Article: AMD's Mobile Strategy
By: Daniel Bizo (fejenagy.delete@this.gmail.com), December 15, 2011 5:30 am
Room: Moderated Discussions
Mark Pillsbury (no_spam@gmail.com) on 12/14/11 wrote:
---------------------------
>I liked your thoughtful analysis but I respectfully disagree with your opinion that
>"From a technical perspective, adopting ARM for SoCs makes little sense. It utterly
>eliminates one of AMD's core competencies, namely their x86 expertise." I think
>ARM is a better technical solution for tablets and netbooks/ultrabooks/notebooks
>because power consumption is critical in these markets. A successful company has
>to provide what the market needs even if it is not the sweet spot of their core
>competency. Otherwise, it is like being the guy who drops his keys in a dark parking
>lot and looks for them under a light instead of where he dropped them.
There are folks here at RWT who know and can explain this stuff a lot better than me, including David, but the bottom line is that in real life, energy efficiency and power consumption has very little to do with the instruction set architecture. This is because over the last decade the microarchitectural complexity AND integration level of microchips increased in such a big way that the impact of the ISA on device power and efficiency is marginal.
Even if ARM had any advantages over x86 due to its RISC type ISA that enables a cleaner, simpler and more efficient front-end design, architectural design choices, resources on implementation, and available process technology are all much bigger factors on their own, not to speak combined.
AMD lost its differentiation capability in process technology, which is really really bad, and underestimated by most, however, it's still an experienced, resourceful chip design house with very good GPU IP. Holding an x86 license and running the Windows ecosystem is actually the single biggest differentiator it has over ARM licencees, and Windows 8/Metro is going to massively help AMD (and Intel) on a strategic level.
Why would anyone buy a non-Windows tablet if you have the same experience as on your PC? Hopefully, with easy and fast data syncronisation in the future. Over time, Intel and Microsoft may even try to completely assimilate the tablet form factor into the fabric of the PC borg ship with rejuvenated convertible/hybrid tablet PC designs -- which is something long overdue and should have happened years ago, basically.
>
>Here's my opinion of what AMD should do:
>1. Make a tablet/netbook/ultrabook/notebook chip with ARM CPUs and ATI graphics.
>2. Start work on a 4G wireless processor so in a couple of years they can offer
>a cell phone chip. This is totally doable at AMD.
>3. Don't make an x86 + ARM chip. That's a dumb idea that no software engineer will like.
>4. Bury the animosity toward Nvidia. It hurts the whole industry when there is
>no performance compatibility between Nvidia and ATI graphics.
>5. Price the Opteron 6000 series at the same price per socket as the Opteron 4000
>series to encourage more adoption of high socket count systems and high core count
>software optimized for AMD's microarchitecture.
---------------------------
>I liked your thoughtful analysis but I respectfully disagree with your opinion that
>"From a technical perspective, adopting ARM for SoCs makes little sense. It utterly
>eliminates one of AMD's core competencies, namely their x86 expertise." I think
>ARM is a better technical solution for tablets and netbooks/ultrabooks/notebooks
>because power consumption is critical in these markets. A successful company has
>to provide what the market needs even if it is not the sweet spot of their core
>competency. Otherwise, it is like being the guy who drops his keys in a dark parking
>lot and looks for them under a light instead of where he dropped them.
There are folks here at RWT who know and can explain this stuff a lot better than me, including David, but the bottom line is that in real life, energy efficiency and power consumption has very little to do with the instruction set architecture. This is because over the last decade the microarchitectural complexity AND integration level of microchips increased in such a big way that the impact of the ISA on device power and efficiency is marginal.
Even if ARM had any advantages over x86 due to its RISC type ISA that enables a cleaner, simpler and more efficient front-end design, architectural design choices, resources on implementation, and available process technology are all much bigger factors on their own, not to speak combined.
AMD lost its differentiation capability in process technology, which is really really bad, and underestimated by most, however, it's still an experienced, resourceful chip design house with very good GPU IP. Holding an x86 license and running the Windows ecosystem is actually the single biggest differentiator it has over ARM licencees, and Windows 8/Metro is going to massively help AMD (and Intel) on a strategic level.
Why would anyone buy a non-Windows tablet if you have the same experience as on your PC? Hopefully, with easy and fast data syncronisation in the future. Over time, Intel and Microsoft may even try to completely assimilate the tablet form factor into the fabric of the PC borg ship with rejuvenated convertible/hybrid tablet PC designs -- which is something long overdue and should have happened years ago, basically.
>
>Here's my opinion of what AMD should do:
>1. Make a tablet/netbook/ultrabook/notebook chip with ARM CPUs and ATI graphics.
>2. Start work on a 4G wireless processor so in a couple of years they can offer
>a cell phone chip. This is totally doable at AMD.
>3. Don't make an x86 + ARM chip. That's a dumb idea that no software engineer will like.
>4. Bury the animosity toward Nvidia. It hurts the whole industry when there is
>no performance compatibility between Nvidia and ATI graphics.
>5. Price the Opteron 6000 series at the same price per socket as the Opteron 4000
>series to encourage more adoption of high socket count systems and high core count
>software optimized for AMD's microarchitecture.
