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With Moore's law slowing down, semiconductors can get commoditized. It happened with DRAM business in 1980s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel#From_DRAM_to_mi

With Moore's law slowing down, semiconductors can get commoditized. It happened with DRAM business in 1980s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel#From_DRAM_to_microprocessors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel#From_DRAM_to_microproces... Maybe CPU margins are going to drop too? ARM is likely the successor. ARM already won mobile market, maybe it start eating some of the cloud market? Do we really care on which CPU architecture runs S3 servers and etc.? That gives cloud providers huge leverage in negotiations. E.g. AWS can demand more discounts for Intel CPUs and if they won't comply slowing, but surely move some portion of it's infrastructure to ARM.

pjmlp 10y ago
> Do we really care on which CPU architecture runs S3 servers and etc.? Not at all, specially when the language runtimes are rich enough to abstract OS and hardware architectures. Even GPUs can be treated as an "acceleration device" by rich GPGPU runtimes.
gpderetta 10y ago
The problem with comoditization is that margins become razor thin, which in turn means less money to invest in R&D, which means that it is hard for a company that isn't already there to come up with high performance (or even entry level, really) server solutions. Intel ate the server market in the late '90/eary '00 thanks to the fat margins it had on the desktop. That's not currently the case in the ARM world were only Apple and maybe Qualcomm have the needed margins, and Apple currently doesn't seem interested in the server market.
- bhouston 10y ago
  If ARM is providing the expensive R&D-based IP, then any licensee can be a competitor.
  - gpderetta 10y ago
    But AFAIK ARM hasn't provided any server specific design. Most ARM based server attempts so far have been with custom designs (e.g. AppliedMicro X-Gene).
    - bhouston 10y ago
      Give it time, why wouldn't ARM start offering server building blocks? There is obviously a market for it. ARM went to 64 bit, and it has just gone to advanced GPU designs. It supports extreme number of cores now too. Server-centric designs can not be far off.
      - gpderetta 10y ago
        While ARM Holdings reference processors are reasonably good, the company is specialized in low power designs. Apple for example had to do a custom design to get the high performance ARM it needed. It is not obvious that ARM has the knowledge, the money and even the will to pursue a server design.
SixSigma 10y ago
> Do we really care on which CPU architecture runs S3 servers and etc.? Somebody above the "we" in that statement has to care.

pjmlp 10y ago

> Do we really care on which CPU architecture runs S3 servers and etc.? Not at all, specially when the language runtimes are rich enough to abstract OS and hardware architectures. Even GPUs can be treated as an "acceleration device" by rich GPGPU runtimes.

gpderetta 10y ago

The problem with comoditization is that margins become razor thin, which in turn means less money to invest in R&D, which means that it is hard for a company that isn't already there to come up with high performance (or even entry level, really) server solutions. Intel ate the server market in the late '90/eary '00 thanks to the fat margins it had on the desktop. That's not currently the case in the ARM world were only Apple and maybe Qualcomm have the needed margins, and Apple currently doesn't seem interested in the server market.

bhouston 10y ago
If ARM is providing the expensive R&D-based IP, then any licensee can be a competitor.
- gpderetta 10y ago
  But AFAIK ARM hasn't provided any server specific design. Most ARM based server attempts so far have been with custom designs (e.g. AppliedMicro X-Gene).
  - bhouston 10y ago
    Give it time, why wouldn't ARM start offering server building blocks? There is obviously a market for it. ARM went to 64 bit, and it has just gone to advanced GPU designs. It supports extreme number of cores now too. Server-centric designs can not be far off.
    - gpderetta 10y ago
      While ARM Holdings reference processors are reasonably good, the company is specialized in low power designs. Apple for example had to do a custom design to get the high performance ARM it needed. It is not obvious that ARM has the knowledge, the money and even the will to pursue a server design.

SixSigma 10y ago

> Do we really care on which CPU architecture runs S3 servers and etc.? Somebody above the "we" in that statement has to care.