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):
Could be a revival but for different purposes
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.
I don't think this is a fair position. It could as well be that focusing in K12 would have delayed Zen, maybe delaying it enough that it could have become irrelevant by the time it got to market.
Remember that while Zen was a good CPU, the only reason it made as much impact as it did was because it also was released in a good time (when Intel was stumbling with 10nm and releasing Skylake refresh after Skylake refresh).
Agree. AMD stock was under $2 prior to Zen. Buying was a bet that Zen would be competitive with Intel in which case the stock would come back, otherwise they were doomed. The first Zen chips were in fact competitive but beat Intel in some benchmarks and lost in others. That would have brought back competition, but who knew Intel would flounder for many more years while Zen got a nice uplift with each generation! Delaying Zen would have been bad for AMD, but in hindsight that wouldn't have mattered so long as they could stay afloat til it launched.