AMD's Strix Halo under the hood

https://chipsandcheese.com/p/amds-strix-halo-under-the-hood

by kristianp • 1 year ago

162 139 1 year ago

mort962• 1 year ago

I don't understand the name "Strix". It's a name a GPU and motherboard partner of theirs, Asus, uses (used?) for their products. It's impossible for me to read "AMD Strix" and not think of it as some ASU's GPU with an AMD chip in it, or some motherboard for AMD sockets.

Aren't there enough syllables out there to invent a combination which doesn't collide with your own board partners?

newsclues• 1 year ago

Strix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strix_(mythology) Halo is the code name.

AMD Ryzen AI MAX 300 is the product name. This continuing to use the code name.

mort962• 1 year ago

Well, it's a public enough code name that it surprises me that they just used Asus's name.

alecmg• 1 year ago

oh great, they are not using a confusing name anymore... wait, now they are using a stupid name!

bombcar• 1 year ago

Spy X Family!

AMD is captured.

DCKing2• 1 year ago

I don't think AMD really uses the name "Strix Halo" to market it to a large audience, it's just an internal codename. Just two other recent internal names are "Hawk Point" and "Dragon Range" internally, where Hawk and Dragon are names that MSI and PowerColor use to market GPUs as as well. Heck, PowerColor even exclusively sells AMD cards under the "Red Dragon" name!

AMD's marketing names for especially their mobile chips are just so deliberately confusing that it makes way more sense for press and enthusiasts to keep referring to it by its internal code name than whatever letter/number/AI nonsense AMD's marketing department comes up with.

Keyframe• 1 year ago

I understand it's internal codename, but also can't read it without thinking Asus. Especially considering I have Asus Strix 4090 in my rig.

casey2• 1 year ago

I thought it was a Halo reference https://www.halopedia.org/Strix-class_harrier

ajma• 1 year ago

Reminds me when I was Amazon, one of our tablets was codenamed Thor. We could ask the device what it's codename was and we special cases some functionality for the tablet we built. But it was the same code we used for the android app and it turned out some other tablet manufacturer used the codename Thor and all of a sudden the code was super broken on that device.

Tepix8• 1 year ago

I think having a (small desktop) system with Strix Halo plus a GPU to accelerate prompt processing could be a good combo, avoiding the weakness of the Mac Ultra. The Strix Halo has 16 PCIe lanes.

aurareturn9• 1 year ago

Max RAM for Strix Halo is 128GB. It's not a competitor to the Mac Ultra which goes up to 512GB.

You shouldn't need another GPU to do prompt processing for Strix Halo since the biggest model it can realistically run is a 70B model. Prompt processing isn't going to help much because it has a good enough GPU but its memory bandwidth is only 256GB/s (~210 GB/s effective).

izacus2• 1 year ago

Max RAM for Strix Halo is 128GB. It's not a competitor to the Mac Ultra which goes up to 512GB.

What a... strange statement. How did you get to that conclusion?

porphyra• 1 year ago

The $2000 strix halo with 128 GB might not compete with the $9000 Mac Studio with 512 GB but is a competitor to the $4000 Mac Studio with 96 GB. The slow memory bandwidth is a bummer, though.

Tepix8• 1 year ago

Running something like Qwq 32b q4 with a ~50k context will use up those 128GB with the large KV cache.

Gracana3• 1 year ago

Despite the hype, the 512GB Mac is not really a good buy for LLMs. The ability to run a giant model on it is a novelty that will wear off quickly... it's just too slow to run them at that size, and in practice it has the same sweet spot of 30-70B that you'd have with a much cheaper machine with a GPU, without the advantage of being able to run smaller models at full-GPU-accelerated speed.

Tepix8• 1 year ago

Of course it's a competitor. Only a fraction of M3 Ultra sold will have 512GB RAM

nrp3• 1 year ago

Note that none of the PCIe interfaces on Strix Halo are larger than x4. The intent is to allow multiple NVMe drives and a Wi-Fi card. We also used PCIe for 5Gbit Ethernet.

Scramblejams• 1 year ago

Love what you're doing, I'm in batch 4!

