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I'm happy to see an AMD with plenty of income that they can invest in the development of future products. We've seen how little advancement we get when Intel do

I'm happy to see an AMD with plenty of income that they can invest in the development of future products. We've seen how little advancement we get when Intel doesn't have effective competition to spur them along.

AtlasBarfed 2y ago
I'm no Intel fan but the last time that AMD had market leadership and anything which was under Hector Ruiz who is they basically completely stopped innovating. I don't think that'll happen under Lisa, but the track record of AMD and market leadership is they just kind of sit on it. We'll see what happens this time around Of course, last time Intel was still sitting on a metric pile of Fab technology and other stuff that was still in the pipeline. Intel appears a lot more starred for such potential innovations. The path forward appears to be radical ISA switches or something besides yet another x86 node shrink. But Intel's track record for doing anything outside of x86 processors is very very very very poor.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  > The path forward appears to be radical ISA switches Why up to this day people still can't make x86 clones? The amd64 architecture is nearly 20 years old, and lots of compilers target ancient processors. What kind of legal protection is there that is lasting for that long? (Anyway, I'm glad RISC-V is taking off.)
  - mlyle 2y ago
    * SSE and other architectural extensions combined with supporting patents * Intellectual property minefields about how to adapt every new micro-architectural innovation to the mess that is x86 architecture. Finally, barriers to entry in developing a competitive processor are fundamentally high. Combining them with the risk of litigation makes it untenable.
- Panzer04 2y ago
  I don't see an ISA switch being worth much. As I understand it today, most cores are basically an ISA interpreter on the front of a bespoke core. There's not much to be gained from using a specific ISA or arch (unless it's so different as to not be the same thing, like GPU vs CPU). Probably they could also go the way of making the guarantees provided by the processor as weak as possible, but that's even harder to switch to, I'd imagine.
- Deukhoofd 2y ago
  > The path forward appears to be radical ISA switches or something besides yet another x86 node shrink What I'm worried about is that the path they'll choose is the Apple route, and begin releasing SoCs, hurting repairability and upgradability.
  - timschmidt 2y ago
    SoCs are inevitable. The CPU is a black hole which will eventually absorb all parts of the computer. As SoCs become more capable, discrete components will inevitably find themselves less commonly used outside of datacenter and workstation. This is a natural outcome of increasingly dense transistors and was observed by the CEO of Centaur Technologies in the 90s. One of the neat aspects of multi-chip modules and specifically AMD's implementation of chiplets, is that they are able to share chiplets across segments, improving yields, volume, binning, and profitability all at the same time. Their 3D VCache has also been very exciting, as we're starting to see Epyc CPUs with L3 cache measured in gigabytes. I think Apple made very smart decisions about jumping to on-package DRAM in terms of taking advantage of the increased bandwidth to bolster performance, and in the ways it worked with their pricing model. Though I think it's clear that 8gb system memory is about the minimum anyone could get away with shipping in such a system. As things get denser, numbers will only go up, and the pain of being stuck with a fully integrated system should decrease. 10 years from now, a SoC with 256gb DRAM integrated will feel very different from a bottom tier M1, while likely occupying a similar price point.
  - paulmd 2y ago
    "what I'm worried about is that the path they'll choose is the NVIDIA route and begin releasing incremental updates while segmenting/upcharging based on RAM capacity". like the null hypothesis is: maybe these things aren't "Intel things" or "NVIDIA things" but "the way the market works"/"the way the technology is progressing". maybe there are good engineering reasons to package memory, maybe there are good reasons vram capacity stalled out, maybe there are good reasons nobody is racing to launch a $179 8GB card anymore. but people would rather believe that every single company is just choosing to leave revenue and marketshare on the table by "joining oligopoly" or something, idk the null hypothesis is that maybe the engineers are actually making good decisions and this is just what they can deliver given the constraints they're operating under, but conspiracies feel better. this idea that "tech is taking a direction I don't like, therefore it's malicious/obviously marketing-driven and there's no technical reasoning or merit" idea is really noxious and toxic, and unfortunately quite pervasive. there are good engineering reasons to package memory. you will see more of it in the future.
Narhem 2y ago
Intels market share is pretty close to a monopoly.

