Very interesting, but your calculation focuses on area, and I'm curious about three elements:
Since the number I arrived at is quite high - 80 mm2 - it's the most significant
- costs of packaging of Halo
This type of packaging is quite low cost. It has been used for a long time in low cost smart phones, so the cost should be in low single digits.
Ther is also savings on die area by elimination of SerDes and power savings. So Strix Halo packaging is an asset, not a liability
- R&D, which I expect has been particularly extensive (LP core, advanced packaging, big APU in a laptop, etc)
That is true, but these are technologies that are going to carry AMD into the future. LP cores will probably be in all future notebook CPUs in Zen 6
That's hard to assess. In the past generations, AMD was typically 10-50% better in GPU performance, but it did not particularly outweigh other features in Intel CPUs.
But ~3x GPU performance, or dropping dGPU is going differentiate Strix Halo from the rest of the field more significantly.
As always I'm a little skeptical of the AMBeliebers that scream that "chipletz are de wey" since they focus on the gains and ignore the extra costs. Which aren't big for cheaper stuff (fan-outs) but get higher pretty fast.
Halo is chiplet-based, Strix is not. To me, that sounds like an extra layer of problems to deal with in a supposed low power laptop. I suspect it may be their (first?) implementation of a silicon bridge, which is less money than MTL's Silicon interposer, but is still more than traces in PCB, as Halo is definitely the first part to leave AMD's Zen 2 era "just do the cheapest" approach. It's a testbed for Zen 6 and later, so no point in going cheap.
I don't think the cost of packaging is going to be a particular problem.
The problem with Strix Halo is that it does not play to the strength of chiplets fully, in being able to have the most appropriate node for a certain functionality, limiting the usage of the most expensive silicon - in case of Strix Halo, likely N3E, of which there may be well over 200 mm2. Could be over 250 mm2.
This big SoC is goig to be single purpose, no re-use.
But considering adding another 2x 100mm2 CPU CCD chiplets on top of ~250mm2 SoC still offers significant advantage in yields, and still some cost savings with N4 vs. N3.
Another advantage chiplets used to have was Intel's low yields, high cost of extra large dies, and inability of make more than 800 mm2 die.
These advantages do not apply as much with smaller chips and on high yielding TSMC nodes.
I expect both packaging costs to be relatively high, and R&D to have been heck of a lot.
Ofc volume is supposed to quash that, but I doubt that it'll sell as much as people believe. NV sticker is still worth a lot, Halo completely negates the value of putting a dGPU in a laptop. So I expect that Halo laptops will have to be more price competitive, I.E cheaper than full laptops with dGPUs. I also can easily expect NV to come out blasting about how "real laptops have dGPUs" and all the obvious jazz they'll do to impede Halo.
If Halo sells for cheaper perf to perf than Point + 4050/60/70, and its situation is "less area, less complexity to integrate, more packaging costs, has to sell for less of a price", I really really am doubtful about any margins or large scale sales.
One other variable to keep in mind is that low end dGPU such as x5x, x6x have 4 GB, 6 GB or 8 GB of memory, and the user is stuck with it for the rest of the life of the laptop.
Strix Halo will likely have 32 GB as a base configuration, leaving pretty much unlimited memory for the GPU in any game.
So, a good reply to dGPU marketing would be: is your game running dog slow with 6GB of memory?
Of course I'm willingly ignoring Halo's ability to be a Windows M1, a really low power stable chip, but that one is still out there, we don't know a thing about Z5 LP except that it's meant to exist. And we have to be doubtful about the market size of people who want a really low power full AMD laptop, but will be told "by the way, if you want it, you gotta pay for the midrange gaming sized GPU". Market of windows low power users? Huge. Market of those willing to pay another $100/200 for a gaming GPU? Tiny.
People still buy notebooks with dGPU, regardless of whether they need dGPUs, whether you think they need dGPUs.
Strix Halo offers a better choice to people who buy dGPUs. That's the target market.
For people who currently don't buy notebooks with dGPUs - Strix Halo is not the best fit.
Halo will be a hard sell, it'll have cost a lot to develop, and its advantage is not that high in area, it's there for sure but we're talking 100m² if we're being ultra generous.
So I'm going to keep my original stance that adroc is full of copium on this and that Halo will be a net loss for AMD.
I think the biggest challenge is that AMD is not NVidia. AMD does not have the same brand name, brand power in laptops.
If NVidia came up with Strix Halo, there would be zero doubt that this is the most brilliant idea. People would automatically buy it. Reviewers would be falling over each other recommending it.
That's the challenge for AMD to overcome. Not technical challenges of Strix Halo.
Which is fine because it's an experimental, high risk product, that's meant to open the way to Z6 and beyond, and that's really all I want out of AMD, to take risks. But they're not making their money back on this one. I think we should expect Halo to open a lot of doors, but to be a bust financially speaking.
And I'm glad about it. AMD's been playing the poor man's game for too long, Halo is a real hard leap forward, so do it Lisa, lose money and come back with most of the hard lifting done for Zen 6.
Surely it is high risk, but having brand recognition and brand power has high rewards. Which is what AMD is trying to do, after things fell apart.
The precise moment when things started falling apart for AMD was Q4 2021, when AMD failed to launch 5800x3d and unquestionably lost (handed over to Intel) the Halo effect. Followed by Rembrandt.
Rebuilding of the client brand started with launch of 7800x3d and Phoenix. And it is proceeding well.