Feedback: That 4x slot looks like it's closed on the end. Can we get an open-ended slot there instead so we can choose to install cards with longer interfaces? That's often a useful fallback.

sunshowers3• 1 year ago

Hi Nirav! Long time admirer.

Gen 4 x4 or gen 5 x4? I saw that gen 5 x4 results in maybe a 3% decrease in 5090 performance compared to gen 5 x16.

noelwelsh2• 1 year ago

For me the question is: what does this mean for future of desktop CPUs? High bandwidth unified memory seems very compelling for many applications, but the GPU doesn't have as much juice as a separate unit. Are we going to see more these supposedly laptop APUs finding their way into desktops, and essentially a bifurcation of desktops into APUs and discrete CPU/GPUs? Or will desktop CPUs also migrate to becoming APUs?

Tepix8• 1 year ago

iGPUs have been getting ever closer to entry level and even mid-range GPUs.

In addition there's a interest in having a lot of memory for LLM acceleration. I expect both CPUs to get more LLM acceleration capabilities and desktop pc memory bandwidth to increase from its current rather slow dual channel 64bit DDR5-6000 status quo.

We're already hearing the first rumors for Medusa Halo coming in 2026 with 50% more bandwidth than Strix Halo.

Gravityloss• 1 year ago

This has been the case for decades now.

GPU:s have existed about 30 years. Embedded ones for 20 years or so? Why are the embedded GPU:s always so stunted?

Tepix8• 1 year ago

The sentence "In addition there's a interest in having a lot of memory for LLM acceleration" was supposed to say "In addition there's a interest in having a lot of memory bandwidth for LLM acceleration" but it's too late to edit it now.

kllrnohj2• 1 year ago

iGPUs have been getting ever closer to entry level and even mid-range GPUs.

Not really closer. igpus got good enough to kill the low the discreet market basically entirely, but they haven't been "getting closer" to discreet cards. Both CPU SoCs and discreet GPUs have access to the same manufacturing nodes and memory technologies, and the simple physical reality is that they can just be bigger and use more power as a separate physical entity, along with memory better optimized for its workloads.

c2h5oh• 1 year ago

APUs are going to replace low end video cards, because they no longer make economical or technical sense.

Historically those cards had narrow memory bus and about a quarter or less video memory of high end (not even halo) cards from the same generation.

That narrow memory bus puts their max memory bandwidth at a comparable level to desktop DDR5 with 2 DIMMs. At the same time quarter of high end is just 4GB VRAM which is not enough for low details for many games and prevents upscaling/frame gen from working.

From manufacturing standpoint low end GPUs aren't great either - memory controllers, video output and a bunch of other non-compute components don't scale with process node.

At the same time unified memory and bypassing PCIE benefits igpus greatly. You don't have to build an entire card, power delivery, cooler - you just slightly beef up existing ones.

tl;dr; sub-200 dollas GPUs are dead and will be replaced by APUs. I won't be surprised if they will start nibbling at lower mid-range market too in the near future.

rcarmo• 1 year ago

My main gaming rig (for admittedly not very intensive games) has been a 7000 series Ryzen APU with a 780M, and my next one will also be an APU. It makes zero economic sense to build a discrete CPU system for casual gaming, even if I believe that APU prices will be artificially inflated to "cozy up" to low-end discrete GPU prices for a while to maximize profits.

kllrnohj2• 1 year ago

tl;dr; sub-200 dollas GPUs are dead and will be replaced by APUs

that already happened like 5+ years ago. The GT 1030 never got an update, so Nvidia hasn't made an entry level GPU since. Intel kinda did with ARC, but that was almost more a dev board

sambull• 1 year ago

That new 'desktop' from framework appears to be just that with the AMD Ryzen Al Max 385

nrp3• 1 year ago

We have both Max 385 and Max+ 395 versions.

Symmetry2• 1 year ago

Having a system level cache for low latency transfer of data between CPU and GPU could be very compelling for some applications even if the overall GPU power is lower than a dedicated card. That doesn't seem to be the case here, though?

noelwelsh2• 1 year ago

Strix Halo has unified memory, which is the same general architecture as Apple's M series chips. This means the CPU and GPU share the same memory, so there is no need to copy CPU <-> GPU.

phkahler2• 1 year ago

> Are we going to see more these supposedly laptop APUs finding their way into desktops, and essentially a bifurcation of desktops into APUs and discrete CPU/GPUs?