AtlasBarfed 2y ago

I'm no Intel fan but the last time that AMD had market leadership and anything which was under Hector Ruiz who is they basically completely stopped innovating. I don't think that'll happen under Lisa, but the track record of AMD and market leadership is they just kind of sit on it. We'll see what happens this time around Of course, last time Intel was still sitting on a metric pile of Fab technology and other stuff that was still in the pipeline. Intel appears a lot more starred for such potential innovations. The path forward appears to be radical ISA switches or something besides yet another x86 node shrink. But Intel's track record for doing anything outside of x86 processors is very very very very poor.

marcosdumay 2y ago
> The path forward appears to be radical ISA switches Why up to this day people still can't make x86 clones? The amd64 architecture is nearly 20 years old, and lots of compilers target ancient processors. What kind of legal protection is there that is lasting for that long? (Anyway, I'm glad RISC-V is taking off.)
- mlyle 2y ago
  * SSE and other architectural extensions combined with supporting patents * Intellectual property minefields about how to adapt every new micro-architectural innovation to the mess that is x86 architecture. Finally, barriers to entry in developing a competitive processor are fundamentally high. Combining them with the risk of litigation makes it untenable.
Panzer04 2y ago
I don't see an ISA switch being worth much. As I understand it today, most cores are basically an ISA interpreter on the front of a bespoke core. There's not much to be gained from using a specific ISA or arch (unless it's so different as to not be the same thing, like GPU vs CPU). Probably they could also go the way of making the guarantees provided by the processor as weak as possible, but that's even harder to switch to, I'd imagine.
Deukhoofd 2y ago
> The path forward appears to be radical ISA switches or something besides yet another x86 node shrink What I'm worried about is that the path they'll choose is the Apple route, and begin releasing SoCs, hurting repairability and upgradability.
- timschmidt 2y ago
  SoCs are inevitable. The CPU is a black hole which will eventually absorb all parts of the computer. As SoCs become more capable, discrete components will inevitably find themselves less commonly used outside of datacenter and workstation. This is a natural outcome of increasingly dense transistors and was observed by the CEO of Centaur Technologies in the 90s. One of the neat aspects of multi-chip modules and specifically AMD's implementation of chiplets, is that they are able to share chiplets across segments, improving yields, volume, binning, and profitability all at the same time. Their 3D VCache has also been very exciting, as we're starting to see Epyc CPUs with L3 cache measured in gigabytes. I think Apple made very smart decisions about jumping to on-package DRAM in terms of taking advantage of the increased bandwidth to bolster performance, and in the ways it worked with their pricing model. Though I think it's clear that 8gb system memory is about the minimum anyone could get away with shipping in such a system. As things get denser, numbers will only go up, and the pain of being stuck with a fully integrated system should decrease. 10 years from now, a SoC with 256gb DRAM integrated will feel very different from a bottom tier M1, while likely occupying a similar price point.
- paulmd 2y ago
  "what I'm worried about is that the path they'll choose is the NVIDIA route and begin releasing incremental updates while segmenting/upcharging based on RAM capacity". like the null hypothesis is: maybe these things aren't "Intel things" or "NVIDIA things" but "the way the market works"/"the way the technology is progressing". maybe there are good engineering reasons to package memory, maybe there are good reasons vram capacity stalled out, maybe there are good reasons nobody is racing to launch a $179 8GB card anymore. but people would rather believe that every single company is just choosing to leave revenue and marketshare on the table by "joining oligopoly" or something, idk the null hypothesis is that maybe the engineers are actually making good decisions and this is just what they can deliver given the constraints they're operating under, but conspiracies feel better. this idea that "tech is taking a direction I don't like, therefore it's malicious/obviously marketing-driven and there's no technical reasoning or merit" idea is really noxious and toxic, and unfortunately quite pervasive. there are good engineering reasons to package memory. you will see more of it in the future.

Narhem 2y ago

Intels market share is pretty close to a monopoly.