Doubtful. I'm not sure they have the talent/knowledge to pull it off while Apple Silicon is a moving target with a new generation introduced in each new iPhone.
And AMD employed some of the most talented people in the area like Jim Keller. They totally can do it. Intel, too. Qualcomm is doing it with Orion and Qualcomm has less expertise and resources.
Its kinda like the evolution of bitcoin mining-everyone was doing it with GPUs, AMDs were better because of some hardware optimization where they could hash something in less cycles, then people started making ASIC which are purpose built and the fastest possible way to run the necessary compute. There were no technical advancements here, just economic forces driving the design and manufacture of components that made making ASICs profitable.
Apple did the same thing except they designed the chip and the computer as one, and they succeeded because it allowed them to optimize stuff further, and you see this in results where they are the leader but not by much, and often behind systems that are overclocked in single core performance. Power consumption on macs, also varies greatly depending on what you are running, which is again a result of optimization for particular use cases.
AMD does not have that.
Anyways, ARM chips are being used for the backbone of the internet. They're called Amazon Graviton chips. Ampere Computing also has ARM server chips. So do many Chinese hyperscalers.
M2 is on TSMC N5. AMD's Zen 4 mobile processors are made with TSMC N4. From die shots, I believe the P-cores in the M2 are about the same size as Zen 4 cores. And yet Apple's M2 laptops are a good deal more power efficient than Zen 4 laptops.
Zen4 is competitive when it comes to actual computing. When doing (almost) nothing, the Apple system comes out on top, but that also has a lot to do with its software.
Source for this?
Geekbench and SPEC heavily favors Apple Silicon in both raw performance and perf/watt. The perf per watt is 2-3x.
The only CPU benchmark Zen4 wins in is Cinebench R23, which uses Intel Embree engine inside and heavily optimizes for x86 AVX instructions.
Isn’t this also true of ARM?
To me the more interesting aspect is how memory architecture will be approached going ahead by both parties. Apple can afford to go more bespoke and integrated, but how can x86 maintain a good mix between performance and design flexibility.
x86 has to scale from embedded boards to laptops to servers. AMD made different trade offs than Apple.
Apple chose to achieve a level of performance by keeping the frequency low and having a high IPC. High IPC means that cores consume a larger size of the die. That helped with lower power consumption.
x86 makers like AMD, did the other way around. They dedicated a smaller portion of the die to a core. That makes it cheaper. To make up for that, they used a higher frequency, which also means a higher power consumption.
Apple also has a node advantage, which also makes their CPUs more expensive.
AMD could totally do what Apple did: have faster IPC at lower power consumption if they would have release more expensive CPUs targeted at the mobile market.
But AMD and Apple have different goals.
If we stick to the mobile world, Qualcomm is doing with their Orion cores just what Apple did with their M cores. In the first half of this year we will see laptops with Orion cores that will have both strong IPC and low power consumption.