I sure hope so. We could use a new board form factor that omits the GPU slot. Although my case puts the power connector and button over that slot on the back so it's not completely wasted, but the board area is. This has seemed like a good idea for a long time to me.

This can also be a play against nVidia. When mainstream systems use "good enough" integrated GPUs and get rid of that slot, there is no place for nVidia except in high-end systems.

adrian_b• 1 year ago

There is no need for a new board form factor, because they have existed for many decades.

Below the mini-ITX format with a GPU slot, there are 3 standard form factors that are big enough for a full-featured personal computer that is more powerful than most laptops: nano-ITX (120 mm x 120 mm, for 5" by 5" cases; half the area of mini-ITX), 3.5" (from the size of the 3.5 inch HDDs, approximately the same area with nano-ITX, but rectangular instead of square) and the 4" x 4" NUC format introduced by Intel.

With a nano-ITX or 3.5" board you can make a computer not bigger than 1 liter that can ensure a low noise even for a 65 W power dissipation for the CPU+iGPU and that can have a generous amount of peripheral ports, to cover all needs.

Keeping the low noise condition, one could increase the maximum power-dissipation to 150 W for the CPU+iGPU in a somewhat bigger case, but certainly still smaller than 2.5 liter.

I expect that we will see such mini-PCs with Strix Halo, the only question is whether their price would be low enough to make them worthwhile.

The fabrication cost for Strix Halo must be lower than for a combo of CPU with discrete GPU, but the initial offerings with it attempt to make the customer pay more for the benefit of having a more compact system, which for many people will not be enough motivation to accept a higher price.

icegreentea22• 1 year ago

The bifurcation is already happening. The last few years have seen lots of miniPC/NUC like products being released.

One of (many) factors that were holding back this form factor was the gap in iGPU/GPU performance. However with the frankly total collapse of the low end GPU market in the last 3-4 years, there's a much larger opening for iGPUs.

I also think that within the gaming space specifically, a lot of the chatter around the Steam Deck helped reset expectations. Like if everyone else is having fun playing games at 800p low/medium, then you suddenly don't feel so bad playing at maybe 1080p medium on your desktop.

adra• 1 year ago

Framework made a tiny desktop form factor version with this chip in it, so we'll if it gets much traction (at least among enthusiasts).

juancn• 1 year ago

I would love a unified memory architecture, even for external GPUs.

Pay for memory once, and avoid all the copying around between CPU/GPU/NPU for mixed algorithms, and have the workload define the memory distribution.

DCKing2• 1 year ago

Strix Halo is impressive, but it isn't AMD going all out on the concept. Strix Halo's die area (300mm2 ish) is roughly the same as estimates for Apple's M3 Pro die area. The M3 Max and M3 Ultra are twice or four times the size.

In a next iteration AMD could look into doubling or quadrupling the memory channels and GPU die area like as Apple has done. AMD is already a pioneer in the chiplet technology Apple is also using to scale up. So there's lots of room to grow for even higher costs.

ryukoposting2• 1 year ago

Interesting read, and interesting product. If I understand it right, this seems like it could be at home in a spiritual successor to the Hades Canyon NUCs. I always thought those were neat.

I wish Chips and Cheese would clean up transcripts instead of publishing verbatim. Maybe I'll use the GPU on my Strix Halo to generate readable transcripts of Chips and Cheese interviews.

keyringlight• 1 year ago

The Framework desktop seems like a next step.

Although I appreciate the drive for small profile I wonder where the limits are if you put a big tower cooler onto it, seeing as the broad design direction is for laptops or consoles I doubt there's too much left on the table. I think that highlights a big challenge - is there a sizeable enough market for it, or can you pull in customers from other segments to buy a NUC instead. You'd need a certain amount of mass manufacturing with a highly integrated design to make it worthwhile.

jorvi• 1 year ago

can you pull in customers from other segments to buy a NUC instead

I've never understood the hype for NUCs for non-office settings. You can make SFF builds that are tiny and still fit giant GPUs like the RTX 3090 /4090, say less for something like a 4080 Super. And then you can upgrade the GPU and (woe is you) CPU later on. Although a high-end X3D will easily last you 2-3 GPU generations.

pixelpoet• 1 year ago

Yeah would it have killed them to read over it just once? Can they not find a single school kid to do it for lunch money or something? Hell I'll do it for free, I've read this article twice now, and read everything they put out the moment it hits my inbox.

randomNumber72• 1 year ago

As long as they cant even provide something similiar to a simple CUDA C API on consumer hardware i dont buy their stuff.

pjmlp3• 1 year ago

There is no such thing as simple CUDA C API, that is the mistake most folks do when talking about CUDA.

