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Comment by shmerl

3 months ago

Can anyone explain what prevents AMD from making x86_64 chips competitive with ARM on the lower end like in mobile phones? I doubt it's about ISA.

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shmerl

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axiolite  3 months ago

Just price, I'd say. AMD / Intel are used to a certain margin on their products, and the low barrier to entry to create ARM CPUs, and fierce competition from giants like Broadcom, keeps margins very thin in this market.

The original smart phones like the Nokia Communicator 9110i were x86 based.

AMD previously had very impressive low-power CPUs, like the Geode, running under 1-watt.

Intel took another run at it with Atom, and were able to manage x86 phones (eg: Asus Zenphone) slightly better than contemporary ARM based devices, but the price for their silicon was quite a bit higher than ARM competitors. And Intel had to sink so much money into Atom, in an attempt to dominate the phone/tablet market, that they couldn't be happy just eeking out a small sliver of the market by only being slightly better at a significantly premium price.

  • aurareturn  3 months ago 

      Just price, I'd say.

    I don't think it is price. Intel has had a bigger R&D budget for CPU designs than Apple. If you mean manufacturing price, I also doubt this since AMD and Intel chips are often physically bigger than Apple chips in die size but still slower and less efficient. See M4 Pro vs AMD's Strix Halo as an example where Apple's chip is smaller, faster, more efficient.

    • adrian_b  3 months ago

      I have not seen any evidence that Apple's chip is smaller, faster and more efficient.

      Apple's CPU cores have been typically significantly bigger than any other CPU cores made with the same manufacturing process. This did not matter for Apple, because they do not sell them to others and because they have always used denser CMOS processes than the others.

      Apple's CPUs have much better energy efficiency than any others when running a single-threaded application. This is due to having a much higher IPC, e.g. up to 50% higher, and a correspondingly lower clock frequency.

      On the other hand, the energy-efficiency when running multithreaded applications has always been very close to Intel/AMD, the differences being explained by Apple having earlier access to the up-to-date manufacturing processes.

      Besides efficiency in single-threaded applications, the other point where Apple wins in efficiency is in the total system efficiency, because the Apple devices typically have lower idle power consumption than the competition, due to the integrated system design and the use of high-quality components, e.g. efficient displays. This better total system efficiency is what leads to longer battery lifetimes, not a better CPU efficiency.

      The Apple CPUs are fast for the kind of applications needed by most home users, but for applications that have greater demands for computational performance, e.g. with big numbers or with array operations, they are inferior to the AMD/Intel CPUs with AVX-512.

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  • shmerl  3 months ago

    I see, but why others like Qualcomm are doing it then? They are OK with low margins?

    • ACCount37  3 months ago

      Qualcomm has a massive "value add" because they own the modem. As well as a doom stack of patents on all things cellular.

      You need a modem if you want to make a smartphone. And Qualcomm makes sure to, first, make some parts of the modem a part of their SoC, and second, never give a better deal on a standalone modem than on a modem and SoC combo.

      Sure, AMD could make their own modem, but it took Apple ages to develop a modem in-house. And AMD could partner with someone like Mediatek and use their hardware - but, again, that would require Mediatek to prop up their competition in SoC space, so, don't expect good deals.

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