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AMD and ARM Team Up
Vigile writes "Today AMD is making an announcement that is the first step in a drastic transition for the company by integrating an ARM Cortex A5 processor on the same die with upcoming Fusion APUs. Starting in late 2013, all AMD APUs (processors that are combinations of x86 cores and Radeon SIMD arrays) will also integrate an ARM Cortex A5 processor to handle security for online transactions, banking, identity protection and DRM integration. The A5 is the smallest Cortex processor available, and that would make sense to use it in a full APU so it will not take up more than 10-15 square mm of die space. This marks the first time AMD has licensed ARM technology and while many people were speculating a pure ARM+Radeon hybrid, this move today is being described as the 'first step' for AMD down a new road of dexterity as an IP-focused technology company with their GPU technology as 'the crown jewel.' So while today's announcement might focus on using ARM processors for security purposes, the future likely holds much more these two partners."
So AMD and ARM team up, and the product of their blissful union is an on-die TPM?
Thanks for nothing, guys.
So, they have these universal processing units, and the ARM part of them is doing fuckall but DRM? I can't exactly say "yay".
Why not rename the whole business to AAA, for ARM, AMD, ATI?
This would also make them the first chip maker in the phone book.
So AMD is outsourcing DRM with an ARM core... somehow I don't think this is the utopian fairytale nirvana that the fanboys were trolling about when they started rumoring that AMD would go ARM.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Before you start flaming about DRM and TPM taking over your computer and all, please remember that all TPM chips currently available allow you to install your own keys. This hardware root of trust allows you to verify that your Linux installation has not been tampered with. It also is a good place to store hard disk encryption keys, because the TPM chip makes it extremely difficult to do brute force attacks on your password. I simply can not imagine why anybody would intentionally buy a modern computer without these wonderful capabilities.
ARMD?
Sig?
10-15 square mm? Do you even have any idea what you're talking about? Those A5's are more like 1-2 square mm, even with a l2 cache. They're tiny. And perform very poorly.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Seriously, you go through all that trouble to cram an ARM core in there, and you use it for exactly what it's *worst* at?
Crypto is best done by specialized, single-purpose hardware. Intel has special units on their chips just for certain common crypto algorithms. Doing it in software, on a core that's underpowered compared to the x86 cores next to it is retarded.
The strengths of ARM is low power. Doing what the Wii did would be a wonderful idea - they had a small ARM core on the northbridge, used to do online updates and such while in sleep mode. Imagine if your computer could keep your emails and RSS feeds synched and run updates while in sleep mode. Yes, it would need some OS-level support, and could probably be done better with an ultra-weak x86 core just for better compatibility (just take an old K6 core, shrink it down to 32nm and trim the cache - you don't need power, you just need small). Maybe it wouldn't be a killer feature, it would probably go unused by most users, but it's something that would actually *work*.
Sounds like a console chip to me.
The A5 is the smallest Cortex processor available
Really? I figured that the Cortex-M0 would be smaller. The M0 doesn't even have a cache. Indeed, ARM's Cortex-M0 product page agrees, saying:
The ARM Cortex(tm)-M0 processor is the smallest ARM processor available.
so it's not clear why the article is calling the A5 the smallest?
Or they could use those new 400 sq mm (or whatever) dies from Thailand that were just posted about on slashdot so I can also use my tablet to cook on. Just throwing it out there as a feature option lol.
I think it's a bad idea for many reasons. The main one being that the swiss army knife approach means mediocre subcomponents.
While a SoC solution may be good for embedded devices, it just doesn't seem a good idea for a desktop device; it's like replacing a discrete component stereo system with a receiver - it's bigger, lower quality, and you can't upgrade the one component that's not up to par - you have to toss the whole thing. Yay for consumerism.
Yes, having components on the chip can have advantages, when the bottleneck is the access latency and electrical path length. This is not the case here - the A5 is way too slow for it to be significant whether you have it in the CPU or in a box across the room.
I'd much rather be able to buy the TPM modules and coprocessors that I want, and even keep them if I upgrade the CPU.
Yes. You could do that, but that is not what this is for. This is specifically designed to perform operations that need to occur securely, against even physical access. It offers great possibilities for purposes of computer security, but chances are it won't be used for much beyond trying to prevent the rightful owner from doing things.
You have the power to not purchase locked down motherboards.
One ordinarily does not buy a "motherboard" of a laptop computer separately from the rest of the package.
You just described the Windows RT licensing policy. But if this policy were extended to desktop Windows, it would likely trigger a second round of antitrust suits in at least one jurisdiction.
please remember that all TPM chips currently available allow you to install your own keys.
Which won't help if both the cable company and the DSL company start using Trusted Network Connect to control home customers' access to their networks. In such a case, you wouldn't be able to get Internet service with your own key on the TPM.
So will an AMD 3 core or a 6 core APU imply that 1 or 2 cores is Fusion, another 1 or 2 cores is Radeon and another 1 or 2 cores is Cortex?
But I'm not getting the logic. The only reason ARM consumes less power is its implementation more than its instruction set. If a multicore processor includes ARM, that's not gonna make it consume less power, since the other non-ARM cores will still be there for that. And is there a problem w/ lack of ARM compatibility the same way there is w/ x86 compatibility?
How is an ARM processor better for security than an x86 or any other CPU?
For security transactions? How often are those occurring and what cant you handle them in software or on a separate chip?. Why put it on-die? I bought a zacate and now its in the closet because its slow.
We need to figure out what to replace AMD with so that we have a decent competitor for Intel.
