AMD and RED joined venture to release the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X, which is an ultra-powerful  64-core CPU that can eat for breakfast those 8K REDCODE RAWs.

“Game Changer” for content creators

Today, AMD announced its new super processor, the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X, that owns an unprecedented 64-cores, which is something we’ve never seen in a consumer CPU. According to AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su, the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X will be a “game-changer” for content creators. This CPU is unique in the way of its design and form factor that allows the privilege to be implemented in desktop workstations.

Game changer

CEO of Advanced Micro Devices

The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X costs $3,990 and will be available for orders from February 7. Furthermore, there is a neat demonstration in the presentation regarding Ryzen Threadripper 3990X performances in heavy rendering tasks compared to $20,000 Dual Xeon Platinum 8280. Check it out in minute 44 on AMD CES 2020 presentation.

Check out the whole deck below: 

RED Digital Cinema & AMD

In the last part of the deck, Dr. Lisa Su demonstrates the utilization of the 64-core to deal with R3D 8K files. According to RED, this new ultra core CPU makes 8K REDCODE RAW editing effortlessness. RED President Jarred Land says that one of the problems of REDCODE RAW is that this efficient codec is also CPU intensive. However, RED tested the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X and found it valid for playback 8K in real-time. Jarred said that they couldn’t do that on the CPU until the 64 Threadripper came out: “AMD launched the insanely powerful new Ryzen 3990x 64 core Threadrippers today, and we are honored that AMD trusted us with the very first ones to leave the factory” he added.

AMD launched the insanely powerful new Ryzen 3990x 64 core Threadrippers today, and we are honored that AMD trusted us with the very first ones to leave the factory

Jarred Land, RED President

CPU and GPU to facilitate workflow

The business connection behind this announcement is even more intriguing. RED is known for its partnership with NVIDIA. We wrote a decent amount of articles regarding NIVIDA’s unique mobile army to compete against Apple’s MacBook Pros, and I’m talking about the RTX Studios laptops that were developed especially for professional content creators with the help of RED. The logic behind this is more focused on the GPU instead of utilizing CPU limited resources. However, with the born of the new Mac Pro, it seems that the utilization of CPU is relevant again. The hypothesis is that with enough cores, the CPU might have enough power to allow heavy-duty tasks like a native (proxy-free) ultra-resolution editing and grading. Nevertheless, it’s nice to explore RED partnering with these two companies that compete with each other (AMD and NVIDIA). Would Intel be next?