A bit more on AMD’s Genoa memory issues

A few more bits to flesh out the issue

Mar 13, 2023 by
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A few weeks ago, SemiAccurate said some things about AMD’s Genoa going bump in the night. Since then we have gotten a few more data points and things are… interesting.

Lets recap a little, starting with our call last June that AMD would ship Genoa ‘for real’ in February 2023 because the memory controller wasn’t exactly working as planned. We put on the caveat that if AMD wanted to launch earlier than that, it was a PR/marketing decision, not a technical one. If they went with the tech, they would wait until the 2DPC (DIMMs Per Channel) firmware patch was out. SemiAccurate’s sources said it would be out roughly now, late February or early March 2023. This was also reiterated at the Genoa launch pre-brief, directly, and by several vendors at CES in January 2023.

To back it up, 2DPC does not work at the moment, period. Try it. Actually try to find a box that you can actually buy, not order but receive. Should you get one, and you won’t, try and run that second DIMM channel, really. At CES and MWC, several sources said that it was possible to make it work in testing with specific DIMMs and boards but the list of caveats that accompanied it was so long that no one was willing to call it productizable. The silicon vendor in question opinions may vary. In short our information from last summer seems to have been dead on until…

That brings us to mid-February, the first part of the patch arrival window. Instead of a patch that fixed the 2DPC problem, we got the issues reported here. This is the long way of saying don’t hold your breath waiting for said patch to arrive. Toss in that last week at a financial conference, AMD’s Mark Papermaster acknowledged the 2DPC issue and said there was a fix coming in 2H/23. Please do note what SemiAccurate said earlier about launches and fully working products.

So what’s new? I am glad you asked because there is some subtle messaging gymnastics coming out of AMD at the moment. Nothing nefarious, just things that a top tier eastern European contortionist would wince at. Allow us to explain.

Note: The following is for professional and student level subscribers.

Disclosures: Charlie Demerjian and Stone Arch Networking Services, Inc. have no consulting relationships, investment relationships, or hold any investment positions with any of the companies mentioned in this report.

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Charlie Demerjian

Roving engine of chaos and snide remarks at SemiAccurate
Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also available through Guidepoint and Mosaic. FullyAccurate