AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su spoke about Apple’s M1 chip in an interview with AnandTech and how Arm architecture is enabling opportunities for more specialized products.
Lisa Su responded very positively when asked about the new M1 chip, which could potentially signal the end of Apple and AMD’s partnership in the future, as the company plans to roll-out its own graphics solutions for higher-end Macs.
“The M1 is more about how much processing and innovation there is in the market” – AMD CEO
Dr. Ian Cutress of AnandTech interview Lisa Su. The first question was regarding Arm, and Lisa responded vaguely when asked about Arm’s threat to x86:
Lisa’s answer was not particularly committal either way, instead citing the fact that as the industry is growing, it gives more opportunities for specialized products. If anything, according to Lisa, it validates the desire for compute and the agility to build for and target specific workloads.
When asked about Apple’s M1 chip, and how it will take over desktop and workstation Macs soon, Lisa Su spoke about its innovation and opportunity with both hardware and software, which goes beyond ISA:
‘The M1 is more about how much processing and innovation there is in the market. This is an opportunity to innovate more, both in hardware and software, and it goes beyond the ISA. From our standpoint, there is still innovation in the PC space – we have lots of choices and people can use the same processors in a lot of different environments. We expect to see more specialization as we go forward over the next couple of years, and it enables more differentiation. But Apple continues to work with us as their graphics partner, and we work with them.’
While AMD is in a good place, with its processors outperforming Intel, and powering both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series, the company will definitely be planning long-term to counter competition from Arm-based chips. For now, this is a long term scenario, as no other company apart from Apple has proven that Arm-based chips can outperform x86 in laptops and desktops.
Although Apple is the first to releases its computers with its own custom Arm architecture based chips, Microsoft is also expected to follow suit. The company is reportedly working on its own Arm chips, which could replace Qualcomm, Intel, and AMD’s chips in future Surface products. If anything, this points to the x86 market shrinking in the future, but we expect that it will take much longer for other OEMs to reach where Apple is right now, with high-performance Arm-based silicon.
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