In the server markets, you look at performance per watt and performance per rack unit and ease of setup - for general purpose computation, Intel still dominates

In the server markets, you look at performance per watt and performance per rack unit and ease of setup - for general purpose computation, Intel still dominates those metrics. (with some exceptions [1]). Being ahead in fab technology, it can take the performance hits due to the legacy x86 architecture. You can replace 1 beefy server with 8 small nodes, but you can not replace the convenience of administering that one server. Also, retargeting performance-sensitive JITs/compilers/maths libraries such as GCC, LLVM, Java, V8, *BLAS is no small feat either - x86 gets support first, because it is the market leader, and also gets tuned the most, since it's the oldest backend. A feedback loop that's hard to break, so don't expect Intel to go out of business any time soon. [1] http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fawnproj/ http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fawnproj/