It won over OpenCL, because it is a polyglot ecosystem, with first tier support for C, C++, Fortran, and Python (JIT DSL), plus several languages that have toolchains targeting PTX, the IDE integration, graphical debugger, compute and graphical rendering libraries.

All of the above AMD and Intel could have provided for OpenCL, but never did when it mattered, not even after SPIR was introduced.

Now they finally have GPGPU support for Fortran, C++, Python JIT DSLs, but a bit too late to the party, because contrary to NVidia it isn't like those tools are available regardless of the card.

randomNumber72• 1 year ago

The early versions had been only C. Then they added a lot of stuff.

You don't need all the fancy stuff, but OpenCL (and even more so Vulkan) are too complicated when all you want to do is some gpu number crunching.

Being able to write a kernel with something that looks like C. Having pointers on gpu and cpu and being able to call these kernels somewhat conveniently (like CUDA C) would be a great starting point.

heraldgeezer2• 1 year ago

Cool I guess for a mini PC but Im one of those desktop PC tower nerds :)

hulk-konen• 1 year ago

I hope they make this in ATX (or mATX) form factor, toss out all the size, energy, and heat concerns, and add more ports and interfaces.

heraldgeezer2• 1 year ago

At those sizes, just get a real CPU and GPU separate. Was my point.

FloatArtifact2• 1 year ago

Seems like Apple's M2 is a sweet spot for AI performance at 800 GB/s of memory bandwidth which can be added under $1,500 refurbished for 65 gigs of RAM.

crazystar• 1 year ago

Where for $1500?

runjake4• 1 year ago

Not on Apple Refurbs. That would cost you about $2200.

And the M2 Max has a memory bandwidth of 400GB/s.

swiftcoder• 1 year ago

I don't really like these "lightly edited" machine transcripts. There are transcription errors in many paragraphs, just adds that little bit of extra friction when reading.

elorant• 1 year ago

But why did they choose to build this as a mobile cpu though? I don’t need 128GB of unified RAM on my laptop. It’s the desktop where things happen.

cptskippy2• 1 year ago

Because people are accustom to unified memory in laptops and also complain about the low amounts of ram and inability to upgrade.

This solves those problems but apparently uncovers a new one.

ForTheKidz3• 1 year ago

Because people are accustom to unified memory in laptops

Surely the vast majority of laptops sold in the last five years don't have unified memory yet.

aurareturn9• 1 year ago

Because desktops are a much smaller market and AMD caught the Apple Silicon FOMO.

alienthrowaway2• 1 year ago

IMO, the likely cause is AMD capitalizing on multiple OEMs having Steam-Deck envy and/or setting the foundation for the Steam Deck 2 with near-desktop graphics fidelity rather than 800p medium/low settings users have to put up with.

bangaladore• 1 year ago

Compete with Apple is my guess. There is a decent market for super high end laptops.

Framework (I believe) made one of these into a purchasable desktop.

ThatMedicIsASpy• 1 year ago

I wonder if you could actually put these into a socket or issues would occur.

neogodless• 1 year ago

While I think the market is small, and they don't release a lot of these, AMD has sold desktop / socketed APUs in the past.

They tend to come out much slower than the laptop chips, or the "CPU-only" desktop chips.

This is one of the more recent examples: https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/desktops/ryzen/80...

jchw• 1 year ago

People keep saying "to compete with Apple" which of course, is nonsense. Apple isn't even second or third place in laptop marketshare last I checked.

