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.
Apple had already switched cpus in Macs twice, it's not surprising that they could do it again, but would they have switched from Intel x86 to AMD ARM when they never used any AMD x86? Seems unlikely.
Focusing on a product that would sell on day one rather than one that would need years to build sales makes sense for a company that was struggling for relevance and continued operations.
Today? Sure, they could probably sell some arm cpus; in 2017, doesn't seem likely.
I think you can get 95% of compatibility but the 5% of apps not running, even though they might be used once every full moon and there are alternatives, might be seen as a major blocker for a potential customer if he can still buy another computer with 100% compatibility.