Despite granted patent, AMD has no immediate plans to introduce hybrid CPUs.
AMD Hybrid CPUs: No Point in Big.Little for PCs Unless OS Can Use It : Read more
AMD Hybrid CPUs: No Point in Big.Little for PCs Unless OS Can Use It : Read more
That's why Intel will be using it first. Even if they have to fund all the development, you can bet Windows will be ready for big.little when Intel releases Alder Lake.And OS developers won't see a point in hybrid CPUs until they come out.
Which is why I'm a believer that hardware manufacturers need a strong software team behind them to overcome the "chicken and egg" problem.
What's the problem?! AMD released FX before windows was ready for them and the same goes for ZENs CCX and windows always patched it in relatively fast.Despite granted patent, AMD has no immediate plans to introduce hybrid CPUs.
AMD Hybrid CPUs: No Point in Big.Little for PCs Unless OS Can Use It : Read more
I get it from AMD's perspective, high-performance architectures like Zen are very power efficient when idling, and AMD's impressive Precision Boost algorithm and super-fast frequency changes allow the CPUs to enter idle states super quickly. So making a big.LITTLE architecture doesn't really make a lot of sense. Even in laptops.
What performance oriented laptops have you used that the battery life was so great it couldn't be improved? With replaceable batteries becoming extinct, battery life is even more critical as the battery wears down over its lifetime.I get it from AMD's perspective, high-performance architectures like Zen are very power efficient when idling, and AMD's impressive Precision Boost algorithm and super-fast frequency changes allow the CPUs to enter idle states super quickly. So making a big.LITTLE architecture doesn't really make a lot of sense. Even in laptops.
So you don't have a modern smartphone? They all use big.LITTLE.Count me as another who doesn't see the point. I can't see myself ever buying a machine with a mixed-mode CPU. I want something to either last as long as possible on a battery OR to give as much performance as possible, depending on my use for it. I do not want something that is going to compromise so heavily on both unless I could only have one and that's not likely any time soon.
So you don't have a modern smartphone? They all use big.LITTLE.
Also "last as long as possible on the battery" is a little vague in some sense. You could put a Z80 on 7nm and it'll probably last forever on modern batteries, but all that time is wasted waiting for the thing to do something.
So you don't have a modern smartphone? They all use big.LITTLE.
Also "last as long as possible on the battery" is a little vague in some sense. You could put a Z80 on 7nm and it'll probably last forever on modern batteries, but all that time is wasted waiting for the thing to do something.
Most of the x86 consumer market uses laptops still. And there may be a compelling enough reason to look into this for server clusters if heterogeneous CPUs can prove to be more efficient than homogeneous ones.That is a very specific use case that drove the development of hybrid CPUs and the needed OS support. Intel tried to get x86 in phones and it never caught on. It isn't clear what they're expecting the market to be for their hybrid line, unless they're achieving battery life far in excess of what everyone else expects. It appears AMD is asking this question and finding a lack of compelling reason to sink capital into it. Gating and variable clocks appear to be getting the job done on advancing those market where x86 still dominates. If Apple implements big.LITTLE in the SOC for their ARM based Macs, that will come under heavy scrutiny from everyone looking to see if it was worth the trouble.
Well, the thing about the little cores is that they are in fact small. E.g. in the Apple A14 SoC, the total die area 4 small cores is about equal to the size of 1 big core (if you include associated L2 caches, area for 4 small cores + cache is roughly half the size of 2 big cores + cache). Relative to the total die, the small cores + L2 are only about 5% of die area.It's funny how nobody talks about the extra die space big.LITTLE CPU cores consume, that's also a huge consideration. And it has to pay off tremendously. The only reason it works so great in phones is because the architecture is specifically optimized for phones (I believe), from the efficiency of the cores, to the software. The fact that phones use big.LITTLE architecture is just one feature that makes android and iPhone CPUs efficient.
If you look at the 5950 and 5900, when using all cores they only have 6-7 and 7-8W per core available,that IS a low power state and if you have a little core that can give you better performance at such low power it can be useful for desktops and especially for high core count.Big.Little's advantage is in low priority, low power states. The magic is in the laptop segment, not the desktop and certainly not about core count.
FX was likely how they learned this lesson.What's the problem?! AMD released FX before windows was ready for them and the same goes for ZENs CCX and windows always patched it in relatively fast.