←back to thread

AMD could enter ARM market with Sound Wave APU built on TSMC 3nm process

(www.guru3d.com)
283 points walterbell | 3 comments | 31 Oct 25 03:07 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
stevefan1999 ◴[31 Oct 25 05:54 UTC] No.45768818[source]▶
Legendary Chip Architect, Jim Keller, Says AMD ‘Stupidly Cancelled’ K12 ARM CPU Project After He Left The Company: https://wccftech.com/legendary-chip-architect-jim-keller-say...

Could be a revival but for different purposes

replies(7): >>45769959 #>>45770585 #>>45771421 #>>45772011 #>>45772565 #>>45772778 #>>45773850 #
high_na_euv ◴[31 Oct 25 09:22 UTC] No.45769959[source]▶
Funny how some of his projects got cancelled like K12 at AMD or Royal Core at INTC and people always act like that was terrible decision, yet AMD is up like 100x on stock market and INTC... times gonna tell
replies(4): >>45770095 #>>45770287 #>>45771119 #>>45771786 #
StopDisinfo910 ◴[31 Oct 25 12:07 UTC] No.45771119[source]▶
Seems completely uncorrelated with what is discussed especially considering Intel didn’t enter the ARM market either.

Would make much more sense to compare with Qualcomm trajectory here as they dominate the high end ARM SoC market.

Basically AMD missed the opportunity to be first mover on a market which is now huge with a project Apple proved to be viable three years after the planned AMD release. Any way you look at it, it seems like a major miss.

The fact that other good decisions in other segments were made at the same time doesn’t change that.

replies(9): >>45771185 #>>45771221 #>>45771239 #>>45771351 #>>45771611 #>>45771841 #>>45772208 #>>45772417 #>>45774680 #
wing-_-nuts ◴[31 Oct 25 14:36 UTC] No.45772417[source]▶
>Basically AMD missed the opportunity to be first mover on a market which is now huge with a project Apple proved to be viable three years after the planned AMD release. Any way you look at it, it seems like a major miss.

No man, apple basically had the power to frog march it's app devs to a new cpu arch. That absolutely would not have happened in the windows ecosystem given the amount of legacy apps and (arguably more importantly) games. For proof of this you need look no further than Itanium and windows arm

replies(2): >>45772553 #>>45772810 #
1. GeekyBear ◴[31 Oct 25 15:06 UTC] No.45772810[source]▶
> apple basically had the power to frog march it's app devs to a new cpu arch

Microsoft's ARM transition execution has been poor.

Apple's Rosetta worked on day one.

Microsoft's Prism still has some issues, but at release its compatibility with legacy x86 software was abysmal.

Apple's first party apps and developer IDE had ARM versions ready to go on day one.

Not so for Microsoft.

Apple released early Dev Kit hardware before the retail hardware was ready to go (at very low cost).

Microsoft did not.

replies(1): >>45774791 #
2. coredog64 ◴[31 Oct 25 17:55 UTC] No.45774791[source]▶
Microsoft already had an example of how to do this in a reasonable fashion. Not only that, but the original developer was an ARM licensee. And then finally, during that era Windows was still being developed for multiple architectures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FX!32

replies(1): >>45776687 #
3. GeekyBear ◴[31 Oct 25 21:05 UTC] No.45776687[source]▶
That's a good example of a non-Apple processor transition where DEC's Alpha CPU performance was industry leading, and the compatibility layer for legacy software was solid.