AMD Zen does seem to support FMA4

Posted on Monday, October 15 2018 @ 15:16 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck

It probably doesn't matter a lot, but it's interesting to know that AMD's Zen architecture has unofficial support for the FMA4 instruction set. In the video below, Level1Techs illustrates you can feed Zen with FMA4 instructions. Instead of returning an "illegal instruction" error, the CPU goes ahead and completes the operation.

Presumably, AMD didn't finish FMA4 support on Zen because it wasn't worth it, either due to budget issues or lack of sufficient adoption.

The exact reasons why AMD deprecated FMA4 with "Zen" are unknown, but some developers speculate it's because AMD's implementation of FMA4 is buggy, even though it's more efficient (33% more throughput). Intel's adoption of FMA3 made it more popular, and hence more stable over the years.

Via: TPU

About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.

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