Remember that a while ago we mentioned that Threadripper basically is the 32-core processor, yet with four Dies on it? AMD at the time specified that two out of the four dies are dummies, basically blanks for for structural support under that heat-spreader. Well, there are four dies under there really.
Overclocker der8auer a while ago tried to de-lid a Threadripper, but with the heatspreader soldered to the dies he broke that CPU (of course). In his latest video he takes it a step further and check out the dummy dies. When he pealed them loose …
Now if you can remember it, Threadripper really is based on the EPYC platform and processor, and EPYC offers up-to 32-core processors. When we looked at the early photos, you could clearly see 4 dies. Each Die basically is one Ryzen 1800 8-core unit. So many expected that two out of the four dies would be disabled. When we asked AMD about this at a recent summit they claimed that Threadripper has two working sies and two dummies to get you to the 16-cores. The two dummies would be in place for better structural support.
Well, these dummies seem to be 8-core dies (these are called Zeppeling dies). I personally think that AMD simply might be is re-using failed dies here and simply called them dummies as in non-working dies. No-body really knows except AMD of course. The reality remains to be that in the future AMD certainly can scale upwards towards 24-core or 32-core Threadrippers for X399. But the find by itself is rather interesting. Check out the photos below, courtesy of der8auer . .
Nobody should really care about all this as it is just not relevant, but the photos are fun and actually fascinating to see alright 🙂 Check the photos. His video can be spotted here.
