Article: AMD's Mobile Strategy
By: David Kanter (dkanter.delete@this.realworldtech.com), December 15, 2011 6:13 pm
Room: Moderated Discussions
Mark Pillsbury (no_spam@gmail.com) on 12/14/11 wrote:
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>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.
I think some other folks addressed these points adequately. ISA influences power/energy efficiency, but it's really a second order variable.
>Here's my opinion of what AMD should do:
>1. Make a tablet/netbook/ultrabook/notebook chip with ARM >CPUs and ATI graphics.
That would take 3-5 years and require redoing the whole driver infrastructure from scratch. That's a ton of effort.
>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.
That's not even remotely possible. AMD does not have any teams with wireless expertise to do 4G. Nvidia and Intel spent millions and billions to acquire such expertise, there's no way AMD can internally develop it in a meaningful timeline. Nor do they have the money to do so...
Moreover, you still need bluetooth, GPS, wifi, 3G, 2G, etc.
>3. Don't make an x86 + ARM chip. That's a dumb idea that >no software engineer will like.
Yeah I can't see the point of this.
>4. Bury the animosity toward Nvidia. It hurts the whole industry when there is
>no performance compatibility between Nvidia and ATI >graphics.
Hrmm, what do you mean? AMD's architecture is more efficient in terms of perf/W and perf/area, so I don't see any reason for them to give up that advantage.
>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.
Wouldn't it just be easier to have a bunch of field engineers optimize the applications?
David
---------------------------
>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.
I think some other folks addressed these points adequately. ISA influences power/energy efficiency, but it's really a second order variable.
>Here's my opinion of what AMD should do:
>1. Make a tablet/netbook/ultrabook/notebook chip with ARM >CPUs and ATI graphics.
That would take 3-5 years and require redoing the whole driver infrastructure from scratch. That's a ton of effort.
>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.
That's not even remotely possible. AMD does not have any teams with wireless expertise to do 4G. Nvidia and Intel spent millions and billions to acquire such expertise, there's no way AMD can internally develop it in a meaningful timeline. Nor do they have the money to do so...
Moreover, you still need bluetooth, GPS, wifi, 3G, 2G, etc.
>3. Don't make an x86 + ARM chip. That's a dumb idea that >no software engineer will like.
Yeah I can't see the point of this.
>4. Bury the animosity toward Nvidia. It hurts the whole industry when there is
>no performance compatibility between Nvidia and ATI >graphics.
Hrmm, what do you mean? AMD's architecture is more efficient in terms of perf/W and perf/area, so I don't see any reason for them to give up that advantage.
>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.
Wouldn't it just be easier to have a bunch of field engineers optimize the applications?
David
