AMD Sound Wave ARM APU for Windows laptops to bring 6 cores, novel MALL cache, and more

[Redaktion]

AMD Sound Wave ARM APU is reportedly arriving as Team Red's first Windows ARM chip next year. Specifications of the APU have now leaked, giving us our first look at things like the P-core, E-core, and iGPU configuration of the SoC alongside cache sizes and the memory subsystem.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Sound-Wave-ARM-APU-for-Windows-laptops-to-bring-6-cores-novel-MALL-cache-and-more.983765.0.html

[APU or CPU?]

"AMD Sound Wave ARM ***APU*** for Windows laptops to bring 6 cores, novel MALL cache, and more"

[Fierce.XT]

Fake. There is no rational reason for AMD to spend money on an ARM APU, having precious x86 licenses and perfect compatibility at hand, just look at Qualcomm's horrendous failure to know that this is dumb, ARM has no magic, Apple makes magic using large chips, ASICs, superior manufacturing processes, added to optimization on the OS, software, Kernel side; this only works well in their ecosystem.

[Dan6]

Don't think it's fake. It's quite exciting. ARM is the way to go for compact laptops. And considering that Qualcomm struggles or doesn't care about GPU drivers/performance - AMD can provide a superior option on the market. And I think NVidia will join them.

[Why 2?]

Auxiliary Power Unit

[aCPU]

you can use it my friend Fawad

[GeorgeS]

So while Microsoft & Qualcomm conned a whole bunch of OEM's into launching a FAILED product (WIN-on-ARM), we are expected to believe that those products failures inspired both MediaTek and AMD to jump into the unwanted product category?

LOL!!!

Yeah, sure maybe AMD will marry a usable iGPU to the ARM chip for ALL THOSE ARM compatible AAA games... LOL!!!!

 

[GenU2]

They'll have to do their homework to catch up with Qualcomm Project Glymur w/ Snapdragon X2 Elite & Ultra Premium w/ support eGPU ... or who knows even iGPU ... !LOL! ...

And what about upcoming AMD's x86 Medusa Halo & Point ... will they be obsolete? ... !LOL! ...

So while Microsoft & Qualcomm conned a whole bunch of OEM's into launching a FAILED product (WIN-on-ARM), we are expected to believe that those products failures inspired both MediaTek and AMD to jump into the unwanted product category?

LOL!!!

Yeah, sure maybe AMD will marry a usable iGPU to the ARM chip for ALL THOSE ARM compatible AAA games... LOL!!!!

[Stop laughing]

we are expected to believe that those products failures inspired both MediaTek and AMD

I don't think that's what inspired them. I think what happened is the industry (both x86 & arm) saw the gains that apple is making in their CPU cores and were like, "how can we be like that?", "what are they doing?", etc.

And then they realized it's custom core arm design going big deep and wide with huge caches. And now everyone is pretty much trying to follow that.

Yeah, sure maybe AMD will marry a usable iGPU to the ARM chip for ALL THOSE ARM compatible AAA games

I think you under estimate the progress some of these projects (e.g. fex emu) have made. X86 emulation on arm has made massive strides.

Not talking about the MS & Qcomm partnership as everything MS touches turns out to be a disaster. But I'm talking about the Linux projects and the projects on android to get x86 pc games to run on android via winlator, box64, termux wine, etc.

There has been massive progress on this front. And android is a trash platform. Qcomm Adreno has piece of sheet drivers. If AMD did Indeed marry a usable igpu to arm it could potentially be killer.

The Samsung collab was the closest we ever achieved to that. But Samsung is Samsung and they've to Samsung it up. Plus it was android which still sucks as it's still difficult to next to impossible to keep the device gpu drivers up to date on some devices.

[Stop laughing]

Er, small correction. Not just some devices pretty much all & every conceivable android device possible.

[Russell]

Fake. There is no rational reason for AMD to spend money on an ARM APU, having precious x86 licenses and perfect compatibility at hand, just look at Qualcomm's horrendous failure to know that this is dumb, ARM has no magic, Apple makes magic using large chips, ASICs, superior manufacturing processes, added to optimization on the OS, software, Kernel side; this only works well in their ecosystem.

AMD has a lot to lose if this arm project actually ends up being a success. But a failure would just mean losing less rather than make ARM unwanted. So it's really weird for amd to be trying this.
They have to do it like what was rumoured to be happening with the rumoured project skybridge that Jim Keller was working on.
K12 processor revival might not help all that much now, but upgrading that while trying to make a hybrid with x86 full fat cores and ARM cores might actually help create an alternative solution as intel has given up on x86s already.

[Mate]

"So it's really weird for amd to be trying this."

Actually not. A lot of people dont understand that ARM is simply superior architecture. I'm not talking about performance, not efficiency. ARM is simply future regardless of how slow is adoption speed in computer world. Main problem with x86 is lack of fixed instruction length which means that decoding next instructions and branch  prediction are a lot more complex than on ARM and you still can't get even close to what ARM can do.

For example  if we take Cinebench R24 scores then Snapdragon X Elite has 60% higher IPC than Ryzen AI 9 HX 375. Apple M4 is even better with more than double performance. In Geekbench 6 difference is smaller but its still +22% for Qualcomm and +50% for Apple. Its architectural problem that is unfixable. 

Personally I'm not a fan of X Elite chips due to poor GPU performance but it will be harder and harder for x86 chips to be competitive.

[A]

Don't think it's fake. It's quite exciting. ARM is the way to go for compact laptops. And considering that Qualcomm struggles or doesn't care about GPU drivers/performance - AMD can provide a superior option on the market. And I think NVidia will join them.

The irony of all this is that Qualcomm's Adreno comes from buying AMD's mobile gpu division, AMD ImageOn.

[Worgarthe]

The irony of all this is that Qualcomm's Adreno comes from buying AMD's mobile gpu division, AMD ImageOn.

Correct. And Adreno is an anagram of Radeon.