AMD Sound Wave ARM APU for Windows laptops to bring 6 cores, novel MALL cache, and more
The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus SoCs are the first truly impressive ARM chips for Windows laptops. Due to their solid performance and power efficiency, these SoCs have seen wide adoption from major laptop OEMs like Asus, Dell, HP, Microsoft, and more. However, Qualcomm is not going to be the sole profiteer of the ARM-based Windows laptops race, as MediaTek and AMD are also expected to release their ARM APUs in the not too distance future.
AMD’s ARM laptop processor is codenamed “Sound Wave”. We reported in May 2024 that AMD was gunning for a 2026 release for its debut ARM APU. Coupled with a “powerful NPU”, the APU is reportedly aimed at clawing Microsoft Surface products away from Qualcomm.
Courtesy of Moore’s Law Is Dead, we now have some specifications of AMD Sound Wave and there are some interesting things to go over.
AMD Sound Wave specs
Starting with the CPU, the AMD Sound Wave could feature 2x P-cores, 4x E-cores, and 4 MB of L3 cache. If these 6 cores are capable of SMT like AMD’s x86 chips, we are looking at 12 total threads. The CPU is allegedly paired with an RDNA 3.5 iGPU with 4x Compute Units, 16 MB of MALL or Memory Attached Last-Level Cache, and better ML performance.
MLID’s source claims that the surprising presence of MALL cache on an small APU like Sound Wave “makes sense” for power efficiency and providing more bandwidth for the AI engine. On the topic of AI, there is going to be a 4th-generation AI engine on AMD Sound Wave APUs.
For the memory subsystem, AMD is allegedly employing a 128-bit LPDDR5X-9600 memory controller. Windows laptops based on Sound Wave are also expected to come with 16 GB of memory as a standard, which is pretty good news considering AMD is seemingly positioning Sound Wave as a successor to the Zen 2-based Ryzen 7020 “Mendocino” APUs for 5-10 W form factors.
Finally, AMD Sound Wave is reportedly being tapped out on the TSMC 3 nm process. We could start seeing laptops based on the AMD’s ARM processor in 2026.
All in all, with AMD Sound Wave potentially coming in 2026 alongside new Qualcomm Snapdragon ARM SoCs for Windows and Nvidia+MediaTek AI PC chip, the future is shaping up to be quite exciting for ARM-based Windows laptops.
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