything
by Dr. Ian Cutress on March 5, 2020 5:15 PM EST
Another element to AMD’s Financial Analyst Day 2020 was the disclosure of how the company intends to evolve its interconnect strategy with its Infinity Fabric (IF). The plan over the next two generations of products is for the IF to turn into its own architectural design, no longer just between CPU-to-CPU or GPU-to-GPU, and future products will see a near all-to-all integration.
AMD introduced its Infinity Fabric with the first generation of Zen products, which was loosely described as a superset of Hypertransport allowing for fast connectivity between different chiplets within AMD’s enterprise processors, as well as between sockets in a multi-socket server. With Rome and Zen 2, the company unveiled its second generation IF, providing some more speed but also GPU-to-GPU connectivity.
This second generation design allowed two CPUs to be connected, as well as four GPUs to be connected in a ring, however the CPU-to-GPU connection was still based in PCIe. With the next generation, now dubbed Infinity Architecture, the company is scaling it not only to allow for an almost all-to-all connection (6 links per GPU) for up to eight GPUs, but also for CPU-to-GPU connectivity. This should allow for a magnitude of improved operation between the two, such as unified memory spaces and the benefits to come with that. AMD is citing a considerable performance uplift with this paradigm.
AMD and LLNL recently disclosed that the new El Capitan supercomputer will have the latest generation Infinity Architecture installed, with 1 Zen 4-based Genoa EPYC CPU to 4 GPUs. This puts the timeline for this feature in the ballpark of early 2022.
Interested in more of our AMD Financial Analyst Day 2020 Coverage? Click here.
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Sahrin - Thursday, March 5, 2020 - link
I still prefer the Hypertransport braning :)ballsystemlord - Thursday, March 5, 2020 - link
You mean branding.I liked HyperTransport better too.
Dragonstongue - Thursday, March 5, 2020 - link
HyperTransport is a consortium, Infinity Fabric now Architecture, is AMD exclusive (to best of my limited knowledge)Maybe next up will be Hyper Infinity to "marry" the two near and dear words togther..
I love the name HyperTransport as well, however, maybe they decided to stop using it as HT is "intel" where Infinity is their own specific branding, to win "mindset" of their various customer/consumers...
No "real" possible limitations more or less, as it is Infinity (and beyond) .. .something like that anyways.
Near limitless scaling potential (which they have shown, countless reviewers have more or less proven ala Zen2 (Ryzen 3xxx)
I wonder if their "next huge move" at some point in the very near future will be the FIRST readily available optical based chip (or fabric) as that time is approaching for sure...that is, at some point, silicon will reach limits of die shrinks, bajillions of cores or not, whereas Optical they can "go back to the start" as in 200+nm dies, as Optical is a whole new ballgame to be played upon the field.
Maybe at the same time, we will also start seeing proper self driving vehicles, that one does not need a license to have, alternative fuels for these vehicles also be "common place", universal income for everyone on earth...
Can only dream (^.^)
Threska - Friday, March 6, 2020 - link
Optical, or some other material for their bus.Lord of the Bored - Friday, March 6, 2020 - link
"Maybe next up will be Hyper Infinity to "marry" the two near and dear words togther.."I would love to go for a ride on the Hyper Infinity Transport Fabric.
jtd871 - Friday, March 6, 2020 - link
"Magic Carpet Ride"Lord of the Bored - Saturday, March 7, 2020 - link
It'll be a whole new world, with new fantastic computing possibilities.Smell This - Friday, March 6, 2020 - link
**HyperTransport is a consortium, Infinity Fabric now Architecture, is AMD exclusive (to best of my limited knowledge)**_______________________________________________
'Infinity Fabric' was purchased by Rory Read in 2012 or so, for $330M. It was based on the SeaMicro 'Freedom' fabric.
Mr Read *pant-eds* Intel. HA!
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/120601-amd-b...
https://www.anandtech.com/show/9170/amd-exits-dens...
Fataliity - Friday, March 6, 2020 - link
No it's not. They are completely different.https://dvcon-india.org/sites/dvcon-india.org/file...
https://dvcon-india.org/sites/dvcon-india.org/file...
These are the first papers about Infinity Fabric, from AMD (and the last I think). They are using a PHY connection (8g, 16g, 32g),
Similar to this. https://ip.cadence.com/ipportfolio/ip-portfolio-ov...
haukionkannel - Friday, March 6, 2020 - link
So in the next gen we will have chiplet gpu Also from amd and chiplet apus!