juanrga :
de5_Roy :
i have some questions about amd and arm:
1. what kind of license did amd buy? on arm's website, it says amd has 'processor license' for cortex a57 and a53 cores. is it the same as architecture license or different?
if it's the same, that means amd can customize the cores to better integrate to their own ip blocks.
if it's not, then arch license holders like [strike]calxeda[/strike], nvidia, apple, qualcomm might have advantage.
2. what will the licensees do when arm raises their royalties?
the way arm has operated so far makes them look almost like a charity (amd has nothing on them).
3. is amd among arm's 'chosen' 3 partners for arm v8 testing?
since we were discussing roadmaps, i want to see if this following bit contradicts others:
in the earlier 'opteron' roadmap, amd showed that steamroller is on track for 2013, right? then in a later roadmap, amd showed that 'berlin' apu/cpu will have steamroller core in them. then amd is technically 'by the roadmap', they did debut steamroller in 2013. or did you guys expect something else instead of 'warsaw'?![Smile :) :)](/data/assets/smilies/smile.gif)
edit: not sure about calxeda.
1. what kind of license did amd buy? on arm's website, it says amd has 'processor license' for cortex a57 and a53 cores. is it the same as architecture license or different?
if it's the same, that means amd can customize the cores to better integrate to their own ip blocks.
if it's not, then arch license holders like [strike]calxeda[/strike], nvidia, apple, qualcomm might have advantage.
2. what will the licensees do when arm raises their royalties?
3. is amd among arm's 'chosen' 3 partners for arm v8 testing?
since we were discussing roadmaps, i want to see if this following bit contradicts others:
in the earlier 'opteron' roadmap, amd showed that steamroller is on track for 2013, right? then in a later roadmap, amd showed that 'berlin' apu/cpu will have steamroller core in them. then amd is technically 'by the roadmap', they did debut steamroller in 2013. or did you guys expect something else instead of 'warsaw'?
![Smile :) :)](/data/assets/smilies/smile.gif)
edit: not sure about calxeda.
AMD has licensed the core, not the ISA. This means AMD cannot change the cores. This doesn't mean that AMD ARM SoC will be as everyone else SoC. AMD will incorporate custom stuff such as Freedom Fabric in its ARM SoC, offering advantages over competitors.
The reason why AMD didn't license the ISA is because developing a custom ARM core will take time and money. Nvidia did license ISA but its custom ARM cores are announced for 2015 (if there is no delays).
AMD will license ISA in a second phase and will develop its own ARM cores, but not today.
There is nothing else instead Warsaw. I don't understand why people insist on ignoring official roadmaps.
esrever :
Steamroller is still late because it was suppose to be read Q3 this year by the original roadmap. Warsaw will probably be piledriver, AMD would have advertised it in the roadmap otherwise.
AMD has confirmed that Warsaw is Piledriver. AMD explained why and I also did.
Oh! you are wrong... either AMD as well Nvidia are "architectural licensees". They can change the not only the cores if they wish (edt), but also the SOCs.
I bet you, that either AMD and Nvidia have different cache arbitration than ARM reference designs, and AMD for sure could have different "pre-fetch" schemes than ARM references.
All is based on "core" definitions" of ARM of course, but none SoC of ARM has 10Gb Ethernet links on SoC, neither Freedom Fabric on SoC... and Nviida 4+1 CPU scheme of Tegra is not big.LITTLE either, and the GPU is quite different of Mali...
Different SoCs, different interconnects, different caches hierarchies, front-ends and back-ends of "cores" slightly different, enough to accommodate all those differences.