Samsung and AMD will reportedly take on Apple’s M1 SoC later this year
1–10 of 18 posts
Re: Samsung and AMD will reportedly take on Apple’s M1 SoC later this year
#2If they release full documentation and a standard (cloneable) full-system design they will be far ahead of Apple and might initiate another PC revolution. I'm already beyond sick of the barely-documented proprietary crap that is the mobile world; seeing that cancer spread to and gradually erode the freedoms of the true general-purpose PC is really sad to see.
Of course if the past is any indication, the reality is probably going to be far from that --- it will be another locked-down mobile device, except with a large screen and a keyboard attached.
Re: Samsung and AMD will reportedly take on Apple’s M1 SoC later this year
#3If Samsung was in the same league as Apple Silicon we'd see some evidence of it by now. Before Apple released the M1 they were selling similar parts in iPads. We knew these were fast before they stuck them in Macs. But Samsung is the opposite: their flagship mobile processors are terrible. Apple beats them by 50% on single-core performance. If Samsung was about to jump into the game, I would expect some signs of better parts.
Re: Samsung and AMD will reportedly take on Apple’s M1 SoC later this year
#4What OS will it run? From what I've heard windows ARM isn't up to scratch, and I doubt they will ship devices running Linux.
Re: Samsung and AMD will reportedly take on Apple’s M1 SoC later this year
#5If Samsung was in the same league as Apple Silicon we'd see some evidence of it by now. Before Apple released the M1 they were selling similar parts in iPads. We knew these were fast before they stuck them in Macs. But Samsung is the opposite: their flagship mobile processors are terrible. Apple beats them by 50% on single-core performance. If Samsung was about to jump into the game, I would expect some signs of bett…
Samsung CPU performance meets AMD GPU performance per watt? I couldn't imagine a worse combination heh. I don't think this will compete with the M1 very well. At least I'm glad the industry is moving towards putting cheap high-performance/efficiency SoCs in all laptops finally.
Re: Samsung and AMD will reportedly take on Apple’s M1 SoC later this year
#6What OS will it run? From what I've heard windows ARM isn't up to scratch, and I doubt they will ship devices running Linux.
Chrome OS.
Re: Samsung and AMD will reportedly take on Apple’s M1 SoC later this year
#7I'm skeptical that Samsung is anywhere near taking on the M1 given their current production Exynos processor, but I wish some one would. I have an M1 MacBook Air and it's essentially the computer I've been wanting for years, powerful without fans or other moving parts, but I wish there were good options outside of Apple.
Re: Samsung and AMD will reportedly take on Apple’s M1 SoC later this year
#8If Samsung was in the same league as Apple Silicon we'd see some evidence of it by now. Before Apple released the M1 they were selling similar parts in iPads. We knew these were fast before they stuck them in Macs. But Samsung is the opposite: their flagship mobile processors are terrible. Apple beats them by 50% on single-core performance. If Samsung was about to jump into the game, I would expect some signs of bett…
Samsung CPU performance meets AMD GPU performance per watt? I couldn't imagine a worse combination heh. I don't think this will compete with the M1 very well. At least I'm glad the industry is moving towards putting cheap high-performance/efficiency SoCs in all laptops finally.
There was a generation here or there where AMD(and Nvidia) had poor performance per watt. And even then it was due to pushing clock speeds and voltages on the high end parts to compete on performance. Hardly the norm or even the case today. RDNA2 seems to be very efficient. Cooling aside the RDNA mobile GPU in my Macbook gets a lot done with 20w-30w of power.
Re: Samsung and AMD will reportedly take on Apple’s M1 SoC later this year
#9If they release full documentation and a standard (cloneable) full-system design they will be far ahead of Apple and might initiate another PC revolution. I'm already beyond sick of the barely-documented proprietary crap that is the mobile world; seeing that cancer spread to and gradually erode the freedoms of the true general-purpose PC is really sad to see. Of course if the past is any indication, the reality is pr…
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Re: Samsung and AMD will reportedly take on Apple’s M1 SoC later this year
#10OK, let's unfold this next bit.
>It was always questionable that Samsung was planning to beef up its Exynos smartphone chips, since the company splits its flagship smartphone lineup between Exynos and Qualcomm, depending on the region. Exynos chips are always inferior to Qualcomm chips, but Samsung considers the two products close enough to call the Exynos- and Qualcomm-based phones the same product. If Samsung knocked it out of the park with an AMD GPU, where would that leave the Qualcomm phones? Would Samsung ditch Qualcomm? That's hard to believe, and it sounds like the easy answer is for the company to just not dramatically change the Exynos smartphone chips.
1. The history of two chip in two market is mostly due to CDMA patents licensing usage aka Qualcomm. This isn't a Samsung only problem.
2. Samsung has made it clear they want a single chip for all market. Especially after the patent dispute settlement with Qualcomm in 2019. Qualcomm also gets some better deal with Samsung Foundry.
3. Samsung Foundry, and specifically Samsung Foundry ( since Samsung is a huge conglomerate ) has a long history of over promise and under deliver. I made two bet with an industry analyst on Samsung not delivering their promise in the past 5 years. And so far my prediction have not been wrong. This has some implication in Qualcomm's deal because they could fall behind in their chip's leadership. i.e They could go back to TSMC.
That interesting thing about this Samsung AMD chip collaboration was that it was originally labelled as a good partnership by Dr Lisa Su because AMD was not competing in the Phone market. Much like their console Semi- Custom Silicon division. That make sense. But now Samsung making a chip for their laptop is basically entering AMD's Ryzen territory. If these were ChromeOS based laptop then it would be fine, but all source and direction are currently pointing to Windows - ARM solution. Dr Lisa Su dodged the question once, and no other analyst / interviewer seems to be asking the hard question.
I am wondering if AMD are turning into a Semi-IP company.