5 ms·

Datacenters are the highest-binned parts, and therefore the highest margins. Whom is Amazon going to sell low-bin Gravitons to? It isn't cost effective to run

Datacenters are the highest-binned parts, and therefore the highest margins. Whom is Amazon going to sell low-bin Gravitons to? It isn't cost effective to run them, just like it's not cost effective to use low-binned Intel or AMD chips in datacenters. It's intrinsic to the way all chips are manufactured. Making your own low performance chips makes clear economic sense, as the producer and consumer of all output. But there have been decades of people trying to make their own high-performance chips as both consumer and producer, and they inevitably fail. And it's not super black and white, whose "subsidizing" whom, in the chip business - datacenter purchasers get cheaper chips because Intel can sell lower-binned parts to enthusiasts, while enthusiasts get cheaper parts because datacenters pay more. Same thing is observed for GPUs, product segmentation in chips is a real synergy and not zero sum. Who knows if that will succeed, for the idiosyncratic reason of the foundry business being separate from the IP business. Did it really just take a corporate reorg? Maybe AMD was right.

tyingq 6y ago
The question about where low-binned Gravitons go to is an interesting one. But my point on how easy it is now, as compared to the past, for large swaths of customers to move away from Intel, stands. Moving to AMD or some 3rd party ARM provider are options outside of Graviton that can be done quickly.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  These days, are you more likely to have dead cores, reduced cache, or reduced clock speed for chips in low bins?
  - tyingq 6y ago
    If pictures like this are accurate, I assume cache problems would be the most likely: https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Z1nU.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Z1nU.png
    - aprao 6y ago
      Can you describe what I should be seeing here?
      - tyingq 6y ago
        That most of the die area is L1/2/3 cache.
        aprao 6y ago
        gotcha, thanks
SergeAx 6y ago
A lot of datacenter running cost lays in power and cooling (which requires more power). Maybe Gravitons are not that space effective, but they are definitely power effective, so there is a possibility to get a better margin in the long run.
spartas 6y ago
> Datacenters are the highest-binned parts, and therefore the highest margins. While I recognized that this is indeed the case, I'd not considered some of the recent plays that Apple has been making. Forget those Gravitons. Forget those low volume datacenter ARM chips too. Also forget those high-binned EYPC and Xeon chips. What happens when those rackmount Mac Pro machines go to Apple silicon? Datacenters are already paying a premium for processors, but these are much better at performance-per-watt, and Apple can afford to cut the prices on the first and second generation ones to make it up in volume and then ratchet up the prices later once they've got the marketshare.
bobdole12345 6y ago
Why would they need to sell them to anyone? They'd just run their internal clusters with the high binned parts, and the low binned parts would go into their AWS budget tiers. Tada! Now they've got the best, and unloaded the rest onto suckers while billing them for the privilege.
- ComputerGuru 6y ago
  Budget AWS sells you slices of CPU performance rather than leasing you hours of access to a physical chip. They gain/lose on efficiency in that context.
  - bobdole12345 6y ago
    They sell you a second of performance on a system. There's a fair bit of variation in systems even in the same tier, but you're going to pay the same price. And low bin chips are still going to be more power efficient than the previous generation.
rbranson 6y ago
I don't think binning is as big of a deal as it's made out to be. What does Apple do with the "low-bin" A13s, for instance?
- SoapSeller 6y ago
  iPhone SE?
- selectodude 6y ago
  Low-end iPads and AppleTVs where either frequency or power consumption isn't as important, respectively.
  - rbranson 6y ago
    Apple's history is mostly using older designs for the lower end devices. They are completely different chips, not just a lower frequency version of the same part.
    - selectodude 6y ago
      Sure, but things can change?
- an_opabinia 6y ago
  Exactly. The answer is nothing. If it isn't already, TSMC will eventually pass the cost onto Apple.
- imtringued 6y ago
  Mobile chips are usually smaller than desktop chips. That alone is enough to increase the yield significantly.
Robotbeat 6y ago
BTW, I generally dislike such discussions of "who is subsidizing whom" because they often miss the obvious point: both "sides" benefit from having a larger market to spread fixed costs over. There is no "subsidy" here. Just regular economies of scale that benefit (at least for first order effects) all the users.
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  Right, and subsidies happen a lot less often than placating salesmen would have us believe.
tengbretson 6y ago
> Whom is Amazon going to sell low-bin Gravitons to? It isn't cost effective to run them, just like it's not cost effective to use low-binned Intel or AMD chips in datacenters. It's intrinsic to the way all chips are manufactured. If they're starting with designs that are very energy/heat efficient then couldn't they fuse off the bad parts of the dies and then glue like 10 of them onto a single interposer and still have a tdp competitive with x86 server parts?
- mechagodzilla 6y ago
  No. First of all, the efficiency is part of the binning process (some chips are just worse than others). But adding the logic to be able to scale to that many die (high speed SERDES, large caches with lots of cache coherency traffic flying around) takes up more power, and doing the engineering for a large interposer where one wasn't needed before, enlarging the package the interposer sits in, etc. is expensive. Gluing together a lot of defective die on an expensive interposer/package is a bad idea from just about every perspective.
m0zg 6y ago
> Whom is Amazon going to sell low-bin Gravitons to? To the same customers as higher-bin Gravitons. It'll just be sold in the form of services, where you don't get to see the CPU directly.
nisten 6y ago
I too dismissed the Gravitron cpus for a long time, until today actually when I saw the benchmarks. Man, I would not know if amazon was bribing anandtech or something, but the gravitron2s are they're wiping the floor here with Intel and Amd when it comes to performance per cost and even holding their own single threaded which I did not expect. https://www.anandtech.com/show/15578/cloud-clash-amazon-graviton2-arm-against-intel-and-amd/8 https://www.anandtech.com/show/15578/cloud-clash-amazon-grav...
mrep 6y ago
Not everything is cpu bound. All the storage services like s3 and ebs are likely network bound and could probably use lower spec CPUs.

