5 ms·

Interesting. They they'd better be much faster than an off-the-shelf Arm core. That takes some serious investment. Qualcomm tried it, and eventually gave up. Is

by awill 3y ago

Interesting. They they'd better be much faster than an off-the-shelf Arm core. That takes some serious investment. Qualcomm tried it, and eventually gave up. Isn't the only company outdoing Arm Apple?

senttoschool 3y ago
Nuvia should outdo ARM - if the lawsuit preventing Qualcomm from using Nuvia cores fail. I do expect Ampere to succeed in outperforming stock ARM core designs. Otherwise, there'd be no reason to have embarked on a very risky and expensive journey to have their own custom cores.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  That's circular reasoning. They may simply not succeed because their risky and expensive journey didn't work out. They can't retro-actively redo their reasoning.
  - awill 3y ago
    Exactly. They're doing it because they THINK they can outdo Arm. Arm isn't standing still, and they would have had to start years ago.
bee_rider 3y ago
Maybe they started with N2 as a baseline and improved from there. If if their 3 year old chips were performance/power competitive with the new AMD ones, then even if they only tweaked N2 a little bit they would seem to have a likely winner?
411111111111111 3y ago
Weren't the tensor chips in the pixel phones based on arm too? And in the Datacenter you've also got google and Amazon making their own arm based chips, not sure if MS does the same. However, Apples M1 Chip had the biggest impact to consumers I think. The tensor chips aren't particularly better and we just don't have any interactions with hardware servers
- rgbrenner 3y ago
  Google Cloud, Azure, and Oracle use Ampere Altra (ARM Neoverse) AWS used Neoverse for Graviton. Google Cloud is designing their own ARM chips: they're working on one design from Marvell (likely Neoverse), and their own custom design. These are in the design phase, and very unlikely to be produced this year. Re: Google Tensor chips on phones: Those used ARM Cortex CPU and ARM Mali GPU, and a Google designed Tensor processing unit for machine learning. The google TPU replaces chips like Qualcomm Hexagon. The TPU does not use an ARM instruction set.
KingOfCoders 3y ago
Apple does it mostly with the best fab tech (3nm next [0]), one generation ahead of everyone else, and with lots of cache (expensive, but they have the margins by being expensive and being vertically integrated), more than everyone else. Apple doesn't do it with ARM design in this sense. [0] https://www.macrumors.com/2023/02/22/apple-secures-tsmc-3nm-chips/ https://www.macrumors.com/2023/02/22/apple-secures-tsmc-3nm-...
- pzo 3y ago
  Current a15 is still in 5nm but outperforms latest snapdragon that’s on 4nm - those fastest android arm chips matching iPhone chips from 2 generations behind last time when checked Geekbench
  - p_l 3y ago
    The part where Apple can (or is courageous enough) to plop large caches and other otherwise "trivial but expensive" performance enhancements is the critical point. The vertical integration also means that they get to design the parameters of the planned device instead of how Qualcomm or Samsung end up making compromises for market share
  - KingOfCoders 3y ago
    Difficult to get information, seems like the A15 has 2x 3.2 ghz cores whereas the S8G2 has 1x 3.2 hgz core. Searched a little bit on Google but could not come up with detailed - only fragmented - information on L1/L2/L3 caches for the A15 and S2G2. But I thought we were talking Server/Desktop chips, not phone chips (I have no clue about them, my MI11Ultra seems fast enough for everything, I'm not compiling on it). And the M2 has massive caches (L1/L2/L3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M2 How much performance you get with caches are shown with the X3D models that - gaming performance - are faster than all than more expensive Intel/AMD chips. M2 Max Ryzen 7900 Cores 12 12 L1 320kb 64kb L2 32MB 12MB Last 48MB 64MB (32MB/chiplet)
StillBored 3y ago
Right, its easy to name a half dozen companies that designed their own cores that turned out to be worse or no better than the arm offerings. The real hubris at these companies is thinking they can build a team that can create a better chip in one generation. Apple is on what the 10th public generation of their own cores, from a team they acqihired that was already producing cpus? How many generations/respins did it take before they replaced the ARM ip with their own designs, and then how many generations was it before they were faster? Not only that but Arm seems to have gotten serious a few years ago and the IPC is within striking distance of the best amd/intel products. They are no longer doing obviously stupid things, so it seems odd a company like ampere doesn't have another respun Altra with a N2/V2 sitting on the sidelines as a fallback when their own design fails.
- celrod 3y ago
  The ARM cortex x4 will have 10-wide dispatch: https://www.anandtech.com/show/18871/arm-unveils-armv92-mobile-architecture-cortex-x4-a720-and-a520-64bit-exclusive/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/18871/arm-unveils-armv92-mobi... It'll probably be roughly the same chip as one of their upcoming V chips. The specs there sound seriously impressive to me, and like they might be getting ready to leave AMD and Intel behind in terms of IPC (for their highest performing chips). ARM's clock speeds are much lower, so single core performance will probably be worse. But I'd guess server clock speeds may be similar.
  - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
    Having an N-wide dispatcher means nothing unless the software can use it, and server clock speeds tend to be lower than desktops. Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about
    - celrod 3y ago
      Given that the M1 and M2 perform similarly to AMD and Intel CPUs with far higher clock speeds, it seems most software can use wider dispatch. Note that dispatch doesn't mean vector width, which is harder for software to take advantage of. It means how many uops the pipeline can handle/clock cycle.

