AMD Will Build 64-bit ARM based Opteron CPUs for Servers, Production in 2014

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• nofumble62 - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link

  It does not have PCIe gen 3. Why it is called high speed?

• Jaybus - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link

  No. Intel already tried something similar with Larrabee.

• iwod - Monday, October 29, 2012 - link

  We now know ARM's memory controller is its weakest area, do the license means AMD will be using the same controller for server applications? Or would they design something different.
  
  I think there are increasing number roles in Web Server market where there is Low CPU usage with High Memory usage such as caching servers. Which is a perfect fit for ARM typed CPU.
  
  And it is interesting that it was AMD who states they want x86 from top to bottom. And x86 will shrinks and grows. Then they came up with x64. Intel decided the other way and wanted IA-64 aka Itanium and ARM Xscale CPU for the low end. It was x64 that force Intel to rethink and license it, then sold Xscale and now literally gave up on Itanium. Now they swap position and It is Intel who thinks x86 should be used from top to bottom and AMD decided to use ARM, how time changes.

• booleanalgebra - Monday, October 29, 2012 - link

  Not sure about AMD but this does lend credibility to the minions of ARM server guys like AppliedMicro and Calxeda who have been at it for many years already.
  
  AMD was one of the two (main) members of the exclusive x86 club. For them to abandon that exclusivity and go with standard ARM cores is a testament in itself. But giving up that exclusivity also means they need to compete with the likes of AppliedMicro who have a head start on them. There will also be other ARM server players coming out of the woodwork so AMD will have to count on better execution - not their strong forte.

• andrewaggb - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link

  AMD isn't competing well in any market right now that I can see, other than bargain laptops and desktops. Their graphics lead (as far as perf/watt/$$ is lost as nvidia really turned it around).
  
  By all indications haswell's integrated graphics may catch up (at least in benchmarks) to amd's integrated graphics.
  
  They're almost hopelessly behind intel in single threaded performance, they have no smartphone wins, no windows 8 tablet wins (that I know of), almost no ultrabook-a-likes,
  
  I don't know that switching to ARM will help them either. Sure you can use somebody else's cpu designs, but it's not a competitive advantage. You're likely using the same foundry as everybody else as well. Your graphics are good, but not especially low power, and you've conceded the high end to intel.
  
  I don't want AMD to go away, but entering a very competitive market that Texas Instruments just pulled out of seems risky to me. Unless you're sure you can one up qualcomm, nvidia and apple, what's the point? I doubt they'll be one-upping anybody using stock core designs.
  
  Hopefully I'm wrong.

• dvinnen - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link

  I would feel better about this venture if they were designing their own chips. I can imagine an ARM processor with a AMD memory controller and HyperTransport links built in could be a cool and viable product.
  
  Not seeing that with just rebranding an ARM core as an Opteron

• rrohbeck - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link

  Once they make their own designs, I can see interesting options:
  An ARM APU with a Radeon GPU for graphics performance and GPGPU (HSA)
  An ARM CPU that combines an ARM instruction decoder with a high performance back end
  An x86 Opteron with a low end GPU and built-in ARM core as a IPMI BMC
  And my favorite: A CPU that supports both x86 and ARM instructions. "Just" add an ARM instruction decoder to an Opteron.

• hrga - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link

  I like this part of IPMI BMC but that doesn't seems viable as this kind of specific CPu would still require Serial Port Interface + Super I/O + switchable logic and all that doesn't work on low voltages 1.2-1.4V as CPU ... some IPMI substitute could be blueprinted this way
  
  My favorite would be CPU that doesn't "just support both instruction set" [ARMv8 and x86-64] but something that i could use w/o OS reboot as power sawing feature. But this even crappily new Win8 doesn't support yet (and probably wont!).
  So at least they could in new desktop socket that will be brought for HSA, probably with Excavator @20nm, along integrate two "el cheapo" Jaguar cores to do the similar feature and yet every OS could do that w/o any issue as both share same x86-64 architecture.
  
  Any good market thing with ARMv8 is if they go same way as nvidia announced their Tesla line should go. To integrate few ARMv8 cores directly onto GP-GPU which then could boot directly w/o need of any traditional x86-64/IA64 CPU.

• nofumble62 - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link

  Dirk got fired because he hold on to x86 too long and let Nvidia jumped on ARM.
  
  I guess that has always been the board intention. So they fired all the people don't go along with them.
  
  Does AMD have a chance with ARM? yes.
  Do they have enough time? No. They will run out of cash way before the first chip is launched.

• Metaluna - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link

  As I see it, Intel is really the last of the companies that can sell CPUs as their defining product and profit center. ARM is a race to the bottom profit-wise. You can differentiate a little bit with custom architectures, but ARM cores are pretty much a commodity. That's not a bad thing necessarily, but it means that CPUs become just a small part of an overall product line. Nobody thinks of Qualcomm, Broadcom, Samsung, Apple, etc. as a processor company, nor is anyone paying a premium for ARM-based processors.
  
  What I'm saying is, if AMD is going to go this route, it needs to become a much more diversified company than it currently is.