Intel will ship processors with integrated AMD graphics and memory
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
The last time AMD got into a fight with Intel, Intel pulled out all the stops. The only relief AMD got--quite a ways down the road--was in the form of damages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v....
Something tells me AMD decided to make strange bedfellows this time around against a common growing threat in multiple spaces, to include graphics as well as machine learning (nVidia). It's one agreement, but for AMD, it's both a revenue source as well as a foot in the door for potential collaborative efforts which could give it some stability as it broadens its offerings and looks at new avenues for value creation in the face of headwinds such as resistance in further transistor shrinkage.
Intel announced new performance graphics parts on the way, they’ll be learning a lot from AMD and seems reasonable to say they’ll be leaning on amdgpu for these parts
If they’re quietly teaming up to support an open modern video driver architecture, that would help put pressure on nVidia. While historically the better performer, nVidia drivers can be fickle.
ATI has been dead for 7 years, and part of AMD for 11.
So, it isn't unusual for me to say "Intel", "AMD", "Radeon", "Nvidia" during the course of a conversation. AMD ended up legitimizing what I do when they split Radeon off as its own company (ala HTX.org and GloFo).
Considering that Apple does not compete on price, making developers and users unhappy to save on costs does not seem to me a very Apple-like move.
Seeing iOS get more and more desktop features in due time is much more likely, IMHO.
First, 68k to PPC, then PPC to Intel. Both times they included the ability to run binaries from the previous architecture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_68k_emulator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software)
I find it stunning that people think Apple couldn't pull this of a third time.
Further, there's a lot more focus on battery life these days, and while many apps will be tolerable from a UX perspective if you halved their speed, that also means the CPU is spending twice as long at the highest turbo states. Ouch.
I also think Apple could pull it off, and actually want to see it happen for the health of the PC industry. But I haven't seen anyone declaring it's not possible, I think that's a bit of a straw man.
I assume Apple will make some more improvements to close the gap between x86 and ARM, and switch when it makes sense for them. I also assume that, with the Mac App Store, they will start forcing developers to ship software compiled to both architectures ahead of making the switch. This way, only software that is distributed outside their store would be slow, which is going to become more and more niche as Apple enabled stricter signing enforcement by default in macOS Sierra (by default, only apps from the Mac App Store are allowed to run).
It was discussed a while ago here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10190521
By changing a few registers, you could alter how instructions were interpreted. This was used by some vendors for hardware-software interfacing, and by others to provide specific acceleration primitives for their specialized workloads.
ARM used this mechanism themselves to offer an optional floating point unit, with specialized vectorized floating point instructions.
Unfortunately, support for coprocessors has been removed from ARMv8.
To me this is a bit of a frightening scenario given the closed nature of iOS.
They simply stopped talking about their supposedly awesome new ARM chip. My personal guess is that they're reworking it, targeting RV64G now; Because why bother with ARM licensing.
Given that I expected that some company would release ARM laptops with better specs memory-wise especially after introduction of ARM64 CPUs, but that did not happen. I guess Intel has still too much grip on the industry.
Apple CPUs are designed in-house, not by ARMH. It's not magic pixie dust, but designing a CPU core architecture from scratch is a non-trivial investment of which very few companies are capable.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/31/15711334/microsoft-window...
http://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-on-arm-hps-leak-hint...
They worked out well
There was a report on MacRumors [1] (yes, so take it with a grain of salt) that the iMac Pro is likely to ship as an A10 Fusion + Intel Xeon.
The A10 would apparently be 'always-on' for things like "Hey Siri", and would actually handle the boot process, passing the EFI firmware for the Xeon to boot with.
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/19/imac-pro-a10-chip-hey-s...
I'm not sure how long it will last though.
The A10X Fusion chip with 64‑bit architecture and six cores puts incredible power in your hands. So you can edit a 4K video on the go. Render an elaborate 3D model. Or create and mark up complex documents and presentations.
I'm not discussing the current hardware, i acknowledge their marketing about it. I'm discussing the tools and usability on a iPad Pro. I'm saying that the usability of a tablet, is merely consumerism and doesn't needs the power of the iPad Pro.
Ps. I had both in my hands and i can create stuff far easier on a Surface Pro vs iPad Pro. I can't imagine even development on a iPad, i can do it on a Surface Pro though.
> My view is CUDA has already won, and everyone else needs to get over it. Even clang supports PTX now, which is a reasonably device agnostic representation, albeit controlled mostly by Nvidia. Perhaps intel will introduce their own extensions to this ISA.
> Even if my precompiled CUDA application could run on Intel GPUs at 50% of the throughput, I'd be happy if I could later tweak and recompile it to get the full benefits from their hardware.
Instead a better scenario; AMD embedded parts that are millions of miles ahead in gfx and close in CPU performance for most task leads to loads of design wins for Ryzen + AMD GPU.
So yes I do think this is a terrible idea. Why you think Intel aren’t busting a gut to compete (this deal or not) you are wrong; they’ve already lowered prices and will move away from AMD pretty fast in IPC over the next two years.
