AMD's Corporate Vice President, David McAfee, has lauded Apple's M1 processor, stating that it rivals his company's brand new Zen 3 CPUs but is also confident that his company has a strong roadmap ahead.
AMD Impressed By Apple's M1 CPU, Says Its Offers Strong Single-Threaded Performance That's On Par With Its Zen 3 Processors But States They Have A Very Competitive Roadmap Ahead
In an interview with The Indian Express, AMD's CVP of Product Management, David McAfee, said that their company would retain a competitive edge against Apple despite the launch of their M1 chip. The Apple M1 CPU stunned everyone when it launched, offering new levels of performance that weren't expected by the industry.
David acknowledged that not only does the Apple M1 bring strong single-threaded performance on the table but it's so fast that it's often on par with the company's brand new Zen 3 based CPUs and that's quite a statement for a rival chip maker. David also says that Apple's biggest innovation with its M1 line of CPUs is the increased battery timings and increased power efficiency which is on a whole different level compared to modern x86 processors.
"What Apple has done is that they have taken a different approach to design a chip. Their approach is something that has strong, single-threaded CPU performance that is right there with the Zen 3 series processor."
"I would say the biggest innovation Apple has brought into the ecosystem is the battery life and power efficiency that comes from the heritage of the mobile handset space and kind of taking it into the PC space from a mobile handset design methodology."
AMD CVP, David McAfee (via The Indian Express)
But David also states that AMD has a very competitive roadmap against what Apple is doing. There are two interesting points to this statement, first is that AMD has its roadmap positioned against Apple instead of their old adversary, Intel. And the second is that AMD will be targetting its future Zen offerings against Apple M(X) CPUs, prioritizing higher single-core performance and efficiency.
“I don’t think that what Apple has done changes AMD’s strategy dramatically.”
“When we look at our roadmap going forward, I think we got a very competitive roadmap against what Apple is doing,”
“AMD is leading in performance, in power efficiencies, and in manufacturing process technology. We can continue to do those things in spite of whatever moves that Intel or Apple might make…we will end up being in a very strong competitive position.”
AMD CVP, David McAfee (via The Indian Express)
Intel recently announced a revamp of its process node roadmap and a commitment to accelerate its products through 2025 and beyond. AMD has also committed to offering its next-generation & latest Zen 4 CPUs based on a 5nm process node next year. This is about the same time Apple will have a new M series SOC for its Mac products which Intel and AMD are directly going to compete against through brand new chiplet and hybrid design innovations.
