AMD’s Press Conference at Computex 2018 didn’t quite have the same wow factor as last year, but we did get some key details about the 32-core Threadripper 2, recently launched Ryzen 2 processors, Epyc server processors, 7nm Vega, and a few hints at what to expect throughout the end of the year and into next year.
Dr. Lisa Su kicked off the festivities with a brief recap of the state of the computing industry, and we were pleased to hear her refer directly to gaming, DIY PC building, and various enthusiast pursuits throughout the talk.
Jim Anderson, head of the computing and graphics business, came up on stage to talk about Threadripper 2 following a demo of several new laptops that feature AMD technology (which we edited out). Yes, we sort of expected a 32-core monster Threadripper was coming, but seeing it up on stage running flat out, was still a thrill.
Next on stage was David Wang, a former ATI veteran who just rejoined AMD four months ago, to talk about Radeon. He covered the roadmap as it currently stands through 2020, talked a bit about what 7nm will do for Vega, and ran an flashy ray-tracing demo with the chip running on 32GB of HBM2. “Can you feel the power of 7nm?” You bet we did.
Dr. Lisa Su takes the stage again at the end to wrap up the show.
For those who want to jump right to that AMD Threadripper 2 versus Intel Core i9-7980XE demo, performed off-screen by James Prior, skip to 11:40.
And before you ask, no, you can’t have our Threadripper t-shirt.
