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The worry I have is that these deep pocketed vendors will lock up access to top tier fast designs. There will no longer be a high end CPU open market, making it

by api 5y ago

The worry I have is that these deep pocketed vendors will lock up access to top tier fast designs. There will no longer be a high end CPU open market, making it almost impossible for a new entrant to build anything competitive. X64 is still decoupled but how long will it survive with ARM designs like the M1 or Graviton blowing it out of the water? The thing we really have to beware of is an oligopoly of vertically integrated vendors locking up all high end fab capacity, making it impossible to even fab a competing design if you can design one. Not only do we need a revival of antitrust, but we need competitors to TSMC badly. Samsung and Intel are close on its heels but that’s not enough.

klelatti 5y ago
We’ve moved from a less diverse world (where Intel and AMD have an oligopoly) to one where a large number of firms can use Arm’s ISA and base designs (eg Neoverse) to build a decently competitive CPU. This is the opposite of what you’re suggesting is happening.
- pjc50 5y ago
  The argument from M1 is that "competitive CPU" will cease to be a thing as markets close; you'll get vertically integrated hardware. The M1 isn't a competitive CPU because it doesn't compete as a CPU; it competes only as the sealed unit of "Apple laptop"
  - klelatti 5y ago
    M1 isn't a CPU its an SoC. The CPUs in the M1 are competitive because they build on Arm's IP which others can and are doing (Google, Amazon, Qualcomm Samsung already and others can join them) which is a much less oligopolistic position than Intel / AMD having the market to themselves.
    - api 5y ago
      But you can’t source the M1 for another product. If you could you’d see them in servers already as they (or at least their performance cores) would be fantastic chips for many server workloads. That was my point. Diversity doesn’t matter. It’s diversity of what can be sourced on the open market that matters.
      - klelatti 5y ago
        You do know that Graviton is essentially a slightly modified Arm Neoverse core or that you can buy an Ampere CPU based on Neoverse today or that Qualcomm and Nvidia will almost certainly be launching competitive Arm based server chips in the near future. Nothing to stop other vendors coming in and licensing Neoverse too. So tell me that isn’t a more open market than say 3 years ago when you basically had to buy Intel. I find these arguments bizarre - we’ve had many, many years of Intel monopoly on the desktop and server and finally we have some competitors and people are worried about the market being closed up? Seriously?

by api 5y ago

klelatti 5y ago

We’ve moved from a less diverse world (where Intel and AMD have an oligopoly) to one where a large number of firms can use Arm’s ISA and base designs (eg Neoverse) to build a decently competitive CPU. This is the opposite of what you’re suggesting is happening.

pjc50 5y ago
The argument from M1 is that "competitive CPU" will cease to be a thing as markets close; you'll get vertically integrated hardware. The M1 isn't a competitive CPU because it doesn't compete as a CPU; it competes only as the sealed unit of "Apple laptop"
- klelatti 5y ago
  M1 isn't a CPU its an SoC. The CPUs in the M1 are competitive because they build on Arm's IP which others can and are doing (Google, Amazon, Qualcomm Samsung already and others can join them) which is a much less oligopolistic position than Intel / AMD having the market to themselves.
  - api 5y ago
    But you can’t source the M1 for another product. If you could you’d see them in servers already as they (or at least their performance cores) would be fantastic chips for many server workloads. That was my point. Diversity doesn’t matter. It’s diversity of what can be sourced on the open market that matters.
    - klelatti 5y ago
      You do know that Graviton is essentially a slightly modified Arm Neoverse core or that you can buy an Ampere CPU based on Neoverse today or that Qualcomm and Nvidia will almost certainly be launching competitive Arm based server chips in the near future. Nothing to stop other vendors coming in and licensing Neoverse too. So tell me that isn’t a more open market than say 3 years ago when you basically had to buy Intel. I find these arguments bizarre - we’ve had many, many years of Intel monopoly on the desktop and server and finally we have some competitors and people are worried about the market being closed up? Seriously?