That's assuming Raja still has the chops to compete at the top table, something his latest tenure at AMD would call into doubt ...
it's not like AMDs GPU designs are going shared with Intel. Nor are they giving up control of fabrication.
Looks like it's time to upgrade my ThinkPad once Lenovo integrates this setup into their T line.
Well done, Lisa Su!
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12032/amd-announces-wider-epy...
Doesn't really apply directly to the laptop market, people probably aren't buying laptops for mining, but presumably it has some impact.
(Thought it was from July for a minute, silly US dates.)
Um, really? Rumors talk of a 65W (and a 100W) Kaby Lake G CPU. The CPU is 4C/8T @ 3.1/4.1. That's 10% more than the 7700HQ which is 45W. The GPU side is rumored to be 1000MHz 24CU and 4GB HBM2 @ 700 MHz.
Now the Ryzen 5 2500U is a 15W part with 8 CUs up to 1100 MHz. The CPU surely eats some watts out of that so I do not think it's too outlandish to claim 24 CUs eat less than 30W especially with a lower frequency.
All in all, I absolutely can't see the claimed gigantic power usage savings Intel purports here. It looks like 10% perhaps 15% based on the above data. What am I missing?
Edit: yes, the VRM and the chipset itself have beefy heatsinks but not the interconnect between them. https://images.evga.com/products/gallery/131-SX-E295-KR_XL_5... look at the bazillion traces running on the PCB.
"You're a GPU specialist, you don't get to quit anymore"? Fuck that, it's insane.
Source: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/19/imac-pro-a10-chip-hey-s...
When TensorFlow came out I happily downloaded it on my Macbook only to learn that the "Iris GPU" is not supported (apparently there are NVIDIA based Macbooks too which are more expensive). What a bummer. Search and search, there is no solution, because Intel doesn't give a fuck about DL.
So now I enjoy seeing them desperate, but it will take a lot to convince me of their dedication.
> because Intel doesn't give a fuck about DL.
Why do you think that?
https://www.intelnervana.com/ https://www.intel.in/content/www/in/en/events/ai-day.html https://github.com/01org/mkl-dnn
This is a way more powerful solution than integrated graphics and thus puts a lot of pressure on Nvidia for laptops and mobile maybe even for office computers.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/9582/intel-skylake-mobile-des...
HBM is not exclusive to AMD, NVIDIA also ships GPUs using HBM (Tesla P100 and V100)
1. Stave off the stiff competition from Zen APUs.
2. Support a small competitor to keep the DOJ off their tail.
3. Bankroll an alternative to CUDA which they could piggyback on later when their own stuff is shipping.
If anyone is threatened it is Nvidia because nobody needs their mobile GPUs anymore.
I don't agree. SC's unofficial theme was AI/ML. Every single vendor and HPC center were talking AI, not all were talking ARM. The student cluster was dominated by GPUs, not a single one ran ARM.
I thought they had the most advanced mainstream size capable foundries.
intel will ship a package that has an AMD GPU+HBM combined with a CPU but they are not the same chip, basically, Intel is buying already fabricated GPU chips from AMD and putting them together with their CPU to sell them as one unit.
For instance, I built a new computer using an AMD Ryzen processor recently (solely for its CPU speed). I hadn't realised that the CPU had no graphics hardware at all, and that I would need a separate graphics card in order to get any output on a monitor. Whereas previous computer builds using i7 CPUs need no extra hardware.
AMD wanted to release 8 core parts that competed on price with Intel's 4 core parts. Roughly half the die area (and thus manufacturing cost) of Intel's quad core desktop CPUs is the GPU, so by cutting the GPU they were able to make 8 cores at similar cost to Intel's 4 cores + GPU.
It also allowed them to reuse the same chip for desktop, workstation, and server parts dramatically reducing R&D costs for the whole lineup. And really "high end" Intel processors, as in everything with 8 cores or more, also lack the GPU anyway.
The Raven Ridge CPUs are 4 cores + GPU (with much faster GPU than anything Intel has). I imagine they'll do a higher core count part with GPU once Globalfoundries starts making 7nm chips.
I'd say either AMD doesn't have the production capacity for whomever the customer is (Apple?) or its something more nefarious like preserving ME.
Given that AMD is still a close second in graphics, maybe it really is a way to increase volumes for their GPUs. But that still suggests there's some reason they can't deliver the same with their own CPUs.
It's easier to see this from Intel's perspective: Intel's biggest threat is from the onrush of GPU-driven computing, and Nvidia is the market leader there. The classic play is to starve them of oxygen by leveraging existing channels to get them out of the gaming notebook market. Thus comes this weird saga with AMD and Raja which is a win win deal in fact: Intel gets ammo to fight Nvidia now and a key hire for their own development later, and AMD gets another source of cashflow and marketshare plus a graceful exit for what has been reported as shaky, conflicted executive management at RTG. Although they've delivered decent hardware and software recently, there have been numerous PR flubs from the group and the business unit performance is questionable overall. There is an open question of what happens to RTG later on, but perhaps the answer is simply to survive in Intel's shadow again.