Understanding AMD's Roadmap & New Direction
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 2, 2012 6:16 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- AMD
- Trade Shows
- AMD FAD 2012
ARM & The Future
Thankfully, Rory isn't HPing the company. AMD will continue to build its own x86 CPUs and GCN (and future) GPUs. The difference is that AMD will now consider, where it makes sense, using other architectures. AMD didn't come out and say it, but it's clear that the other ISA under consideration is designed by ARM. In the markets where it makes sense, AMD might deliver an ARM based solution. In others it may deliver an x86 based solution. The choice is up to the market and customer, and AMD is willing to provide either.
What's most interesting is that AMD was very clear about not wanting to be in the smartphone market. It believes, at least today, that the smartphone SoC market is too low margin to make financial sense. With smartphone SoCs selling for under $20 and given how hard it has been for Intel and NVIDIA to break into that market, I don't blame AMD for wanting to sit this one out. However, smartphones have been a huge success for ARM. If AMD is to offer ARM based SoCs coupled with their own CPU/GPU IP in other markets, it's unclear what the reception will be. The flexibility is definitely appreciated and it's a far more defensible position than saying that all future products have to use x86, but simply embracing ARM isn't a guarantee for success.
Rory Read presented a vision of the future where a large, vertically integrated device manufacturer may want to deliver custom silicon for everything from tablets to notebooks to TVs. AMD's goal is to be able to provide silicon to companies like this, while differentiating based on its own internal IP (x86 CPUs, GPU cores). One current example would be Microsoft's Xbox 360. AMD designed much of the silicon for that console, although it's using 3rd party CPU IP. In other words, should a customer want an ARM based solution mated with an AMD GPU, they could have one. If a customer wanted a strange x86/ARM APU, that would be a possibility as well.
AMD did a good job outlining that it would be more agile and flexible, however it didn't outline what specific products we'd see that implement this new architecture agnostic mentality. I suspect AMD's lack of specific examples is a result of the simple fact that the new management team has only been in place for a handful of months. It will take a while to develop outlines for the first products and a clear roadmap going forward. Until then, it's all about executing on the APU, GPU and server CPU fronts.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
84 Comments
View All Comments
another voice - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link
intel also has to compete with itself on performance.Anyone looking at the highish end cpu (i5 or more) already has a cpu.
intel can only charge lots for its new cpu if they are significantly faster than whatever the customer currently owns, cause if its too much for a small performance gain then that generation will get skipped and customer waits for a new generation thus intel sells less.
Impulses - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link
Yup, even if AMD shifts focus away from the desktop (which they should've done years ago) Intel won't have free reign to squeeze the market, one slip still gives a more agile AMD room to jump back in... At worst we'll see Intel's tick tock strategy shift to a slower pace, but Intel still derives much of the efficiency of newer mobile parts out of introducing newer smaller processes so...chizow - Friday, February 3, 2012 - link
Thank god someone else gets it. I've been hearing this "we need competition and AMD for cheap CPUs" meme repeated for the last 5 years. In the meantime, AMD still doesn't have a CPU that convincingly beats what Intel was offering then and yet, Intel continues to release newer, faster CPUs every year.But yes its just as you said, Intel is still competing with themselves and needs to provide incentive for users to actually "upgrade" to a faster CPU. Its not like CPUs expire or even "die" after a few years.
Its really very similar to other markets, like Apple with iPhone or Samsung with Galaxy. Or Madden or Modern Warfare. Even without significant competition, people will buy the latest and greatest but there needs to be enough reason to buy the next iteration.
chizow - Friday, February 3, 2012 - link
It makes you wonder though why AMD has no mobile strategy and no interest in even entertaining it.Beenthere - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link
WHERE does anyone see AMD say they will not continue to deliver excellent desktop CPUs? WHERE? Show me WHERE you see this written or stated by an AMD exec? WHERE exactly did people come up with this nonsense idea?Let me guess when AMD said they were not going to compete directly with Intel everyone concluded that AMD was no longer going to produce high performance desktop CPUs. Well if you did then you thought WRONG. In addition to all of their current products they are also going to offer ULV products for tablets and other devices. These are additional revenue streams not a replacement for desktop CPU sales.
PLEASE stop whining. Vishera will be out this Fall and there are more desktop CPUs to follow.
Risforrocket - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link
Well if AMD will not continue to design and produce high end CPUs then I will probably stop using the CPUs they do make in my high performace desktop. This is, I think, what people are trying to say, and they are right in saying just that.arjuna1 - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link
Both the 2012 and 2013 client roadmaps show only Vishera as a performance desktop part, other than that, 3rd gen bulldozer, "steamroller", comes in 2013 as an APU part, unless the cpu part is a performing champ and the gpu part is a high end 7k series AMD will effectively, as Anand stated, abandoning the high end race.I fully understand that as a company the have nothing to catch up with intel and the focus is placed on other markets, but after all this years of supporting them one can only feel butt hurt to see them leaving us in the air.
As it looks the AM3+ platform is dead already, I don't know about you but I don't have bottomless pockets to have the luxury of investing in a new platform with it's end of the road already in sight.
Beenthere - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link
There will be more desktop CPUs after Vishera. The AM3+ platform isn't dead because it will run Vishera. After that we'll see. AMD may have a few tricks up their sleeve as they are making Opterons to run on AM3+ sockets... You do recall Opteron 165's were fine OC'ers, right?Butt hurt? You must be kidding. I don't know how people reach such absurd conclusions about AMD not continuing with high end desktop CPUs. Yes mainstream will migrate to APUs - as I have said for over a year, but AMD will continue to offer top end desktop CPUs also.
arjuna1 - Thursday, February 2, 2012 - link
Actually, their idea is: their high end desktop parts are now their low end server parts, that's what they did with BD and we all know the end result, don't we??If Vishera is an APU I highly doubt it will run off AM3+, which is fine anyway, I wasn't expecting the AM socket to last forever, but the new trend is obvious, AMD is no longer interseted in the high end desktop market, and I'm not interested in APUs, and won't be couple of years still.
Sabresiberian summed it up pretty well:
they no longer are interested in supplying what I want, so we must part ways.
mak360 - Friday, February 3, 2012 - link
dude, your like a broken record "we must part ways", be gone and don`t let the door hit your ass on way out lol.if you're an high end user, you should be with intel anyway, so whats your point?