Report: AMD and NVIDIA Set to Offer Arm-Based Processors for PCs
by Anton Shilov on October 25, 2023 8:30 AM EST
Apple's release of Arm-based system-on-chips for its desktops and laptops three years ago demonstrated that such processors could offer competitive performance and power consumption. On the Windows-based PC front, only Qualcomm has offered Arm-based SoCs for notebooks in recent years, but it looks like it will soon be joined by AMD and NVIDIA, two notable players in the PC space, according to a Reuters report.
While neither AMD nor NVIDIA has confirmed plans to offer Arm-based SoCs for client PCs, it will not be the first time these companies either planned or offered Arm-powered processors for the Windows ecosystem. Furthermore, this move will align with Microsoft's broader vision to push the adoption of Arm-based processors into Windows PCs to make them more competitive against Apple's offerings.
Microsoft has spearheaded initiatives promoting the utilization of Arm-based processors, intending to diversify and evolve beyond the prevailing x86 architecture, predominantly controlled by Intel, for years. At first, the company attempted to do this in the late 2000s but saw no major success for years. However, AMD tried to develop a competitive Arm-based SoC (but had to fold development due to insufficient budgets), whereas NVIDIA offered its Tegra processor.
Microsoft's renewed attempt to push Arm into Windows PCs kicked off in 2016 when the company signed a deal with Qualcomm, under which the latter produced PC-oriented Snapdragon application processors. In contrast, Microsoft tailored its Arm version of Windows specifically for these SoCs.
"Microsoft learned from the 90s that they do not want to be dependent on Intel again, they do not want to be dependent on a single vendor," said Jay Goldberg, chief executive of D2D Advisory, in a conversation with Reuters. "If Arm really took off in PC (chips), they were never going to let Qualcomm be the sole supplier."
That deal between Microsoft and Qualcomm is set to expire in 2024 when AMD, NVIDIA, and others will be able to release their Windows PC-oriented SoCs. But it remains to be seen what exactly the two companies will offer.
AMD, Intel's arch-rival on the x86 CPU market for decades, may be inclined to expand its offerings. However, this move will not fit into its contemporary data center-oriented strategy. Furthermore, NVIDIA has also focused primarily on data center business in recent years.
On the one hand, both companies are interested in making high-volume products of PCs. On the other hand, both earn tons of money on AI, HPC, and data center CPUs and GPUs, and both use all production capacity they can to meet demand for their high-margin offerings. Yet, historically, companies that solely concentrated on enterprise hardware went extinct or became parts of more prominent entities.
Source: Reuters
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
43 Comments
View All Comments
FWhitTrampoline - Thursday, October 26, 2023 - link
Do you mean the ARM Cortex X4 is out now? And in what Shipping device if that's so? And hopefully there will be some Micro-Benchmark work done there to see how that works out with X4 having no Micro-OP cache. The X4 can only issue 10 Micro-OPs so that's all coming from the decoders and that's maybe going to have some latency and power usage considerations there instead of pulling in Micro-OPs from a Micro-op cache! And that's because Instruction Decoders are power hungry relative to other parts of the core when enabled and will have to be enabled there most of the time for Cortex X4.I found an Interesting research paper tiled: "I See Dead μops: Leaking Secrets via Intel/AMD Micro-Op Caches" that's got an nice primer into AMD's and Intel's Micro-Op caches and how they work and even though the paper is looking at SMT related side channel vulnerabilities it's discussion of x86 Micro-OP cache designs is worth keeping a copy for reference for it's deeper dive in the x86 Micro-Op cache design at that time for AMD(Zen) and Intel(Sky Lake). There's some nice Micro-Benchmark code samples that may be useful to others as well in that research paper.
mode_13h - Friday, October 27, 2023 - link
> hopefully there will be some Micro-Benchmark work done thereNo, I think Anandtech hasn't benchmarked any phones since Andrei left.
> The X4 can only issue 10 Micro-OPs
Only? That's like the widest in the biz. Also, ARM seems to cal them Macro Ops.
> so that's all coming from the decoders and that's maybe going to have some latency and
> power usage considerations there instead of pulling in Micro-OPs from a Micro-op cache!
How dumb do you think ARM is? Do you think they'd really drop the mOP cache if doing so came at such costs? And what do you mean "all the way", when the decoders are right where the mOP cache would be?
> that's because Instruction Decoders are power hungry relative to other parts of the core
No, you must be thinking of a bad ISA, like x86. AArch64 decoders are cheap. ARM got rid of the mOP cache, since the X4 dropped support for AArch32.
iphonebestgamephone - Wednesday, November 1, 2023 - link
Yes. In the hands of reviewers in the form of the sd 8g3 refrence design.iphonebestgamephone - Wednesday, November 1, 2023 - link
Now the xiaomi 14 is also out.Kevin G - Thursday, October 26, 2023 - link
The other benefit ARM has isn't just simplified decoders that consume less power and less die area than their x86 counter parts. Post decoding Apple has a massive instruction window for re-ordering operations. Again, the ARM benefit isn't in the feature but rather increased capacity given the same die area.mode_13h - Friday, October 27, 2023 - link
The reordering window isn't really related to ISA, it's just an Apple flex. The X-series reorder buffers have the following sizes, according to wikichip: 224, 288, 320, and 384. So, the X4 has one not much more than half the size of the Firestorm cores in Apple's M1.mode_13h - Friday, October 27, 2023 - link
By contrast, Golden Cove's reorder buffer is 512 entries, while Zen 4's is only 320.FWhitTrampoline - Wednesday, October 25, 2023 - link
Edit A14 Cyclone to A14 Firestorm!jamesindevon - Wednesday, October 25, 2023 - link
I expect AMD to start with AMD graphics and Arm Ltd cores: much cheaper to put together, and a fairly attractive proposition. They've said for years they'd do it if an OEM asked.It might not be too dissimilar to their pre-Zen position: good-enough CPU power with much better graphics and drivers than Qualcomm (now) or Intel (then).
iphonebestgamephone - Thursday, October 26, 2023 - link
So the exynos 2100