Think of what you could do with an ARM subcore to handle transactions for math equations, or even graphics. Don't get hung up just because you saw 'DRM' in the article. I think this is a neat idea, especially if you have full access to the ARM core from your x86 OS
What could you do with the DRM logic block that you couldn't do with the many cpu cores or the fucking gpu that's also on-die?
Suboptimal soln at best from the blurb.
H.
Isn't the Cortex-M0 smaller? Perhaps they mean its the smallest Cortex-A series.
ARM's processors aren't powerful enough to run Win8 Boxes.
And lets be honest here, when Android, IPhone, and all the other big OS players in the mobile market were developing their OS's they were developing them to small Motorola, Arm, Apple and Intel embedded non-x86 processors. So that means VERY limited app functionality from their standpoint and to get cross platform compatability you need java and browser support because NOBODY is going to spend a fortune developing an app just for one vendor's OS.
What does the A5 have that AMD needs? it has Cell signalling functionality, a Mature TPM platform, a mature hardware security platform, and VPN acceleration.
AMD doesn't have the Mature TPM platform on it's x86 lineup which if you want to stop people from, say, jailbreaking your new Win8 tablet that was sold under contract, is a big thing; Intel Does but AMD isn't going to license it from their competition. Also Microsoft is going to write a new hardware standard for Win8 just like they did for Vista/7, which means new DRM requirements which means new hardware lockout requirements. Want your tablet to provide a "rich media experience"? Well, in order for your Tablet to wirelessly interface with your TV and enable playback of video from the tablet to the TV, you just GOT to have the newest DRM standard (think HDCP for Wifi).
They're also missing instructions on their cores for accelerating cell signalling functions which you need if you want to boosting signal resolution, which in turn, enables you to use less power for your cell connection. Finally, if your mobile device is always-VPN'd into your corporate network, and you want to run VOIP chat over it, you get 150MS end to end for your latency, and VPN encryption adds anywhere from 10-50ms of signal processing on EACH END of the connection. This is the reason you see 3des modules for Cisco security appliances; you can offload the processing onto a seperate board thus decreasing the latency substantially.
So what AMD does is they aim to take their current GPU/CPU offering, which will do decent graphics on a 10" tablet running at, say, 1024x768 or similar resolution, then toss the A5 ontop to handle the cellphone end of the system, then wait for the die size to shrink to give them that extra 25% of die space, retool their chips to be ultra-ultra low power, toss all that goobly gop into a single chip, license the driver binaries from ARM, retool them for windows, and offer it to the market as a complete, embedded solution.
That is going to be VERY attractive to companies like HTC.
Lets face it, if we cut out the northbridge entirely from the equation and stick 1-2 southbridges all with embedded devices on them, really things get very tiny.
Exactly because even on the low end AMD APUs frankly you have some truly insane power at your command. Here is a video of someone playing L4D II on an E350 netbook and that is about the weakest chip AMD still has in production.
So with the amount of insane power the CPUs and GPU provides there really isn't a reason for an on-chip really wimpy ARM except for DRM, where you don't want the user accessing the code which they could on a general purpose chip. this is why I hate this announcement as we had all hoped AMD was gonna do something cool with ARM, personally I had hopes they were gonna somehow integrate a dual core A9 or something so that you could put the X86 to sleep when not needing all that power but with a chip like the A5 the only real use i can think of is to keep the user at bay for DRM. Yay AMD, way to make those of us that have been loyal feel like crap.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Not to mention there is another BIG problem. As i'm sure some have read the ONLY chance faildozer has with keeping up with Intel is to OC the crap out of them but as we saw with llano OCing tying more components into the chips limits the OCing thus making the AMD chips a worse value. the last bench i saw had them struggling to get a few bumps in speed with the APU but in some of the Faildozer CPUs they managed to get over 1GHz on air thus making the performance closer to the Intel chips.
So i wouldn't be surprised if this weak ARM chip killed any chance of OCing which has frankly been a lot of what has been keeping AMD in the game. What AMD needs to do is hire some good engineers, milk faildozer while they come up with a new design that will hopefully if not put them on top at least get them back in the game. Other than as a console chip i can't see TFA lighting any fires under those of us who bought AMD to buy again.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
AMD, I am going to help you here. ARM is nice, and yes, Windows RT might possibly prove every analyst wrong and come out a winner, with a tremendous demand for ARM devices.
But, as a long time advocate of your processors, and (now) your video cards, I'd like to take a moment, and ask if you wouldn't mind listening to what I, personally, would like to see from you in...16 months. Here's what I'd like: you to fix your Bulldozer design / work with Microsoft & the open source community to patch their code / threading models into something that can take greater advantage of this new design; then I'd like you to make a consumer CPU with 12 or 16 or 24 cores. Don't listen to the nay-sayers who say there is no demand for it; they also said there was no demand for your Phenom 2 X6 processors, and you know how wrong they were. That's it, unless you want to make us all really happy, and design some PCI express boards with 7990 GPUs stuck on them (for OpenCl computing); think daughterboards.
And if you could lean on Asus to release a new Crosshair motherboard when the new chips are ready, as well as to convince them that the tech community wouldn't mind them making it so we can stick...I don't know...256-512 GB of RAM into them, and for them to get away from Creative / Realtek (just use Xonar, it crashes Steam less).
Honestly, I don't care if you take two Phenom 2 X6s, and laser weld them together. I want more cores, and full-fledged ones if I can get them. I am a Computer Scientist, I write my own programs...trust me, those extra cores will be used.
I am John Hurt.
Maybe call it the ARMD platform?
By that standard they should have been calling themselves "AA".
But then of course people would be calling for meetings all the time...
Think of what you could do with an ARM subcore to handle transactions for math equations
Oh! Oh! And I know just what to call it! The AMD8087!