Are SoftMachines building a laptop SoC? Maybe even a Macbook processor?

[NTMBK]

So SoftMachines are shipping a 4 core 2GHz SoC with remarkably high IPC, which is capable of translating multiple different ISAs into its internal format...

Wild speculation- is this the next Macbook processor? Use binary translation to execute both ARM and x86 binaries on the same chip, and get around Apple's backwards compatibility problems.

They obviously got a big customer, going by Charlie's comments over on RWT:

The one thing that makes me think SM has a potential win on their hands is Mojave is a design for a real, paying customer. I would assume that anyone going to those lengths vs buying an off the shelf SoC has the ability to run enough tests to weed out the BS better than most people debating here. Like I said we will know for sure in ~9 months.

I also know a bit more, not from SM but from other sources, about their initial prototype that leads me to be a bit more optimistic than their presentation alone.

-Charlie

http://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=154475&curpostid=154508

And they have a seriously aggressive roadmap, shipping a physical 16nm SoC in 2016 and a 10nm SoC in 2017. Considering they were at 500MHz on 28nm last year, they suddenly got a massive cash infusion from somewhere. And take a look at the SoC they are making:

That's promising a 1TFlop GPU, which is pretty massive- that's a laptop scale GPU, not a phone scale one. (For comparison, a Tegra X1 peaks at 512GFlops.)

And look at the IO- it is using SATA ports and PCIe lanes, not typical tablet interfaces.

I honestly think this is a laptop processor for someone, and it could well be Apple.

 

[Arachnotronic]

I doubt it. If Apple were confident enough in this tech that it would bet its Mac line on it, you would see Apple outright buy this company.

 

[Boze]

I doubt it. If Apple were confident enough in this tech that it would bet its Mac line on it, you would see Apple outright buy this company.

Unless they didn't want to rock the Intel boat just yet...

I agree that this is for "someone", I just don't know who that "someone" might be yet.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Unless they didn't want to rock the Intel boat just yet...

I agree that this is for "someone", I just don't know who that "someone" might be yet.

Either Google, Microsoft and less likely Samsung aka firms that can make a product out of it and also has no immediate conflict of interest with such a move, yet not good enough to be bought outright by Apple.

 

[gdansk]

Their customer isn't Apple. Samsung, Glofo and AMD are all sponsors. I suspect the GPU core will be licensed from AMD. By the time it releases, high-end tablet/phones will have similar performance GPU cores.

Regardless, I was curious how VISC is different from the many forms of OoO ILP that already exist. It seems like it distributes instructions submitted to one thread to any of the CPU cores. It'd be like sharing scheduling tables across cores. The ISA translator doesn't seem any different than Transmeta or Denver. Interesting combination of ideas and I hope they can get some manufactured.

Either way, even their promotional material show that performance is worse than Intel's laptop dual cores and only marginally more power efficient. Maybe they're hoping it simplify programming and have better results with more money (this is usually true). Overall I'm more optimistic about the Mill architecture, though that one seems less likely to ever leave the labs.

 

[Nothingness]

I suspect the GPU core will be licensed from AMD. By the time it releases, high-end tablet/phones will have similar performance GPU cores.

The GPU comes from Imagination.

 

[Thanatosis]

Why would Apple ditch their A series processors? Especially now with the unequivocal performance lead they have over android and windows competitors... it makes no sense.


I can't even see Apple ditching intel immediately, they are too invested with the Mac Pro and Macbook Pro to just "drop" them as they have no alternative for the kind of long, heavy workloads those PCs handle. Maybe in a few years.


VISC also seems to me a lot like Transmeta or Nvidia and their Tegra X1 with code translation. Interesting idea in principle, but in practice it appears to be very buggy and the architecture is never going to be as efficient as a dedicated RISC. Maybe superior to CISC, but I the only modern CISC implementation I know of is x86.

 

[NTMBK]

Why would Apple ditch their A series processors? Especially now with the unequivocal performance lead they have over android and windows competitors... it makes no sense.

Going with SoftMachines for the Macbook would give them backwards compatibility in theory, by letting them execute x86 code alongside ARM code- I would expect the A series to stick around in the iPad/iPhone line. Maybe if VISC is as good as SM claim, Apple could acquire them and incorporate the technique into future A series processors.

EDIT: However yes, it may well not be for Apple But it definitely looks like like a laptop chip than a tablet/phone chip... Should be interesting to see who it is for.

 

[Arachnotronic]

And they have a seriously aggressive roadmap, shipping a physical 16nm SoC in 2016 and a 10nm SoC in 2017. Considering they were at 500MHz on 28nm last year, they suddenly got a massive cash infusion from somewhere.

Of course they do. Scrappy little startup trying to get acquired for big $$ will of course publish very aggressive roadmaps

 

[sm625]

If it was going into a macbook in 2016, Apple would had to have bought this company 3-5 years ago.

 

[MisterLilBig]

VISC also seems to me a lot like Transmeta or Nvidia and their Tegra X1 with code translation.

The Denver core is only in the Tegra K1 64-bit SoC, not in X1.


Considering the 1Tflop performance of the claimed top of the line GPU it has, it would be incredible in a high end tablet.

 

[jpiniero]

The Denver core is only in the Tegra K1 64-bit SoC, not in X1.

Considering the 1Tflop performance of the claimed top of the line GPU it has, it would be incredible in a high end tablet.

1 TFLOP what though? SP would be impressive... HP less so.