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Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

nytimes.com

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Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#151

Post by snaky »

dokalanyi wrote: post #111
PostOnce wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dozens of small companies (ranging from a couple of people to a couple dozen) rely on me to decide and direct their tech stacks; I always suggest something other than Amazon even where Amazon is suggested first by them; the vast majority defer to my judgement. I think I'm not only doing them a service by avoiding lock-in to AWS specific "stuff", but also our industry and society at large by maintaining software diver…

What alternatives to AWS could save a non trivial amount of money? Especially for RDS? I think we're getting to the point where servers cost quite a bit

https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/px61-nvme

Substract VAT from the price, add HDD for WAL, and setup PostgreSQL on a couple of them.

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#152

Post by pjc50 »

baybal2 wrote: post #116
maddyboo wrote: post #94

Just yesterday, I was trying to explain to my partner (who isn't a programmer) why I think open source software and hardware is so important. My argument is that without enough core components in the industry standard tech stack being open source, the more likely companies who develop solutions will restrict user freedom. For example, Apple has been able to own nearly their entire iDevice stack from manufacturing to…

> They have very little incentive to interoperate with external organizations via open standards because they own many of the pieces which need to be interoperable. Thus, they can force users and developers to use their tooling, the applications they approve of, dictate what code will run on their platform, and how easily you can inspect, modify, or repair their products. I myself is wondering why this is not yet the…

TSMC are ""just"" a factory, they're not the ones with enough market power to do that and it would really annoy their customers. It's more people like Apple we're talking about here.

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#153

Post by rbanffy »

dokalanyi wrote: post #111
PostOnce wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dozens of small companies (ranging from a couple of people to a couple dozen) rely on me to decide and direct their tech stacks; I always suggest something other than Amazon even where Amazon is suggested first by them; the vast majority defer to my judgement. I think I'm not only doing them a service by avoiding lock-in to AWS specific "stuff", but also our industry and society at large by maintaining software diver…

What alternatives to AWS could save a non trivial amount of money? Especially for RDS? I think we're getting to the point where servers cost quite a bit

The Google cloud solutions are very competitive in price with the AWS ones.

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#154

Post by rbanffy »

ryacko wrote: post #137
maddyboo wrote: post #94

Just yesterday, I was trying to explain to my partner (who isn't a programmer) why I think open source software and hardware is so important. My argument is that without enough core components in the industry standard tech stack being open source, the more likely companies who develop solutions will restrict user freedom. For example, Apple has been able to own nearly their entire iDevice stack from manufacturing to…

Performance competitive technology requires paying for its development. Electronics manufacturing is inherently heavy industry, nothing short of mandating FPGAs would tilt it any other way. The world we live in is built upon a series of choices, the most important of which is whether you take a higher paying job or building what you desire. There will always be a lag between the latest product, or in the case of Linu…

> nothing short of mandating FPGAs would tilt it any other way.

I can think of multiple alternatives that could be taken in isolation or combined.

- Regulating the market and splitting foundries from their IP developers (this may not even be necessary at this point)

- Funding development of a rich set of public-domain IP that could be used to build a common standard platform

- Direct all government purchases to be of such public-domain standards

- If necessary, fund capacity so that the foundry market remains competitive even in small runs.

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#155

Post by jononor »

Someone wrote: post #143
sanxiyn wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allegedly, Apple hates GPLv3.

Their lawyers likely strongly advised against bundling GPLv3 software with their OS because there is a non-zero risk that some judge, somewhere, some day, will claim that requires them to release the source of all their software under GPLv3. I think that, if GPLv3 ever gets sufficiently tested in courts all around the world (which is highly unlikely) that stance could change.

Why would GPLv3 be substantially different risk than GPLv2?

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#156

Post by rbanffy »

mcbain wrote: post #126
hermitdev wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel chips are RISC under the hood these days (for a long while - decade or more). They're CISC at the ASM layer before the instructions are decoded and dispatched by the microcode.

The idea that Intel is “RISC under the hood” is too simplistic. Instructions get decoded and some end up looking like RISC instructions, but there is so much macro- and micro-op fusion going on, as well as reordering, etc, that it is nothing like a RISC machine. (The whole argument is kind of pointless anyway.)

With all the optimizations going on, high performance RISC designs don't look like RISC designs anymore either. The ISA has very little to do with whatever the execution units actually see or execute.

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#157

Post by ori_b »

dokalanyi wrote: post #111
PostOnce wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dozens of small companies (ranging from a couple of people to a couple dozen) rely on me to decide and direct their tech stacks; I always suggest something other than Amazon even where Amazon is suggested first by them; the vast majority defer to my judgement. I think I'm not only doing them a service by avoiding lock-in to AWS specific "stuff", but also our industry and society at large by maintaining software diver…

What alternatives to AWS could save a non trivial amount of money? Especially for RDS? I think we're getting to the point where servers cost quite a bit

> Especially for RDS?

Run your own servers, instead of paying Amazon to do your system administration. At small sizes, Amazon is a cheap sysadmin. At scale, paying them as sysadmins is expensive.

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#158

Post by mijamo »

rbanffy wrote: post #153
dokalanyi wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What alternatives to AWS could save a non trivial amount of money? Especially for RDS? I think we're getting to the point where servers cost quite a bit

The Google cloud solutions are very competitive in price with the AWS ones.

The lock in is the same though.

We are having A LOT of troubles due to lock in with Google Cloud (particularly GAE and Datastore, but also Pub/Sub) and it is really not fun at all...

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#160

Post by rbanffy »

Kliment wrote: post #140
bogomipz wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>'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.

A node is a combination of manufacturing capabilities and design components that are manufacturable in that process. They're typically named after an arbitrary dimension of a silicon feature, for example 14nm or 10nm. Your higher level design options are dictated by what you can produce at that "node" (with those masking methods/transistor pitches/sizes/electrical and thermal properties).

Would a pixel be a good analogy? It's the smallest thing you can make on your chip and that defines all the rest of your design.
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