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Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

nytimes.com

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Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#11

Post by trevyn »

comboy wrote: post #4

This can be powerful. They don't have to build general CPU right away. Start with storage and by the time you have database boxes on ASICS designed to match your software you're already winning. I'm surprised there's still not much effort to make FPGAs more affordable and base everything on it. With this scale it seems like it should be a win on the long run over deploying new ASICs every few years.

FPGAs are much larger (read: more expensive in volume) and slower than ASICs, so if you have the unit volume and calendar time to do an ASIC and know roughly what it needs to be optimized for, FPGAs really can’t compete. FPGAs are effective for more exotic smaller-scale use cases where unit cost is less of an issue.

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#12

Post by imtringued »

Why should intel be scared of AWS selling overpriced ARM servers? Scaleway offers 8 core servers with 8GB for almost half the monthly price of the cheapest ARM instance (with 1 core) amazon offers. Even the 16 core instance doesn't make sense. Packet.net will give you a whole 96 core server for the same price with 4x the memory. Capable ARM hardware has existed for years already and AWS is barely able to catch up.

Yes, I know AWS' target group is small startups and big enterprises who couldn't care less about how much their servers costs them. But at the same time this means switching to a new architecture for meager cost savings isn't attractive to them at all. They are willing to pay a premium if it means that things "just work". As long as this barrier exists ARM servers have zero chance of threatening intel.

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#13

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

becauseiam wrote: post #3

The article misses that months before the ARM announcement, AWS announced AMD based instances being available in m5 and r5 classes, and are cheaper than the default Intel offerings. If anything Intel might be afraid is that because the workloads that can be achieved are comparable.

AMD are in a great place. TSMC's 7nm is in great shape (unlike Intel's 10nm), and AMD's multi-chip architecture allows them to get vastly better effective yields for high-core-count “chips”. They will be selling superior CPU to Intel's and they will be making them at significantly lower cost, while Intel is struggling to compete, stuck with monolithic chips on 14nm.

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#14

Post by comboy »

adamson wrote: post #6
comboy wrote: post #4

This can be powerful. They don't have to build general CPU right away. Start with storage and by the time you have database boxes on ASICS designed to match your software you're already winning. I'm surprised there's still not much effort to make FPGAs more affordable and base everything on it. With this scale it seems like it should be a win on the long run over deploying new ASICs every few years.

I'm pretty out of the loop here. Are there existing, widely used workloads that are critical for storage for which FPGAs are competitive with CPUs?

I'm just guessing that if the only thing that given box is doing is handling very specific internal S3 API, you can probably optimize a few things over a multi-purpose architecture.

I'm totally blue and I'll be honest - when I want to learn about something, it seems that stating some thesis gets me way more information from HN vs asking a question, especially when it turns out to be wrong ;)

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#15

Post by jimbokun »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #5

From the article: "Amazon licensed much of the technology from ARM, the company that provides the basic technology for most smartphone chips. It made the chip through TSMC, a Taiwanese company." Amazon became an ARM architecture licensee and had their variant manufactured for them by TSMC. I find the characterization "home grown" as a stretch here, had they designed their own instruction set etc I might agree. That s…

It may not be "home grown", depending on how you want to define that term, but it does point to a vector for Intel's business model to be disrupted.

Going to ARM for chip IP, tweaking it, and then going to TSMC or some other manufacturing specialist could steadily eat away at Intel's market share and margins. Apple has now gone this route, Amazon is testing the waters, and other tech giants probably aren't far behind.

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#16

Post by 20938ny9 »

imtringued wrote: post #12

Why should intel be scared of AWS selling overpriced ARM servers? Scaleway offers 8 core servers with 8GB for almost half the monthly price of the cheapest ARM instance (with 1 core) amazon offers. Even the 16 core instance doesn't make sense. Packet.net will give you a whole 96 core server for the same price with 4x the memory. Capable ARM hardware has existed for years already and AWS is barely able to catch up. Ye…

A-are you sweating?

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#17

Post by hbosch »

projektfu wrote: post #7
ChuckMcM wrote: post #5

From the article: "Amazon licensed much of the technology from ARM, the company that provides the basic technology for most smartphone chips. It made the chip through TSMC, a Taiwanese company." Amazon became an ARM architecture licensee and had their variant manufactured for them by TSMC. I find the characterization "home grown" as a stretch here, had they designed their own instruction set etc I might agree. That s…

I think it's fair to call it home grown, like in house, but to say it threatens Intel is like saying that Amazon has introduced a server chip that will take over everyone's datacenters from Intel. Seems unlikely. Amazon also has to be careful now not to run afoul of anyone's IP as they can't farm out that responsibility to other providers.

> but to say it threatens Intel is like saying that Amazon has introduced a server chip that will take over everyone's datacenters from Intel.

The implication is that Amazon is everyone's datacenter.

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#19

Post by twblalock »

imtringued wrote: post #12

Why should intel be scared of AWS selling overpriced ARM servers? Scaleway offers 8 core servers with 8GB for almost half the monthly price of the cheapest ARM instance (with 1 core) amazon offers. Even the 16 core instance doesn't make sense. Packet.net will give you a whole 96 core server for the same price with 4x the memory. Capable ARM hardware has existed for years already and AWS is barely able to catch up. Ye…

> Yes, I know AWS' target group is small startups and big enterprises who couldn't care less about how much their servers costs them.

When you choose a cloud provider you aren't just renting servers, you are getting access to an ecosystem of supporting services like load balancing, DNS, monitoring systems, container orchestration, cloud-specific databases and event systems, datacenters across the word, 24/7 oncall support, etc.

Nobody offers as many features as AWS. Not Google, not Azure, and certainly not Scaleway. And when they offer as many features I bet they'll charge close to the same price.

Dismissing the valid reasons people have for choosing AWS in the way you did is completely incorrect.

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#20

Post by comboy »

muricula wrote: post #9
comboy wrote: post #4

This can be powerful. They don't have to build general CPU right away. Start with storage and by the time you have database boxes on ASICS designed to match your software you're already winning. I'm surprised there's still not much effort to make FPGAs more affordable and base everything on it. With this scale it seems like it should be a win on the long run over deploying new ASICs every few years.

Not storage, networking: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2018/0...

Indeed, with networking it seems to have already happened, if I remember correctly Google also uses software defined networking based on their own hardware (not sure if FPGAs are involved)
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