AMD's ARM Efforts Appear Stalled, But At Least Zen Should Be Great

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD's ARM Efforts Appear Stalled, But At Least Zen Should Be Great

This week's news of Qualcomm sampling a 10nm 48-core ARMv8 SoC for servers made me wonder where are AMD's ARM SoCs -- and the long-awaited development boards -- and thus been following up with a few sources this week...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-ARM-Where-Are-They

[chuckula]

I can't blame AMD for focusing on an x86 Zen considering that is where 100% of its expertise lies and the x86 ecosystem already exists.

Qualcomm is a huge company that has far more resources than AMD. It's also been on the losing side of the mobile market for the last several years as Apple uses its own chips, Samsung only uses Qualcomm parts for some of its products, and cut-rate companies like AllWinner are attacking the very low end of the market. Qualcomm needs to throw huge amounts of time and money at trying to establish a legitimate ARM server market for its own long-term survival. AMD could never pull that off even if it wanted to.

[boxie]

I can't blame them for focusing on a product that is likely going to put them in a better position to compete if/when arm does take off there.

[bug77]

I can't blame AMD for focusing on an x86 Zen considering that is where 100% of its expertise lies and the x86 ecosystem already exists.

Well, they did fire their x86 engineers in Dresden and closed that facility while betting on ARM, so "focusing" is not exactly what they've been doing.
But yes, they're strapped on so many fronts that I simply cannot see them getting into a better position by simply releasing something that matches intel (like many seem to think will be enough). They need to smash intel again the way they did with AthlonXP and Athlon64. Or smash Nvidia the same way. Or both.

Fun fact: Qualcomm bought their mobile graphics division from ATI/AMD.

[UseLinuxNotWindows]

I think there there is most definitely a market for ARM based desktop and server computers. Microsoft certainly thinks so and (IMHO) is very worried about the continuing dominance of Android in mobile space hence the (reported) porting of Windows to ARM (along with Qualcomm supporting x86 emulation - albeit 32-bit). I have played around with using various ARM based devices as desktop machines (such as the RPi3 running Pixel and Pine A64 - who are about to launch a laptop based on the Allwinner chip).

China has shown that you do not need to have an x86 based server to have outstanding system performance.

If somebody was to bring out a fast 8 core 64 bit ARM chip, couple this with a decent on-chip GPU and ship it with 4GB RAM+ (even 2GB+ would be better) and a fast SSD then I think you would have a terrific mini server (think NAS or little Linux server) or very usable desktop machine. Can we have an RPi4 with 2GB RAM and NMVe please? All right an ARM based worktation might not quite compete with the top x86 based PCs with 1kW power supplies and insane graphics cards but look at the graphics on mobiles these days. Pretty good might be good enough for most peopleand I think that Qualcomm know this.

[VikingGe]

AMD Zen does indeed appear to be shaping up very nicely.

Except that SEV might be broken by design and they apparently still have trouble with their SMT implementation on Naples. None of this should affect Desktop systems, though.

[Sonadow]

Microsoft certainly thinks so and (IMHO) is very worried about the continuing dominance of Android in mobile space hence the (reported) porting of Windows to ARM (along with Qualcomm supporting x86 emulation - albeit 32-bit).

Microsoft essentially gave up on porting Windows as-is to ARM after Windows RT flopped (i was even a first-gen Surface RT owner). The current version of Windows 10 Core for RasPi and other ARM devices are centered around capatilizing IoT, and not as an alternative desktop platform anymore.

[log0]

I think there there is most definitely a market for ARM based desktop and server computers. Microsoft certainly thinks so and (IMHO) is very worried about the continuing dominance of Android in mobile space hence the (reported) porting of Windows to ARM (along with Qualcomm supporting x86 emulation - albeit 32-bit). I have played around with using various ARM based devices as desktop machines (such as the RPi3 running Pixel and Pine A64 - who are about to launch a laptop based on the Allwinner chip).

China has shown that you do not need to have an x86 based server to have outstanding system performance.

If somebody was to bring out a fast 8 core 64 bit ARM chip, couple this with a decent on-chip GPU and ship it with 4GB RAM+ (even 2GB+ would be better) and a fast SSD then I think you would have a terrific mini server (think NAS or little Linux server) or very usable desktop machine. Can we have an RPi4 with 2GB RAM and NMVe please? All right an ARM based worktation might not quite compete with the top x86 based PCs with 1kW power supplies and insane graphics cards but look at the graphics on mobiles these days. Pretty good might be good enough for most peopleand I think that Qualcomm know this.

And why would anyone prefer such an ARM server/workstation over a comparable x86 system.

[Sonadow]

And why would anyone prefer such an ARM server/workstation over a comparable x86 system.

Probably for low power consumption.

[schmidtbag]

I feel like AMD really only invested in the ARM-based Opteron as a backup plan in the event Zen failed. That being said, the results of Zen do sound promising if they have postponed that Opteron chip.