So why build powerful laptops? Simple: people want powerful laptops. Remoting to a desktop isn't really a slam dunk experience, so having sufficient local firepower to do real work is a selling point. I do work on both a desktop and a laptop and it's nice being able to bring a portable workstation wherever I might need it, or just around the house.

dietr1ch• 1 year ago

This is a really good point. It's not easy to use both a laptop and a desktop at the same time. There's challenges around locality, latency, limited throughput, unavailability that software can't easily deal with, so you need to be aware and smart about it, and you'll need to compromise on things.

I'd work from my workstation at all times if I could. Tramp is alright, but not too fast and fundamentally can't make things transparent.

icegreentea22• 1 year ago

128GB is actually a step down. The previous generation (of sorts) Strix Point had maximum memory capacity of 256GB.

The mini-PC market (which basically all uses laptop chips) seems pretty robust (especially in Asia/China). They've basically torn out the bottom of the traditional small form factor market.

alienthrowaway2• 1 year ago

"Mobile CPU" has recently come to mean more than laptops. The Steam Deck validated the market for handheld gaming computers, and other OEMs have joined the fray. Even Microsoft intends to release an XBox-branded portable. I think there's an market opportunity for better-than-800p handheld gaming, and Strix Halo is perfectly positioned for it - I wouldn't bet against the handheld XBox running in this very processor.

zbrozek2• 1 year ago

I really want LPDDR5X (and future better versions) to become standard on desktops, alongside faster and more-numerous memory controllers to increase overall bandwidth. Why hasn't CAMM gotten anywhere?

I also really want an update to typical form factors and interconnects of desktop computers. They've been roughly frozen for decades. Off the top of my head:

- Move to single-voltage power supplies at 36-57 volts.

- Move to bladed power connectors with fewer pins.

- Get rid of the "expansion card" and switch to twinax ribbon interconnects.

- Standardize on a couple sizes of "expansion socket" instead, putting the high heat-flux components on the bottom side of the board.

- Redesign cases to be effectively a single ginormous heatsink with mounting sockets to accept things which produce heat.

- Kill SATA. It's over.

- Use USB-C connectors for both power and data for internal peripherals like disks. Now there's no difference between internal and external peripherals.

gjsman-10002• 1 year ago

Why hasn't CAMM gotten anywhere?

Framework asked AMD if they could use CAMM for their new Framework Desktop.

AMD actually humored the request and did some engineering, with simulations. According to Framework, the memory bandwidth on the simulations was less than half of the soldered version.

This completely defied the entire point of the chip - the massive 256 bit bus ideal for AI or other GPU-heavy tasks, which allows this chip to offer the features it does.

This is also why Framework has apologized for non upgradability, but said it can’t be helped, so enjoy fair and reasonable RAM prices. Previously, it had been speculated that CAMM had a performance penalty, but Framework’s engineer on video saying it was that bad was fairly shocking.

arghwhat4• 1 year ago

I do not believe they were asking for CAMM as replacement for soldered RAM, but as an upgrade for DIMMs in desktop.

CAMM is touted as being better than DIMMs when it comes to signal integrity and possible speed. Soldered of course beat any socket, in-package beats any soldered RAM, and on-die beat any external component.

That AMD Strix Halo is unable to maintain signal integrity for any socketed RAM is a Strix Halo problem, not a socket problem. They probably backed themselves a bit into a corner with other parts of the design sacrifying tolerances on the memory side, and it's a lot easier to push motherboard design requirements than redoing a chip.

If this wasn't a Strix Halo issue, then they would have been able to run with socketed memory with a lower memory clock. All CPUs, this one included, has variable memory clocks that could be utilized and perform memory training as even the PCB traces to the chip cause significant signal degradation.

sunshowers3• 1 year ago

I'm curious how much the CUDIMM thing Intel is doing, where the RAM has its own clock, can help in the CAMM context. The Zen 4/5 memory controller doesn't support it but a future one might.

Tuna-Fish2• 1 year ago

The problem was specifically routing the 256-bit LPDDR5X out of the chip into the CAMM2 connector. This is hard to do with such a wide bus, because LPDDR5X wasn't originally designed for it.

LPDDR6X is designed for it, and an use CAMM2.

simoncion4• 1 year ago

- Move to single-voltage power supplies at 36-57 volts.

Why? And why not 12V? Please be specific in your answers.

- Get rid of the "expansion card" and switch to twinax ribbon interconnects.

