AMD Reveals Roadmap For ARM and X86 SoCs 75
DeviceGuru writes "On the eve of the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, AMD unveiled what it calls an ambidextrous embedded roadmap, based on a series of new system-on-chip (SoC) and accelerated processing unit (APU) products built from both ARM and x86 CPU cores. Planned for launch in 2014 are an ARM Cortex A57-based 'Hierofalcon' SoC, a 'Bald Eagle' APU using a new 'Streamroller' x86 CPU, a multi-core x86 'Steppe Eagle' APU, and an 'Adelaar' discrete Embedded Radion GPU. 'There are different customer needs in different segments of this market, from low-power to high-performance, Linux to Windows, and x86 to ARM,' commented Arun Iyengar, VP and general manager, of the AMD Embedded Solutions division." Update: 09/10 16:54 GMT by T : As Slash DataCenter notes, this roadmap includes an SoC aimed specifically at datacenters.
Good: APUs. Not so good: Server ARM (Score:5, Insightful)
The Kaveri-based APUs in servers are certainly not going to be great for every workload, but for servers that can take advantage of GPU compute, they give AMD a unique advantage in a competitive server environment.
Those ARM parts on the other hand have proven one thing: Just because ARM (and more importantly, Qualcomm) make good chips for smartphones doesn't mean that ARM is magic and can avoid physics.
The 8 core Cortex A57 parts on AMD's roadmap for late 2014 have a 50% higher power envelope than the high-end 8-core Avoton parts that Intel has on sale *this year* (30 watts vs. 20 watts). By the time they launch, Intel will either have launched or be on the verge of launching 14nm microserver parts. These things are a nice prototype, and AMD is easily the best vendor for ARM servers since it has experience in the server world, but ARM ain't about to take over the server room at this pace.