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Why aren't there ASICs for hosting web sites

• IgorPartola 4y ago
  ESP32 can do it.
  • idealmedtech 4y ago
    That's a general purpose microcomputer, not application specific!
• cperciva 4y ago
  Because there's no point. A single server can push hundreds of Gbps of traffic already; using an ASIC would just make it less agile.
  • ip26 4y ago
    You might be able to bake some preprocessing of e.g. HTTP into the NIC, doing incrementally more work using well defined standards before delivering packets to the host. Especially with an FPGA.
    • rsaxvc 4y ago
      IP and TCP often are.
    • 4khilles 4y ago
      This might be possible in the near future using smart NICs that support eBPF offload.
• cookiengineer 4y ago
  > Why aren't there ASICs for hosting web sites Isn't this what ESP32 variants are trying to achieve? [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESP8266 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESP8266
  • azinman2 4y ago
    No, that’s just a general purpose computer. ASICs are dedicated chips for a given task, where that task’s “program” is built into the chip and it can only do that.
    • nine_k 4y ago
      While there may not be HTTP-specific ASICs, there certainly are SSL/TLS-offloading ASICs and general TCP-processing ASICs, found on higher-end network cards, in routers, etc.
      • azinman2 4y ago
        And none of those are an ESP32
• mhh__ 4y ago
  "Johnson, why can't we push this security update?" "Well boss, we thought it would be more webscale to use our own chip design, so we're kinda stuck, but the good news is that we've negotiated the cost of new masks down to 3 million dollars"
  • sydthrowaway 4y ago
    Related questions: why aren’t there ASICs to accelerate compilation