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I disagree with the article author and at the end of the super long article, so does IDC. For the big workloads, x86 systems are going to be on top for the nex

I disagree with the article author and at the end of the super long article, so does IDC. For the big workloads, x86 systems are going to be on top for the next years. Yes ARM is making strides, but it will take time before the move into data centers at any significant rate. The trend lines from the IDC charts show continued growth, 5-6% growth is pretty decent as you remember manufacturing costs continue to drop.

thr0waway1239 10y ago
Can you give a little summary of why the article thinks it is peak x86 for those of us who are not very familiar with this field?
- AstroJetson 10y ago
  It appears that he draws most of his conclusions based on what Gartner thinks is going on. Gartner thinks that the next generation of ARM is going to be a huge winner. It take a long time to get traction in the big server marketplace, he thinks it will be sooner. ARM has some spiffy stuff, but it's not what the big data centers are looking for. There is posts about the Apple CPUs that are out. Nice stuff and if I was building a phone, it would be one of my top choices. But if I'm doing data center then I'm going to want something more general purpose. If I have 6 cores in a chip and they are all the same I can load them up. If I have CPU and GPU cores then I have to move tasks around. If I move to ARM from Intel then I have the added task of trying to optimize my load/task to the new CPU. Granted compilers are a key driver, but lots of people have spent lots of time hand tweaking Intel CPU loads. 22 cores running at 2.2GHz in a single socket is pretty amazing. Haven't seen any ARM72's anywhere near that big. You might see some movement in this area, but the way companies are gobbling big servers, we are not at peak Intel. Hope that helps.
  - thr0waway1239 10y ago
    Thanks. I got most of it :-)
  - ansible 10y ago
    22 cores running at 2.2GHz in a single socket is pretty amazing. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the idea that the processes running on this system aren't going to be memory bandwidth starved. Yes, I know the Xeons have gobs of cache in multiple levels, but still. And yes, I know that distributing tasks across multiple systems can have its own severe performance problems.
  - pcwalton 10y ago
    > the way companies are gobbling big servers, we are not at peak Intel. I think the point is that you're pretty much by definition at the peak when your market share is 99.3%. There's nowhere to go.
    - AstroJetson 10y ago
      But the market keeps getting bigger and bigger. Unless we are using a different version of what "peak" means in this context. "The hypothetical point in time when the global production of x86 equipment reaches its maximum rate, after which production will gradually decline." is the one that I'm using. As long as the demand is up there, then production will continue to grow.
bitwize 10y ago
The Apple A10 is trouncing lower-end Intel kit already. We may be looking at a future of client-side computing dominated by Apple; if they can get their shit in one sock cloud-wise they'll make dents in the server space too. Think Amazon AWS, but running Mac OS X server and fully integrated with OS X. Easy peasy deployment of your Rails app straight from your MBP dev box right to the cloud, with almost zero config management required.
- richardwhiuk 10y ago
  I doubt it. Apple has been systematically withdrawing from the server space for years, and I doubt they are particularly likely to reverse that trend. Servers are relatively low margin with a small brand impact. Apple plays well in consumer electronics where brand has much more of an impact on margin.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    Apple buys generic Intel kit for their datacentres, and did this even when making their own server product. Consuming your own output isn't good for margins, and like many large-scale providers, you must acknowledge vanity hardware isn't any faster than bare motherboards in a rack. The more bare-bones the better. The XServe and friends were intended for small-scale deployments. They did a few partnerships to build clusters of them for HPC but that was largely a demonstration, not a target customer base.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  They may have the CPU chops but no way do they have the institutional ability to sell clients and servers to business. They can't even hold onto the educational market which they're losing to Google Chromebooks.
  - acdha 10y ago
    > They may have the CPU chops but no way do they have the institutional ability to sell clients and servers to business. Proprietary hardware is a hard sale for anyone these days but in Apple's case it's even harder because their previous attempts left many shops with a disinclination to ever use them again. It'd take a serious commitment to forget the era where you had to beg for OS X Server bugfixes by saying they were preventing the purchase of n Macs.

thr0waway1239 10y ago

Can you give a little summary of why the article thinks it is peak x86 for those of us who are not very familiar with this field?

AstroJetson 10y ago
It appears that he draws most of his conclusions based on what Gartner thinks is going on. Gartner thinks that the next generation of ARM is going to be a huge winner. It take a long time to get traction in the big server marketplace, he thinks it will be sooner. ARM has some spiffy stuff, but it's not what the big data centers are looking for. There is posts about the Apple CPUs that are out. Nice stuff and if I was building a phone, it would be one of my top choices. But if I'm doing data center then I'm going to want something more general purpose. If I have 6 cores in a chip and they are all the same I can load them up. If I have CPU and GPU cores then I have to move tasks around. If I move to ARM from Intel then I have the added task of trying to optimize my load/task to the new CPU. Granted compilers are a key driver, but lots of people have spent lots of time hand tweaking Intel CPU loads. 22 cores running at 2.2GHz in a single socket is pretty amazing. Haven't seen any ARM72's anywhere near that big. You might see some movement in this area, but the way companies are gobbling big servers, we are not at peak Intel. Hope that helps.
- thr0waway1239 10y ago
  Thanks. I got most of it :-)
- ansible 10y ago
  22 cores running at 2.2GHz in a single socket is pretty amazing. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the idea that the processes running on this system aren't going to be memory bandwidth starved. Yes, I know the Xeons have gobs of cache in multiple levels, but still. And yes, I know that distributing tasks across multiple systems can have its own severe performance problems.
- pcwalton 10y ago
  > the way companies are gobbling big servers, we are not at peak Intel. I think the point is that you're pretty much by definition at the peak when your market share is 99.3%. There's nowhere to go.
  - AstroJetson 10y ago
    But the market keeps getting bigger and bigger. Unless we are using a different version of what "peak" means in this context. "The hypothetical point in time when the global production of x86 equipment reaches its maximum rate, after which production will gradually decline." is the one that I'm using. As long as the demand is up there, then production will continue to grow.

bitwize 10y ago

The Apple A10 is trouncing lower-end Intel kit already. We may be looking at a future of client-side computing dominated by Apple; if they can get their shit in one sock cloud-wise they'll make dents in the server space too. Think Amazon AWS, but running Mac OS X server and fully integrated with OS X. Easy peasy deployment of your Rails app straight from your MBP dev box right to the cloud, with almost zero config management required.

richardwhiuk 10y ago
I doubt it. Apple has been systematically withdrawing from the server space for years, and I doubt they are particularly likely to reverse that trend. Servers are relatively low margin with a small brand impact. Apple plays well in consumer electronics where brand has much more of an impact on margin.
- astrodust 10y ago
  Apple buys generic Intel kit for their datacentres, and did this even when making their own server product. Consuming your own output isn't good for margins, and like many large-scale providers, you must acknowledge vanity hardware isn't any faster than bare motherboards in a rack. The more bare-bones the better. The XServe and friends were intended for small-scale deployments. They did a few partnerships to build clusters of them for HPC but that was largely a demonstration, not a target customer base.
kalleboo 10y ago
They may have the CPU chops but no way do they have the institutional ability to sell clients and servers to business. They can't even hold onto the educational market which they're losing to Google Chromebooks.
- acdha 10y ago
  > They may have the CPU chops but no way do they have the institutional ability to sell clients and servers to business. Proprietary hardware is a hard sale for anyone these days but in Apple's case it's even harder because their previous attempts left many shops with a disinclination to ever use them again. It'd take a serious commitment to forget the era where you had to beg for OS X Server bugfixes by saying they were preventing the purchase of n Macs.