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Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

nytimes.com

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Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#81

Post by [deleted] »

btian wrote: post #30
40acres wrote: post #8

Mike Tyson said: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." When it comes to semiconductors I'd say: "Everyone wants to make their own chips until they have to do so at scale". (Doesn't roll of the tounge as well!) There is definitely a threat from Apple, Amazon, Google and especially China that will put Intel's market share in target distance, but making chips at scale is incredibly difficult. It's ha…

But TSMC has demonstrated many times that they can make chips at scale. I don't see why they would fail this time.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#82

Post by ethbro »

bstx wrote: post #65
Nokinside wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel is microarchitecture + fab corporation. They do it all. 1. TSMC (also GlobalFoundries) is fab only. They design the node for the process and way to fabricate it. 2. Then ARM joins with TSMC to develop the high performance microarchitecture for their processor design for TSMC's process. 3. Then ARM licenses the microarchitecture designed for the new processes to Amazon, Apple, Qualcomm who develop their own vari…

ARM architectural licensees develop their own microarchitectures that implement the ARM ISA spec, they do not license any particular microarchitecture from ARM (e.g. Cortex-A? IP cores). That includes Apple, Samsung, Nvidia and others.

But ARM actually has relatively few architectural licensees (~10 as of 2015).

In reality, most of their licenses are processor (core+interfaces) or POP (pre-optimized processor designs).

https://www.anandtech.com/show/7112/the-arm-diaries-part-1-h...

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#83

Post by [deleted] »

stcredzero wrote: post #57
Despegar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I'd say it's certainly a big risk to Intel. For one, a lot of Intel customers are going in-house with chip design. Apple on its own might not hurt much, but add a few more like Amazon or Google, and things can really unravel. If you're an integrated chip designer and you lose volume, you're in for a lot of pain. The thing that defines Amazon in recent years is their desire to make everything a third party servic…

The thing that defines Amazon in recent years is their desire to make everything a third party service (AWS, Fulfillment, etc) and they may in fact do that for their own chips. AWS was Amazon monetizing its own infrastructure. Maybe they're thinking of monetizing AWS's infrastructure? Instead of being in the gold rush, sell the pickaxes and backpacks in a general store. Then, when people realize there's a lot of mone…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#84

Post by bogomipz »

Nokinside wrote: post #41
40acres wrote: post #8

Mike Tyson said: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." When it comes to semiconductors I'd say: "Everyone wants to make their own chips until they have to do so at scale". (Doesn't roll of the tounge as well!) There is definitely a threat from Apple, Amazon, Google and especially China that will put Intel's market share in target distance, but making chips at scale is incredibly difficult. It's ha…

Intel is microarchitecture + fab corporation. They do it all. 1. TSMC (also GlobalFoundries) is fab only. They design the node for the process and way to fabricate it. 2. Then ARM joins with TSMC to develop the high performance microarchitecture for their processor design for TSMC's process. 3. Then ARM licenses the microarchitecture designed for the new processes to Amazon, Apple, Qualcomm who develop their own vari…

>'They design the node for the process and way to fabricate it."

What is a "node" in this context? I'm not familiar enough with FAB terminology.

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#85

Post by erikpukinskis »

Apologies in advance for the layperson question:

It's my understanding that a lot of CPU gains come from caching. That suggests to me that there is potential performance to be gained by caching across a larger number of machines.

Is that something Amazon could do here? Somehow connect all their machines and cache in a huge space?

Maybe individual physical machines would be more like a front end for a cache space, and when I get an Amazon instance, it's actually a "virtual" CPU that pieces together instructions that are mostly already cached in various places throughout the network?

Is that even theoretically possible, or is it total fantasy?

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#86

Post by rblatz »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #85

Apologies in advance for the layperson question: It's my understanding that a lot of CPU gains come from caching. That suggests to me that there is potential performance to be gained by caching across a larger number of machines. Is that something Amazon could do here? Somehow connect all their machines and cache in a huge space? Maybe individual physical machines would be more like a front end for a cache space, and…

Cache is insanely fast, orders of magnitude faster than ram, and basically instant compared to going to disk or another machine on the network. I would find it unlikely that they could overcome the added network latency introduced in such a system.

Edit: check this out for more info https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/interactive_l...

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#87

Post by bloomer »

dnautics wrote: post #43
Nokinside wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel is microarchitecture + fab corporation. They do it all. 1. TSMC (also GlobalFoundries) is fab only. They design the node for the process and way to fabricate it. 2. Then ARM joins with TSMC to develop the high performance microarchitecture for their processor design for TSMC's process. 3. Then ARM licenses the microarchitecture designed for the new processes to Amazon, Apple, Qualcomm who develop their own vari…

My personal suspicion is that the integrated approach can eventually be a liability. If you have an integrated process/design house, process can count on design to work around its shortcomings and failures. By contrast, if you are process only, and multiple firms make designs for the process, you have to make your process robust, which means that your process staff is ready and has good practices down when it's time…

It turns out that the effect is typically exactly the opposite. Design and process are already coupled where a given process will have design rules that must be adhered to to achieve a successfully manufacturable design. Intel only has to support their own designs so can have very strict design rules. Fabs like TSMC have to be more lenient in what they allow from their customers so have looser design rules that result in a less optimized process to achieve the same yield.

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#88

Post by Merad »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #85

Apologies in advance for the layperson question: It's my understanding that a lot of CPU gains come from caching. That suggests to me that there is potential performance to be gained by caching across a larger number of machines. Is that something Amazon could do here? Somehow connect all their machines and cache in a huge space? Maybe individual physical machines would be more like a front end for a cache space, and…

I'm going by memory here, but IIRC the fastest level of CPU cache (L1) can be accessed in about 2 nanoseconds. Even the slowest level (L3) operates on the order of a few hundred nanoseconds. RAM is slow by comparison, and network latency is so much slower it's basically glacial.

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#89

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

40acres wrote: post #8

Mike Tyson said: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." When it comes to semiconductors I'd say: "Everyone wants to make their own chips until they have to do so at scale". (Doesn't roll of the tounge as well!) There is definitely a threat from Apple, Amazon, Google and especially China that will put Intel's market share in target distance, but making chips at scale is incredibly difficult. It's ha…

Delivering almost any package to my house in two days at scale seems a lot harder than making chips at scale and they did that already.
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