P- and E-Cores?

How do you feel about hybrid CPU architectures? Does it make sense to bring the Zen 4c core to desktop?
I know that Mark Papermaster talked a lot of about different core types coming into our portfolio. I guess what I would say is that as we've looked at different core types there's probably two things that are overarching factors that we think about in terms of how they fit into the portfolio. One is the notion that P-Cores and E-Cores that the competition uses is not the approach that we plan on taking at all. Because I think the reality is that when you get to the point of having core types with different ISA capabilities or IPC or things like that, it makes it very complicated to ensure that the right workloads are scheduled on the right cores, consistently.


Zen 4 vs Zen 4c

You know what I think about when we think about different core targeting is more the question of "what type of environment is this particular core going into?" Is it an environment that's power constrained like a notebook, or is it a power-unconstrained environment like a desktop. I think that those factors are going to drive first-and-foremost how we use different core types in our roadmap in the future and I think the benefits that you see of the cloud-optimized c-core that we've talked about is in the past is something that has a significant benefit in performance per watt that fits better in a power-constrained environment. Does that make its way into a desktop processor where you're power-unconstrained, I think that's a harder argument to make. We're constantly looking at different core types, how they might fit into our architectures in the future, but I think there's some more obvious places where different core types come in and bring an advantage much more quickly than in the desktop space.

So mobile, laptops?
I think laptops are a far more practical application for where you might see that adopted much more quickly.

Intel's X86-S Proposal

Any thoughts on Intel's X86-S proposal that focuses on 64-bit and gets rid of a lot of legacy capability, so cores can be simplified and use less silicon area at the same time?
We have absolutely been looking at that. We've been evaluating similar proposals for a long, long time. It is both incredibly beneficial to make that break, also very, very complicated. I think it is a non-trivial exercise to strip out legacy compatibility in a core architecture as well as time that in a way so that it matches up perfectly with an OS transition that also eliminates a lot of these legacy compatibilities. I would say "very interesting," something that really, we would have to look at as an industry and make that move in concert. We find Intel's proposal pretty intriguing as we look at that.

Closing Thoughts

We would like to thank David McAfee to take the time to answer our questions. We've learned a lot more than we thought we would, which are the perks of getting to interview a higher-up with much greater control over what can be shared with the press. We've learned that AMD continues to bet big on AI hardware acceleration across the company—not just Ryzen 7000 processors, but across the company's other divisions. We've learned how AMD is trying make AI acceleration sexy to the client user with Ryzen AI, an easy-to-integrate hardware accelerator for most on-device client AI applications that's already being implemented by Microsoft; we've learned what were the reasons AMD's swanky new 4 nm Phoenix silicon was slightly slower to the market than expected (now fully shipping); and how a Socket AM5 product based on "Phoenix" is very much in the realm of possibility; we've also learned how AMD's client division is seeing the development of the "low-fat" Zen 4c core, and possible implementation of the core on client products; and how AMD is looking at emerging technologies such as x86S (or X86-S, pure 64-bit x86).