51–60 of 102 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If all Apple cared about was faster chips Everybody _wants_ faster chips, but for most people, the chip is in idle state 99% of the time. Outside of the data center and serious gamers, chip speed has been fairly irrelevant for years.
This hasn't been irrelevant for years on mobile.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is 3rd hand, but I heard that the 14nm was rushed with a crazy schedule, and as a result the greybeards who actually knew everything all left. Intel is having to rebuild all that institutional knowledge from scratch again.
Any idea where most of them went?
20% YoY Revenue increase, 43% YoY Growth in Datacenter Segment. 76% Growth in Non-Volatile Memory solution, another 7% YoY growth in Client Side computing. This is truly amazing results. I get stabbed over at Anandtech every time I made an argument for Intel as an AMD investor. The Internet is full of Intel bashing comments but reality is Intel has been making record revenue quarter after quarter. For the not so good…
This obviously puts more wind in AMD's sails. That said, Intel's Datacenter growth is very impressive. I have been an AMD investor since pre-Zen launch and I think it is fair to say that EPYC sales feel like they haven't reached the levels some have hoped for quite yet. If AMD continue to widen the gap between EPYC and Xeon, I suspect we may look back on this inertia as a bit of a 'roadrunner effect' and in a year or…
I've been looking just these last few weeks at buying a new Epyc Rome system, and one thing I was a bit surprised (though I shouldn't have been, I just haven't thought about it in a long time) about was that while Rome is incredible as a CPU the whole ecosystem around it has lagged by quite a bit. Specifically, the motherboard selection is still well behind what you can find for Xeon. That's not AMD's fault and there is a bit of a standard egg/chicken bootstrap issue, the market has to be deep enough to really start to fill out the niches. Epyc being so good is what has allowed them to start clawing their way up at all, and the MB scene is already massively better then even the start of this year. Still though it's made it harder for me at least to unthinkingly pull the trigger, every option for my intended use-case entails compromises. There is no perfect fit.
I suspect over the next 6-12 months even that will be less and less the case. And hopefully that will mean accelerating momentum for AMD and bring some more long term competitiveness to that market. But it's been interesting being on the purchase hunt and seeing the development in real time, it already feels like the whole game has changed for CPUs but of course everything supporting that lags a cycle or two.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is 3rd hand, but I heard that the 14nm was rushed with a crazy schedule, and as a result the greybeards who actually knew everything all left. Intel is having to rebuild all that institutional knowledge from scratch again.
Sounds like they should've sent them "please take me back" bouquets with a stack of cash instead of fruit.
Apple's timing here is spot on. If Intel was firing on all cylinders, it would be a lot harder for them to pull off a processor change.
If all Apple cared about was faster chips, they could easily call up AMD and move their platform there. It'd be a lot less work for them. Moving to their own ARM chips lets them gain tighter control over the platform, and not be beholden to Intel or AMDs roadmap or desire to implement specific features Apple wants.
You are talking strategy, I am talking tactics.
Long term, Apple will benefit hugely by having their own silicon for exactly the reasons you suggest.
Short term, being competitive on performance is massively important. Arguably, the most important thing to make the transition successful. So much so that I doubt this transition would even be happening if they weren't confident about out-performing Intel in the near term.
The cynical answer is “they were focused on profit margins and didn’t invest in process”, but is it possible they bet hard on some technology that didn’t pan out? Ultraviolet lithography? Some exotic indium gallium arsenide magic that didn’t work in mass production?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If all Apple cared about was faster chips, they could easily call up AMD and move their platform there. It'd be a lot less work for them. Moving to their own ARM chips lets them gain tighter control over the platform, and not be beholden to Intel or AMDs roadmap or desire to implement specific features Apple wants.
> If all Apple cared about was faster chips Everybody _wants_ faster chips, but for most people, the chip is in idle state 99% of the time. Outside of the data center and serious gamers, chip speed has been fairly irrelevant for years.
When you are emulating another architecture, speed often becomes a much bigger factor.
Particularly since Apple caters to a lot of markets where performance is more important. Developers, video & audio pros, animators, photographers, and other pro users are a big part of what makes Apple's higher end systems move. Even if your CPU is idle 90% of the time, when you run a build you want it to go fast.
20% YoY Revenue increase, 43% YoY Growth in Datacenter Segment. 76% Growth in Non-Volatile Memory solution, another 7% YoY growth in Client Side computing. This is truly amazing results. I get stabbed over at Anandtech every time I made an argument for Intel as an AMD investor. The Internet is full of Intel bashing comments but reality is Intel has been making record revenue quarter after quarter. For the not so good…
I wonder to what extent a six month delay could influence hyperscaler decisions for compute purchasing. Every major cloud now offers AMD Epyc instances at a discount relative to Intel's 14nm(\+)* offerings. It seems unlikely Intel will be competitive until 2022. It seems unlikely any of the top three cloud providers would go all AMD for new instances but I could see the ratio shifting heavily in AMD's favor.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If all Apple cared about was faster chips, they could easily call up AMD and move their platform there. It'd be a lot less work for them. Moving to their own ARM chips lets them gain tighter control over the platform, and not be beholden to Intel or AMDs roadmap or desire to implement specific features Apple wants.
> If all Apple cared about was faster chips Everybody _wants_ faster chips, but for most people, the chip is in idle state 99% of the time. Outside of the data center and serious gamers, chip speed has been fairly irrelevant for years.
Am I waiting for CPU? No. Storage? No.
I am waiting for some friggin call-home/update-check/irrelevant network request.
Edit:brevity, removal of profane words.