AMD hasn’t stopped reaping the benefits of Threadripper and they’ve just clinched the CES 2018 Best of Innovation Award for the high-performance Ryzen Threadripper 1950X processor. The 1950X processor, which supports 16 cores and 32 threads is built around AMD’s powerful Zen core architecture.
“The overwhelmingly positive response from enthusiasts and expert reviewers that greeted the release of AMD Ryzen Threadripper already served as a huge reward for the AMD whole engineering team who built this ground-breaking product,” said AMD Chief Marketing Officer John Taylor. “Now, with its selection as a CES 2018 Best of Innovation Award winner, Ryzen Threadripper achieves a special standing and place of leadership in the incredible history of processor innovation.”
The thing here though is that the Threadripper 1950X is purely an enthusiast chip and falls so high into the premium scale that the commercial benefits to AMD would likely be minimal. At best, it would serve as a technology demonstrator and a shouting point to thump Intel over the head with.
The Threadripper 1950X also opens a new can of worms in that it is ahead of the technology curve, meaning that some software won’t even load, given the unprecedented number of core/threads on this consumer chip. AMD has so far managed to mitigate this issue with a few unique runabouts and will doubtlessly overcome the architecture issues soon.
What is more important to the consumer though is that AMD is now once again in the running with Intel and opens an avenue that has been missing for so long – choice. The technology is solid, and the product has been pronounced as impressive by reviewers.
Perhaps the CES award will help cushion the blow of losing Raja Koduri, who has led the Readon Technologies Group to new heights, to Intel.