Teardown reveals AMD Ryzen Threadripper has no dummy dies

Famous overclocker der8auer delidded a retail sample of the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and discovered that AMD didn't tell the full truth about this processor.

About six weeks ago, der8auer was the first to discover that there are four dies under the Threadripper IHS. Just two cores are activate and at the time AMD's comments indicated the two other cores are dummy parts. According to the chip giant, there need to be four dies under the IHS to achieve mechanical stability.

AMD asked der8auer to take the video down because he was not using a retail sample but now der8auer shelved out 1,000EUR for a 1950X and published a new delidding video. He also tried to get rid of the layers of substrate and the surprising conclusion of his video is that there are no dummy dies.

Unlike what AMD implied, the two unused dies are not just blank spacers. The photos reveal these are real dies with integrated circuit.

Unfortunately, there's little hope of being able to activate these cores as there are many (physical) stumbling blocks, including the fact that the Threadripper and EPYC sockets reportedly are electrically different. The two "dummy" dies have no path to operation, so it's not possible to try to activate these cores via a simple software hack.