There's Still No Sign Of AMD's Low-Cost ARM Development Boards

[pal666]

low-cost Google Chrome notebooks with excellent power efficiency? You want x86.

you don't.

That's called "catchup" and we have a graveyard of companies

'that' here is intel's smartphone fiasco

*ARM really isn't that special when a 65 watt Xeon-D with 16 cores is practically unbeatable in a energy efficiency metric at this point.

1) arm uses less power for same performance 2) 'intel' bundles isa with factories. 'arm' is just isa. 3) comparable arm is also much cheaper than xeon

[pal666]

I really see ARM based hardware as the way forward for modern computing systems.

new way is riscv

[andreano]

No, raspi3 is shit because it was designed to be a GPU with a CPU strapped on to do some minor things, and has only a USB port for device connectivity.

That's what I'm saying, hw is shit, but the sw crucially isn't (relatively speaking).

Without a nazi leader (Steve Jobs) to whip them into making anything great, they can only come up with the same pathetic custom hardware.

Fixed:
Toned down the need for standardization, as I think the 96boards spec is part of the problem.

[starshipeleven]

In the form of Imageon, yes it did.

That's a different thing that has a similar high-level block diagram. Ok that they are somewhat similar on logic level but they are NOT as close as you might think.

That said, they sold that stuff to Qualcomm like 6 years ago or something I think, so they cannot revive it or Qualcomm comes bashing them, anything new has to be done from near-scratch.

Not that it is impossible, just noting that it's less straightforward as you may think.

[duby229]

did r600 use anywhere near the order of magnitude of power that Adreno is allotted? I think not.

In the form of Imageon, yes it did.

[starshipeleven]

You seem to forget that Adreno was once Imageon, a VLIW unified shader architecture very similar to r600 desined by ATi.

did r600 use anywhere near the order of magnitude of power that Adreno is allotted? I think not.

[starshipeleven]

At least to me it seems pretty obvious Zen is a direct result of the IP license AMD has with Intel. Intel knew years ago that Arm has the potential to compete with Intel's products and they must have known years ago that AMD was getting interested in developing it further. So they decided to gift AMD with a high end x86 architecture, which prompted AMD to contract Jim Keller to sort it out and get it to manufacturability testing. The benefit to Intel is that even if they don't get those sales which AMD gets they are still x86 sales which keeps the platform relevant.

Any sense in this speculation or no?

Unless you explain more what would be this "high-end x86 architecture" they gifted, and why they would have given this to AMD instead of using it themselves, no.

Also, probably no in any case. Intel does not play cat-mouse game anymore with AMD since a long time ago. Intel is at like 100% in x86 servers, around 90% of laptops and above 85% of desktops.

[duby229]

More like 3 years, and it is a total redesign.
finishing whatever they begun as changing course now would have wasted the development effort.
That said, ARM space is a very high-competition low-margin market in the consumer segment you talked about.
Big companies don't give a shit about lack of support, they want stuff that works decently now and costs a few bucks. Mediatek usually wins here.

AMD GPUs aren't in high demand in embedded market where at most you need to display 2D content, and I doubt they can make a decent GPU for mobile (decent = powerful AND low-power enough).

You seem to forget that Adreno was once Imageon, a VLIW unified shader architecture very similar to r600 desined by ATi.

[starshipeleven]

Well Zen whosent a short turn plan it's actually developed for 5 years now (& that is a uper limit for mid range plan's).

More like 3 years, and it is a total redesign.

Short range plan would be

finishing whatever they begun as changing course now would have wasted the development effort.
That said, ARM space is a very high-competition low-margin market in the consumer segment you talked about.
Big companies don't give a shit about lack of support, they want stuff that works decently now and costs a few bucks. Mediatek usually wins here.

AMD GPUs aren't in high demand in embedded market where at most you need to display 2D content, and I doubt they can make a decent GPU for mobile (decent = powerful AND low-power enough).

[duby229]

So I've been thinking about the position AMD is in. Let me do some pure speculation here. If you don't agree simply keep scrolling.

At least to me it seems pretty obvious Zen is a direct result of the IP license AMD has with Intel. Intel knew years ago that Arm has the potential to compete with Intel's products and they must have known years ago that AMD was getting interested in developing it further. So they decided to gift AMD with a high end x86 architecture, which prompted AMD to contract Jim Keller to sort it out and get it to manufacturability testing. The benefit to Intel is that even if they don't get those sales which AMD gets they are still x86 sales which keeps the platform relevant.

Any sense in this speculation or no?