Lol without AMD we'd be stuck with Intel trying to break 7GHz on single core CPUs
AMD owned IPC in K6 and for freaking ages after that, my 500 was winning the "booting into half-life race" at lans over P3 550s. And there's a reason the XP series were marketed with an Intel equivalent number instead of clockspeed, my 1.6Ghz chip was sold as "1900+" because it literally had 15-20% better IPC.
AMD was also pushing dual cores and 64bit architecture when the Intel super friends were arguing there's no point "because software didn't support it" (sound familiar?).
I'd say Intel has learnt a lot from AMD (and vice versa of course). And we're all in a better world because of it.
That's hilarious.If it weren't for AMD, we'd probably have ARM Macbooks by now.
For the mainstream desktop market of course. Same for 64-bit. The AMD CPUs are what revolutionized the desktop market in this regard.Who somehow manages to forget Intel came out with the first multi core x86 CPU.
AMD didn't create K6. They bought Nextgen for the design.
Despite the name implying a design evolving from the K5, it is in fact a totally different design that was created by the NexGen team, including chief processor architect Greg Favor, and adapted after the AMD purchase
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_K6
So if you say AMD should not be credited for it at all, then Apple should not be credited for their Ax CPUs either, since they are based on ARM cores.
What the...no. Apple's Ax chips come with custom ARM cores that dramatically outperform anything that ARM or its other licensees are selling into the mobile space (and ARM's cores are already very good).
That's by the PA Semiconductor team. At what point do you say something is made by the parent company after they absorb another company? I mean, AMD wouldn't have K6, K7, or K8 without buying NexGen. Similarly, Apple wouldn't have A7, A8, or A9 without buying PA Semiconductor.
What the...no. Apple's Ax chips come with custom ARM cores that dramatically outperform anything that ARM or its other licensees are selling into the mobile space (and ARM's cores are already very good).
There should be no denial that Intel made some major mistakes and really underestimated what AMD was capable of, like releasing the first 64 bit and multi-core x86 processors.
Technically, AMD released the first native multi-core x86 process; Intel were the first overall by a couple of weeks.
In retrospect though, you have to wonder whether or not AMD might actually have been able to get away with making the Athlon 64 X2 an MCM chip instead of native dual-core. Based on what we later saw with Phenom, I think the X2's advantage was less its native dually status, and more the fact that the Pentium D's core just really, REALLY sucked.
Both Apple and AMD started from an external base design and improved/added to it.
High end what?
Laptops? They've come a long way.
Servers? They've also come a long way.
I don't think Intel sells much outside of those two groups, and probably wouldn't be too concerned even if they lost some of the desktop CPU market.
And let's not forget about the least common denominator of computing - Intel integrated graphics. It's in 99% of PCs, and what you get today is far and above what it was just 5 years ago.
I mean, yeah, I'm a desktop PC enthusiast, but even I'm starting to lose interest and I doubt performance gains are what this market is really lacking.
The goal is performance/watt. Anyone stepping out of this have no chance to compete. If AMD ignores this again, then you can pretty much count Zen sales on your hand. Same reason why they lost so much on the GPU side.
You should ask Oracle and IBM about it. Intel's marginally better at best processors are wreaking havoc on their big iron businesses.
Just in the next decade. Regardless of how Zen performs Intel line up is set in stone until the end of the decade, this for IC design, I guess the foundry roadmap is already set for the next 6-7 years.
OK, here is an interesting question... Would IBM and Motorola would still be making Power PC processors for Apple if AMD wasn't around? The lack of competition in the PC arena might have caused Intel not to invest as much in R&D, allowing the RISC guys to keep up.
You seem to be very confused.
The Apple CPU cores beginning with Swift (A6) onwards are totally custom cores that have nothing to do with the Cortex A-series CPU designs. The only thing they share in common with the ARM off-the-shelf designs is ISA compatibility.*1
Actually Apple was shipping an ARMv8 compatible CPU core before ARM's own core licensees were, which should tell you something.*2
You seem to be very confused.
The Apple CPU cores beginning with Swift (A6) onwards are totally custom cores that have nothing to do with the Cortex A-series CPU designs. The only thing they share in common with the ARM off-the-shelf designs is ISA compatibility.
Actually Apple was shipping an ARMv8 compatible CPU core before ARM's own core licensees were, which should tell you something.
That's exactly the case.The goal is performance/watt. Anyone stepping out of this have no chance to compete. If AMD ignores this again, then you can pretty much count Zen sales on your hand. Same reason why they lost so much on the GPU side.
A custom core does not mean that it has been designed from scratch by the company producing it. Often in these cases they start from a base design (e.g. some standard ARM core), and then just make modifications to certain parts of the CPU core.
What source do you have that Apple A6 was designed from scratch by Apple without basing it on parts of an existing ARM core? A very common setup is to base a custom core on a standard ARM core, optimize some instructions or building blocks, and add some customized specialized instructions.How do you know they weren't designed from scratch? And by what criteria would you consider it so? Bulldozer and Sandy Bridge are considered "designed from scratch".
So same as K6. Based on an existing core and existing building blocks, with some modifications and additions. Which was exactly my point to begin with.But the designers also started from standard logic blocks too. By this criteria, you could argue that those designs are also based on something and not "designed from scratch".