AMD CEO Lisa Su sat down with reporters in a Q&A session after a keynote speech at CES 2021 on Tuesday, presenting several questions, including the request to comment on the first incursion of ‘Apple in the desktop processor space.
Speaking to the press via conference, Su addressed a number of questions about AMD’s upcoming plans, the x86 platform and new developments in a highly competitive semiconductor market.
Dr. Ian Cutress of AnandTech focused on the emergence of ARM processor designs. According to Cutress, ARM models are expected to significantly increase the performance of calculations in the coming years and may begin to invade the territory that have been maintained by x86 manufacturers such as AMD and Intel. ARM silicon is typically used in specialized deployments such as to servers, but chip designs are now starting to appear in consumer products.
Apple, for example, introduced the M1 chip in its late-2020 13-inch MacBook Pro, MacBook Air and Mac mini. The tech giant plans its full range of Macs to run custom ARM chips within two years. This presents an immediate loss of revenue for current Intel CPU partner, but it also creates headwinds for the wider x86 market.
Su was asked how the M1 would affect AMD’s relationship with Apple.
“The M1 is more about the amount of processing and innovation in the market. This is an opportunity to innovate more, both in hardware and software, and it goes beyond ISA,” Su said. “From our point of view, there is still innovation in the PC space: we have many options and people can use the same processors in many different environments. We look forward to seeing more specialization as we move forward over the next two years, and it allows for greater differentiation. But Apple continues to work with us as a graphics partner and we work with them. ”
Apple relies on AMD’s Radeon graphics cards to power high-end devices like the MacBook Pro, iMac and Mac Pro, but that could change with a shift to its own solutions. Mac M1s integrate tile-based deferred rendering (TBDR) graphics cores into a chip-like system design similar to the Series A processors used in iPhone and iPad.
While Apple is content with the integrated graphics for the initial wave of the Mac M1, it is possible that the company is working towards a dedicated GPU to better serve high-performance machines.
It seems that Apple’s transition to ARM is putting pressure on industry headlines. On Monday, Intel detailed its upcoming series of Alder Lake chips, which apparently pulls out a page from Apple’s Silicon strategy book, extending mobile use cases to the desktop.