AMD's upcoming 3D V-Cache is proven to improve bandwidth with minimal latency increase

High Expectations: Speculation surrounding AMD's new 3D V-Cache technology has been raging ever since Dr. Lisa Su gave us a preview of Computex 2021. Since then, AMD and tech enthusiasts alike remains cautiously optimistic, claiming that the new chiplet stacking approach can deliver significant performance gains with minimal impact on latency, responsiveness, and overall functionality. A recent test of EPYC processors with V-Cache is giving early indications that AMD's claims of increased performance may be true.

No one was sure what would happen when AMD announced their 3D V-Cache technology at Computex last summer. While some enthusiasts see the dramatic increase in cache memory as an exciting development, others in the community are saddened that the new services will not provide a significant increase in speed. clock speed, improve power consumption, etc. Last Friday, technology news site Chips and Cheese published their initial test results with one of AMD's new Milan-X processors with 3D V-Cache, the server-oriented EPYC 7V73X. And so far, everything looks promising.

According to the website's summary, AMD has managed to significantly increase the processor cache size (768MB) compared to the previous Milan processor family (256MB). Testing by Chips and Cheese reports impressive performance from stacked CPUs and much larger L3 caches without significantly increasing cache and memory latency. Initial testing shows that the latency penalty keeps the gain between three and four cycles.

If these preliminary findings hold true for AMD's upcoming AM4 and AM5 releases, such as the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, then surely the chipmaker will continue to explore the possibilities and benefits associated with 3D chip stacking.

AMD's current 3D stacking technology involves linking a single V-Cache chiplet to the processor's existing core composite die (CCD) and cache. As technology evolves, future architectures can further extend the capabilities of the L3 cache using additional chiplets.

We'll have to wait and see what the future holds, but if the EPYC-based results are any indication of what could be, AMD could offer another significant performance boost with their next round of CPUs.