> It's telling that ARM, Apple, and Qualcomm have all shipped designs that are physically smaller, faster, and consume way less power vs AMD and Intel.
These companies target different workloads. ARM, Apple, and Qualcomm are all making processors primarily designed to be run in low power applications like cell phones or laptops, whereas Intel and AMD are designing processors for servers and desktops.
> x86 is quickly becoming dead last which should be possible if ISA doesn't matter at all given AMD and Intel's budgets (AMD for example spends more in R&D than ARM's entire gross revenue).
My napkin math is that Apple’s transistor volumes are roughly comparable to the entire PC market combined, and they’re doing most of that on TSMC’s latest node. So at this point, I think it’s actually the ARM ecosystem that has the larger R&D budget.
This hasn't been true for at least half of a decade.
The latest generation of phone chips run from 4.2GHz all the way up to 4.6GHz with even just a single core using 12-16 watts of power and multi-core hitting over 20w.
Those cores are designed for desktops and happen to work in phones, but the smaller, energy-efficient M-cores and E-cores still dominate in phones because they can't keep up with the P-cores.
ARM's Neoverse cores are mostly just their normal P-cores with more validation and certification. Nuvia (designers of Qualcomm's cores) was founded because the M-series designers wanted to make a server-specific chip and Apple wasn't interested. Apple themselves have made mind-blowingly huge chips for their Max/Ultra designs.
"x86 cores are worse because they are server-grade" just isn't a valid rebuttal. A phone is much more constrained than a watercooled server in a datacenter. ARM chips are faster and consume less power and use less die area.
> So at this point, I think it’s actually the ARM ecosystem that has the larger R&D budget.
Apple doesn't design ARM's chips and we know ARM's peak revenue and their R&D spending. ARM pumps out several times more cores per year along with every other thing you would need to make a chip (and they announced they are actually making their own server chips). ARM does this with an R&D budget that is a small fraction of AMD's budget to do the same thing.
What is AMD's excuse? Either everybody at AMD and Intel suck or all the extra work to make x86 fast (and validating all the weirdness around it) is a ball and chain slowing them down.
These companies target different workloads. ARM, Apple, and Qualcomm are all making processors primarily designed to be run in low power applications like cell phones or laptops, whereas Intel and AMD are designing processors for servers and desktops.
> x86 is quickly becoming dead last which should be possible if ISA doesn't matter at all given AMD and Intel's budgets (AMD for example spends more in R&D than ARM's entire gross revenue).
My napkin math is that Apple’s transistor volumes are roughly comparable to the entire PC market combined, and they’re doing most of that on TSMC’s latest node. So at this point, I think it’s actually the ARM ecosystem that has the larger R&D budget.