AMD and Intel rumored to have signed graphics licensing agreement
A rumour originating on Hard OCP, a computer gaming enthusiasts' site, says Intel will start to use Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD) Radeon graphics technology. With the launch of its Zen CPU expected in 2017, AMD may feel it sufficiently competes with Intel on processing power to lend out its graphics expertise, suggests Tirias Research. In turn, Intel could improve its graphics and overall system on chip (SoC) performance but would be reliant on its biggest PC competitor. If the rumour is true, Intel will need its patent cross-licensing agreement with NVIDIA to expire before picking up with AMD.

AMD just filed 5 interesting trademarks that appear to be related to Zen & artificial intelligence. RyZen, ThreadRipper, Jitzu, Joro & Gork. This is especially intriguing as we now know that AMD is planning a big preview on December 13th ahead of Zen's official launch early next year.

Which is one reason why we decided to roll our sleeves up and dig deeper into what these new trademarks might mean and which products they could be related to.

AMD's RyZen And ThreadRipper, New Zen Trademarks ?

Let's start with the two trademarks that, on the face it of at least, appear to be suspiciously related to AMD's upcoming Zen CPUs. Which are set to compete with Intel's eight core, six core in the enthusiast market as well as quadcore i7 and i5 CPUs in the mainstream desktop segment. With a combination of extremely impressive performance and aggressively disruptive pricinng AMD is hoping to hit the ground running with Zen early next year.



The RyZen trademark was filed by AMD several months ago on the 28th of July, 2016. The trademark's description unfortunately is quite vague, it states :

"Semiconductor devices; semiconductor chips; semiconductors; computer hardware; microprocessor modules; chip sets, integrated circuits; graphics processors; and accelerated processors"

Happily however we know for a fact that it's related to chips and with "Zen" in the name it's logical to assume that this trademark has something to do with AMD's upcoming CPUs. Is it a new CPU brand? a feature? a specific product? it's quite difficult to tell.

Moving on to "ThreadRipper". This trademark was filed several months later, on the 25th of October, 2016 to be specific. This trademark's description is quite lengthy and even more vague. It reads :

"Semiconductor devices; semiconductor chips; semiconductors; computer hardware; microprocessor modules; microprocessor subsystems; computer hardware subsystems; computer subsystems; graphics software; chipsets; integrated circuits; graphics processors; accelerated processors; graphics cards; video cards; video game software; computer software; video game consoles; virtual reality headsets; computer workstations; computer servers; solid state drives; volatile memory and dynamic random-access memory"

Given that the word "thread" is in the name it is not outlandish to assume that it has something to do with Zen, specifically it's simultaneous multi-threading capability. It doesn't give me the impression of a brand for AMD's equivalent to intel's HyperThreading. It sounds, to me at least, like something related more to a piece of software but that's just speculation on my part.

Zen's simultaneous multi-threading feature.

Zen CPUs will come in three different configurations, all of which support simulatenous multi-threading. The fastest of the bunch will feature eight cores and 16 threads and is rumored to outperform Intel's i7 $999 5960X CPU at half the price. In the middle of the stack there will be six core, 12 thread chips with performance rumored to be similar to Intel's six core i7 6800K and i7 5820K CPUs at a significantly lower price point. At the most affordable end of the stack will be quadcore, 8 thread models with performance rumored to be similar to Intel's i7 4770K at i5 sort of pricing.

AMD RYZEN Desktop CPU Lineup - Specs & Rumored Prices

Wccftech SR7 Black Edition SR7 SR5 SR3 Microarchitecture Zen Zen Zen Zen L2 Cache 4MB 4MB 3MB 2MB L3 Cache 16MB 16MB 12MB 8MB Cores 8 8 6 4 Threads 16 16 12 8 Core Clock 3.4+ 3.4 TBA TBA Turbo Clock TBA TBA TBA TBA Alleged* MSRPs $499 $349 $249 $149 Launch January January March March

JORO, JITZU & GROK - Potential Hints That AMD Plans A Future Play In The AI Market

All three trademarks were filed on the same day, 25h of July 2016. They all bear the same vague description. Which reads :

"Semiconductor devices; semiconductor chips; semiconductors; computer hardware; microprocessor modules; microprocessor subsystems; computer hardware subsystems; computer subsystems; graphics software; chipsets; integrated circuits; graphics processors; accelerated processors; graphics cards; video cards; video game software; computer software; video game consoles; virtual reality headsets; computer workstations; computer servers; solid state drives; volatile memory and dynamic random-access memory"

Thee keen-eyed among you will note that this description is identical to that of "ThreadRipper", which doesn't help us one bit in trying to figure out what they could be related to. However, digging deeper into the meaning of each of these three codenames is quite revealing.

But, What Do They Actually Mean?

Let's start with Joro. Our research indicates that this is a word derived from the Nordic name Jöro, which simply means earth. Grok on the other hand is a word that was coined by Robert A. Heinlein for his 1961 science-fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land. It means to understand something intuitively or by empathy. Finally we come to Jitzu. This is a name of Asian origins and it means independent, autonomous and self-taught.

If we pause for moment and create a word cloud based on what we just read we will end up with something that sounds like it was taken straight out of one of Jen-Hsuan Huang's -- NVIDIA CEO -- talks about AI and machine-learning. NVIDIA has been pushing its GPU technology in this direction very actively in recent years. Senior AMD executives, including CEO Lisa Su, were asked repeatedly over the past few months at several media events whether the company had any plans to play in the AI & self-driving car markets. They always skirted around the edges of answering the questions bu consistently dropped hints that there are indeed plans to expand to those markets with the Zen CPU microarchitecture, Vega GPU microarchitecture and beyond.

What specifically each one of these codenames refers to is not clear. Our guess would be a software framework for AI and machine-learning. Perhaps even AMD's in-house built AI prototypes.

Wccftech AMD Naples AMD RYZEN Market Enterprise Desktop Microarchitecture Zen Zen Cores 32 8 Threads 64 16 Base TBA 3.6Ghz (F3 Stepping) Turbo TBA 3.9Ghz (F3 Stepping)

4.0Ghz (F4 Stepping) L1 Instruction Cache 32 KB x 32 32 KB x 8 L1 Data Cache 64 KB x 32 64 KB x 8 L2 Cache 512 KB x 32 512 KB x 8 L3 Cache 64 MB 16 MB