tyingq 6y ago

The question about where low-binned Gravitons go to is an interesting one. But my point on how easy it is now, as compared to the past, for large swaths of customers to move away from Intel, stands. Moving to AMD or some 3rd party ARM provider are options outside of Graviton that can be done quickly.

dehrmann 6y ago
These days, are you more likely to have dead cores, reduced cache, or reduced clock speed for chips in low bins?
- tyingq 6y ago
  If pictures like this are accurate, I assume cache problems would be the most likely: https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Z1nU.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Z1nU.png
  - aprao 6y ago
    Can you describe what I should be seeing here?
    - tyingq 6y ago
      That most of the die area is L1/2/3 cache.
      - aprao 6y ago
        gotcha, thanks

SergeAx 6y ago

A lot of datacenter running cost lays in power and cooling (which requires more power). Maybe Gravitons are not that space effective, but they are definitely power effective, so there is a possibility to get a better margin in the long run.

spartas 6y ago

> Datacenters are the highest-binned parts, and therefore the highest margins. While I recognized that this is indeed the case, I'd not considered some of the recent plays that Apple has been making. Forget those Gravitons. Forget those low volume datacenter ARM chips too. Also forget those high-binned EYPC and Xeon chips. What happens when those rackmount Mac Pro machines go to Apple silicon? Datacenters are already paying a premium for processors, but these are much better at performance-per-watt, and Apple can afford to cut the prices on the first and second generation ones to make it up in volume and then ratchet up the prices later once they've got the marketshare.

bobdole12345 6y ago

Why would they need to sell them to anyone? They'd just run their internal clusters with the high binned parts, and the low binned parts would go into their AWS budget tiers. Tada! Now they've got the best, and unloaded the rest onto suckers while billing them for the privilege.

ComputerGuru 6y ago
Budget AWS sells you slices of CPU performance rather than leasing you hours of access to a physical chip. They gain/lose on efficiency in that context.
- bobdole12345 6y ago
  They sell you a second of performance on a system. There's a fair bit of variation in systems even in the same tier, but you're going to pay the same price. And low bin chips are still going to be more power efficient than the previous generation.

rbranson 6y ago

I don't think binning is as big of a deal as it's made out to be. What does Apple do with the "low-bin" A13s, for instance?

SoapSeller 6y ago
iPhone SE?
selectodude 6y ago
Low-end iPads and AppleTVs where either frequency or power consumption isn't as important, respectively.
- rbranson 6y ago
  Apple's history is mostly using older designs for the lower end devices. They are completely different chips, not just a lower frequency version of the same part.
  - selectodude 6y ago
    Sure, but things can change?
an_opabinia 6y ago
Exactly. The answer is nothing. If it isn't already, TSMC will eventually pass the cost onto Apple.
imtringued 6y ago
Mobile chips are usually smaller than desktop chips. That alone is enough to increase the yield significantly.

Robotbeat 6y ago

BTW, I generally dislike such discussions of "who is subsidizing whom" because they often miss the obvious point: both "sides" benefit from having a larger market to spread fixed costs over. There is no "subsidy" here. Just regular economies of scale that benefit (at least for first order effects) all the users.

jjoonathan 6y ago
Right, and subsidies happen a lot less often than placating salesmen would have us believe.

tengbretson 6y ago

> Whom is Amazon going to sell low-bin Gravitons to? It isn't cost effective to run them, just like it's not cost effective to use low-binned Intel or AMD chips in datacenters. It's intrinsic to the way all chips are manufactured. If they're starting with designs that are very energy/heat efficient then couldn't they fuse off the bad parts of the dies and then glue like 10 of them onto a single interposer and still have a tdp competitive with x86 server parts?

mechagodzilla 6y ago
No. First of all, the efficiency is part of the binning process (some chips are just worse than others). But adding the logic to be able to scale to that many die (high speed SERDES, large caches with lots of cache coherency traffic flying around) takes up more power, and doing the engineering for a large interposer where one wasn't needed before, enlarging the package the interposer sits in, etc. is expensive. Gluing together a lot of defective die on an expensive interposer/package is a bad idea from just about every perspective.

m0zg 6y ago

> Whom is Amazon going to sell low-bin Gravitons to? To the same customers as higher-bin Gravitons. It'll just be sold in the form of services, where you don't get to see the CPU directly.

nisten 6y ago

I too dismissed the Gravitron cpus for a long time, until today actually when I saw the benchmarks. Man, I would not know if amazon was bribing anandtech or something, but the gravitron2s are they're wiping the floor here with Intel and Amd when it comes to performance per cost and even holding their own single threaded which I did not expect. https://www.anandtech.com/show/15578/cloud-clash-amazon-graviton2-arm-against-intel-and-amd/8 https://www.anandtech.com/show/15578/cloud-clash-amazon-grav...

mrep 6y ago

Not everything is cpu bound. All the storage services like s3 and ebs are likely network bound and could probably use lower spec CPUs.