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

[M@yeulC]

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.

Well, it seems that their are resurrecting their ARM endeavours, with 32-bit Win32 apps support coming to their 64-bits WinRT platform. That, plus rumors of wearables.
If this can spur a new life in the ARM Linux Laptop/Desktop market, I am all for it

risc-v from AMD would be great, though

[Marc Guillot]

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

Price, obviously.

Intel is a monopoly, Intel doesn't allow competence, nVidia was told that they couldn't buy an x86 license for Project Denver at any price. And AMD is barely any competence for Intel nowadays.

Compare that to they healthy and extremely crowded ARM ecosystem. It's no surprise that Intel couldn't set a foot in mobile, even after throwing billions of dollars dumping their Atom SOCs.

Do you want to pay your processors at monopolistic prices ?, be my guest, I for one hope that ARM will have the software support to be an option on desktop and server.

[bug77]

What they need is for consumers to buy their products in the cases where AMD is better.
If people buy Intel and NVidia no matter what, it gets hard.
I buy AMD whenever i can justify it. And on the graphics department isn't too hard.

I thought I just gave a list of things they need to fulfill for users to start buying their hardware.

[Nille]

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.

You get it wrong. Microsoft plans a new Windows on ARM as a Desktop, not only for IoT. So we will see a Windows 10 RT but this time they implement a 32bit x86 Emulator on ARMv8. They does this already for Itanium and the Alpha CPU Architecture.

[johnc]

I for one hope that ARM will have the software support to be an option on desktop and server.

Well they will with Linux, that's for sure.

[pal666]

http://m.gsmarena.com/asus_zenfone_2_ze551ml-6917.php

lol, out of thousands of phones you found one which was subsidized by intel in 2015. intel killed off its smartphone dreams and stopped wasting money on subsidies, so 2016 lineup of zenfones uses only arm socs(2015 was mostly arm)

[pal666]

Intel doesn't allow competence

this word is spelled "competition"

[pal666]

i think AMD is going to join the RISC-V team

you are living in the past

[wizard69]

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

Costs and power efficiency come to mind. Beyond that a much better environment for developers.

Oh it wouldn't hurt to put a real hurt on Intel too.

[wizard69]

ARM and "low" power consumption is a myth that's busted every time real world benchmarks are run.
It's true that an ARM SoC in a phone uses less power than a full bore desktop system.
It's not true that if you tried to build an ARM desktop system that you would get similar performance to a regular desktop in a lower power envelope. You can have low power, you can have high performance (with ARM designs that haven't been built yet), but you aren't getting both.

Unfortunately that isn't true either. Right now Apple is getting performance out of their table/cell phone chips that comes real close to what they are getting in their intel based mac Book all the while using far less power. I believe at this time that a sound ARM implementation will eclipse Intel on a power per watt metric in most work loads. If one does a custom SoC optimized for common personal computer uses (drop cell specific hardware) you get plenty of die space for enhancing performance.

In a nut shell I see your position as yesterdays reality.