Why would AMD want to invest any money into porting Dali features over to Stoney? Is there some massive high-margin untapped market there?
There is a big market, yes.
Raven2/Dali on 14nm = 150 mm2
Stoney on 28nm = 125 mm2
Getting rid of negatives of the 28nm node with a transition is ideal.
Stoney's successor would thus be on 22FDX/12FDX have a sub-cm2 die w/ high production quantity compared to Raven2/Dali.
Features gained but aren't included with Raven2/Dali:
- Higher CPU GHz(Excavator is on 28nm, all nodes in 14nm generation are faster, so clock rate intrinsically goes up)
- Access to 64-bit LPDDR4X, and do to timing of launch possible upgradability to LPDDR5 later. (Super-Combo Interface: DDR54/LPDDR54X)
- Smaller die size, higher production capacity(intrinsically lower costs/maturer production line), higher yields, etc.
- 125*C operation support, w/ 150*C 12FDX-HiTemp later on.
- Space/HighTude operability
- Support of a true FIVR do to planar node, reducing mobo costs.
- Longer supported node increasing 10 year support to the absurd 25 year support.
IoT/SBC -> Embedded -> Mission-critical -> Laptop -> AiO -> Credit-card NUCs
However, Stoney on 14LPP-derivatives/12FDX-derivatives => not the goal
Something that does low-cost better and doesn't reduce the latest Zen's cost is preferable.
It also needs to be unrushed, allowing for extended optimization over time. For 22FDX, 22FDX+, 22FDX++, 22FDX#, 22FDX#+, 22FDX#++, 22FDX##, etc. Which might included upgraded substrates(Al2O3), gates(Full metal gate), BEOL(carbon doped copper, CNTs, Nanosheet copper, etc), process(new machines), etc.