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Intel is the standard and that has amazing sticking power. AMD is trying to make an offer DC operators can't refuse to break that. Intel is reeling from major
by api 7y ago
Intel is the standard and that has amazing sticking power. AMD is trying to make an offer DC operators can't refuse to break that.
Intel is reeling from major design flaws and process stagnation right now. It makes sense for AMD to punch hard. Now is the time.
Also note that the eternally predicted ARM64 wave into servers, workstations, and cloud is not materializing. So far nobody has been willing to build such high performance chips and price them aggressively enough. All things considered it's an amazing window for AMD to take the market lead.
- ianai 7y agoAt some point, too, they’re likely to get a comparable ARM entrant. The threat of competition puts downward pressure on prices.
- api 7y agoI just ninja edited to add that. Hah. Anyway that could happen but keep in mind that a new ISA (for server workloads) is a much harder sell than a new chip brand. An ARM64 would need to be priced much lower (at least in $/perf/watt terms) than this already mega aggressive AMD offering. Personally I think Epyc this cheap really harms ARM's chances in the data center. If Apple goes ARM64 for Mac it could indirectly help ARM get into the DC by showing that ARM is not just for small stuff. Longer term you also have the RISC-V wildcard. A mostly free core and ISA could in theory move the whole game to the foundry and lead to a race to the bottom on price/performance.
- rbanffy 7y ago> a new ISA (for server workloads) is a much harder sell than a new chip brand It really depends. As long as performance is there and the apps work as expected, I'll deploy my workloads on whatever runs them for the best cost per transaction. Additionally, we don't have a say on what architecture our hosted services are on - if AWS decides my RDS databases are to move to ARM64, or Google decides my CloudSQL will run on POWER9 - I probably won't notice as long as the performance is right. In the past I have deployed production Python-based workloads to amd64 and SPARC (I did POWER too, but for fun) without change. I'm most certain I can do the same with ARM64 or RISCV.
- ianai 7y agoARM does allow for customized silicon. But right now I’ve heard the architecture is slower than x86 at division because it doesn’t have devoted registers to the operation. It’s going to be a huge factor in the DC. Never before have people been able to customize silicon. And now (ish) they can for figures that make sense to more than just the usual suspects.
- api 7y agoYou are in the minority. Most IT and devops people are massively change averse and tend to blame all problems on the most recent change. They would rather pay more for a known quantity. This is even more the case for non technical management.
- sitkack 7y agoIn 2 to 3 cycles it won't be in their control. We are riding the buggies right now while ICE cars are blasting right past us.
- ianai 7y agoMy suspicion is it matters a great deal on OS stack until Microsoft supports ARM in Server. I’m sure the bsd/Linux OSes will have a much easier time transitioning. Edit-I’m seeing some articles that make it look like arm might already be usable on Windows. There’s still legacy software issues though.
- sitkack 7y agoThe instruction set as a moat is almost over with the continual rise of Wasm. This is really AMDs last push into the datacenter and with it a huge infusion of cash.