by awill 3y ago

senttoschool 3y ago

Nuvia should outdo ARM - if the lawsuit preventing Qualcomm from using Nuvia cores fail. I do expect Ampere to succeed in outperforming stock ARM core designs. Otherwise, there'd be no reason to have embarked on a very risky and expensive journey to have their own custom cores.

jacquesm 3y ago
That's circular reasoning. They may simply not succeed because their risky and expensive journey didn't work out. They can't retro-actively redo their reasoning.
- awill 3y ago
  Exactly. They're doing it because they THINK they can outdo Arm. Arm isn't standing still, and they would have had to start years ago.

bee_rider 3y ago

Maybe they started with N2 as a baseline and improved from there. If if their 3 year old chips were performance/power competitive with the new AMD ones, then even if they only tweaked N2 a little bit they would seem to have a likely winner?

411111111111111 3y ago

Weren't the tensor chips in the pixel phones based on arm too? And in the Datacenter you've also got google and Amazon making their own arm based chips, not sure if MS does the same. However, Apples M1 Chip had the biggest impact to consumers I think. The tensor chips aren't particularly better and we just don't have any interactions with hardware servers

rgbrenner 3y ago
Google Cloud, Azure, and Oracle use Ampere Altra (ARM Neoverse) AWS used Neoverse for Graviton. Google Cloud is designing their own ARM chips: they're working on one design from Marvell (likely Neoverse), and their own custom design. These are in the design phase, and very unlikely to be produced this year. Re: Google Tensor chips on phones: Those used ARM Cortex CPU and ARM Mali GPU, and a Google designed Tensor processing unit for machine learning. The google TPU replaces chips like Qualcomm Hexagon. The TPU does not use an ARM instruction set.

KingOfCoders 3y ago

Apple does it mostly with the best fab tech (3nm next [0]), one generation ahead of everyone else, and with lots of cache (expensive, but they have the margins by being expensive and being vertically integrated), more than everyone else. Apple doesn't do it with ARM design in this sense. [0] https://www.macrumors.com/2023/02/22/apple-secures-tsmc-3nm-chips/ https://www.macrumors.com/2023/02/22/apple-secures-tsmc-3nm-...

pzo 3y ago
Current a15 is still in 5nm but outperforms latest snapdragon that’s on 4nm - those fastest android arm chips matching iPhone chips from 2 generations behind last time when checked Geekbench
- p_l 3y ago
  The part where Apple can (or is courageous enough) to plop large caches and other otherwise "trivial but expensive" performance enhancements is the critical point. The vertical integration also means that they get to design the parameters of the planned device instead of how Qualcomm or Samsung end up making compromises for market share
- KingOfCoders 3y ago
  Difficult to get information, seems like the A15 has 2x 3.2 ghz cores whereas the S8G2 has 1x 3.2 hgz core. Searched a little bit on Google but could not come up with detailed - only fragmented - information on L1/L2/L3 caches for the A15 and S2G2. But I thought we were talking Server/Desktop chips, not phone chips (I have no clue about them, my MI11Ultra seems fast enough for everything, I'm not compiling on it). And the M2 has massive caches (L1/L2/L3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M2 How much performance you get with caches are shown with the X3D models that - gaming performance - are faster than all than more expensive Intel/AMD chips. M2 Max Ryzen 7900 Cores 12 12 L1 320kb 64kb L2 32MB 12MB Last 48MB 64MB (32MB/chiplet)

StillBored 3y ago

Right, its easy to name a half dozen companies that designed their own cores that turned out to be worse or no better than the arm offerings. The real hubris at these companies is thinking they can build a team that can create a better chip in one generation. Apple is on what the 10th public generation of their own cores, from a team they acqihired that was already producing cpus? How many generations/respins did it take before they replaced the ARM ip with their own designs, and then how many generations was it before they were faster? Not only that but Arm seems to have gotten serious a few years ago and the IPC is within striking distance of the best amd/intel products. They are no longer doing obviously stupid things, so it seems odd a company like ampere doesn't have another respun Altra with a N2/V2 sitting on the sidelines as a fallback when their own design fails.

celrod 3y ago
The ARM cortex x4 will have 10-wide dispatch: https://www.anandtech.com/show/18871/arm-unveils-armv92-mobile-architecture-cortex-x4-a720-and-a520-64bit-exclusive/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/18871/arm-unveils-armv92-mobi... It'll probably be roughly the same chip as one of their upcoming V chips. The specs there sound seriously impressive to me, and like they might be getting ready to leave AMD and Intel behind in terms of IPC (for their highest performing chips). ARM's clock speeds are much lower, so single core performance will probably be worse. But I'd guess server clock speeds may be similar.
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  Having an N-wide dispatcher means nothing unless the software can use it, and server clock speeds tend to be lower than desktops. Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about
  - celrod 3y ago
    Given that the M1 and M2 perform similarly to AMD and Intel CPUs with far higher clock speeds, it seems most software can use wider dispatch. Note that dispatch doesn't mean vector width, which is harder for software to take advantage of. It means how many uops the pipeline can handle/clock cycle.