If you want that, it's available right now. Look for a product known as "PCI Express Riser Cable". Given that the "row of slots to slot in stiff cards" makes for nicely-standardized cases and card installation procedures that are fairly easy to understand, I'm sceptical that ditching slots and moving to riser cables for everything would be a benefit.

- Kill SATA. It's over.

I disagree, but whatever. If you just want to reduce the number of ports on the board, mandate Mini SAS HD ports that are wired into a U.2 controller that can break each port out into four (or more) SATA connectors. This will give folks who want it very fast storage, but also allow the option to attach SATA storage.

- Use USB-C connectors for both power and data for internal peripherals like disks.

God no. USB-C connectors are fragile as all hell and easy to mishandle. I hate those stupid little almost-a-wafer blades.

- Standardize on a couple sizes of "expansion socket" instead...

What do you mean? I'm having trouble envisioning how any "expansion socket" would work well with today's highly-variably-sized expansion cards. (I'm thinking especially of graphics accelerator cards of today and the recent past, which come in a very large array of sizes.)

- Redesign cases to be effectively a single ginormous heatsink with mounting sockets...

See my questions to the previous quote above. I currently don't see how this would work.

arghwhat4• 1 year ago

Why? And why not 12V? Please be specific in your answers.

Higher voltages improve transmission efficiency, in particularly for connectors, as long as sufficient insulation is easy to maintain. Datacenters are looking at 48V for a reason.

Nothing comes for free though, and it makes for slightly more work for the various buck converters.

God no. USB-C connectors are fragile as all hell and easy to mishandle. I hate those stupid little almost-a-wafer blades.

They are numerous orders of magnitude more rugged than any internal connector you've used - most of them are only designed to handle insertion a handful of times (sometime connectors even only work once!), vs. ten thousand times for the USB-C connector. In that sense, a locking USB-C connector would be quite superior.

... on that single metric. It would be ridiculously overcomplicated, driving up part costs when a trivial and stupidly cheap connector can do the job sufficiently. Having to run off 48V to push 240W and have no further power budget at all also increase complexity, cost and add limitations.

USB-C is meant for end-user things where everything has to be crammed into the same, tiny connector, where it does great.

wtallis• 1 year ago

Graphics cards have finally converged on all using about the same small size for the PCB. The only thing varying is the size of the heatsink, and due to the inappropriate nature of the current legacy form factor (which was optimized for large PCBs) the heatsinks grow along the wrong dimension and are louder and less effective than they should be.

wmf4• 1 year ago

There's a rumor that future desktops will use LPDDR6 (with CAMMs presumably) instead of DDR6. Of course CAMMs will be slower so they might "only" run at ~8000 GT/s while soldered LPDDR6 will run at >10000.

Tuna-Fish2• 1 year ago

LPDDR6 won't go that low, even on CAMM2. The interface is designed for up to 14.4Gbps, with initial modules aiming for 10.6Gbps.

nsteel• 1 year ago

What's the advantage of LPDDR6 Vs DDR6 given the latter will be faster ?

runjake4• 1 year ago

When, if ever, will this be released as a bare processor/memory/motherboard combination that I can buy and throw in my own case?

Does anyone know?

colejohnson66• 1 year ago

Framework Desktop

https://frame.work/products/desktop-diy-amd-aimax300

Timshel• 1 year ago

Framework is selling the board as a stand alone: https://frame.work/fr/en/products/framework-desktop-mainboar...

Too bad there isn't a full PCIe (might not be enough bandwidth left) :(.

runjake4• 1 year ago

I was looking to see if they sold only the motherboard just last night and failed. Thanks!!

$1,299 (64GB) and $1,599 USD (128GB) for the motherboards. Yikes, but I get why.

wmf4• 1 year ago

Here's one motherboard: https://frame.work/products/framework-desktop-mainboard-amd-...

I wouldn't be surprised if Minisforum also offers a motherboard.

sourtrident• 1 year ago

Fascinating how Strix Halo feels like AMD's spiritual successor to their ATI merger dreams - finally delivering desktop-class graphics and CPU power in a genuinely portable form factor. Can't wait to see where it pushes laptop capabilities.

AMD's Strix Halo under the hood

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