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Server replacement rate is actually fairly high in the industry (5 years at most and usually less than 4 for tech oriented companies last time I read an industr

Server replacement rate is actually fairly high in the industry (5 years at most and usually less than 4 for tech oriented companies last time I read an industry report). The main problem is you can't buy AMD based servers. They are completely unavailable, even to hyperscalers judging from the graphs. The only reason Intel is keeping the lead is because they can actually fulfill the demand.

vlovich123 5y ago
Right. Server replacement is ~5 years but it's staggered. So you'll gradually roll out new servers & gradually decommission old ones (with a rapid decommissioning phase towards the end of the server lifetime). However, not every company will adopt AMD processors when they first become available OR they may hedge their bets & do a mixed blend (e.g. Amazon offers Intel & AMD for their customers). Both of these are why it'll probably take 5 years to start seeing the initial impact & longer to see the full impact (e.g. AMD start exceeding Intel marketshare) for the early majority/later majority & laggards to adopt. As far as being unable to buy AMD based servers I don't know. There's certainly a lot of announcements about it: https://blog.cloudflare.com/technical-details-of-why-cloudflare-chose-amd-epyc-for-gen-x-servers/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/technical-details-of-why-cloudfl... https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/new-google-cloud-vms-with-amd-epyc-promise-top-price-performance https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/new-google-cloud-vms-with-amd... https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/amd/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/amd/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-new-amd-epyc-based-azure-virtual-machines/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-new-amd-ep... Obviously it's hard to know how many they've rolled out but I think it's more than a trivial amount. I'm suspicious of the graph because I don't know how they're capturing that data.

vlovich123 5y ago

Right. Server replacement is ~5 years but it's staggered. So you'll gradually roll out new servers & gradually decommission old ones (with a rapid decommissioning phase towards the end of the server lifetime). However, not every company will adopt AMD processors when they first become available OR they may hedge their bets & do a mixed blend (e.g. Amazon offers Intel & AMD for their customers). Both of these are why it'll probably take 5 years to start seeing the initial impact & longer to see the full impact (e.g. AMD start exceeding Intel marketshare) for the early majority/later majority & laggards to adopt. As far as being unable to buy AMD based servers I don't know. There's certainly a lot of announcements about it: https://blog.cloudflare.com/technical-details-of-why-cloudflare-chose-amd-epyc-for-gen-x-servers/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/technical-details-of-why-cloudfl... https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/new-google-cloud-vms-with-amd-epyc-promise-top-price-performance https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/new-google-cloud-vms-with-amd... https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/amd/ https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/amd/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-new-amd-epyc-based-azure-virtual-machines/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-new-amd-ep... Obviously it's hard to know how many they've rolled out but I think it's more than a trivial amount. I'm suspicious of the graph because I don't know how they're capturing that data.