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Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

nytimes.com

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Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#341

Post by bluedonuts »

zaarn wrote: post #191
greyskull wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started my professional career in AWS so I have zero experience in non-cloud businesses (i.e the vast majority of software jobs), but I always wonder about the cost argument people make against AWS (or any major cloud provider). It's very easy to overspend, sure. But say we're considering how well you execute in terms of picking the right tools for your case and utilizing the right cost saving measures. In the opti…

AWS has a few pain points in the cost department; especially Traffic is insanely expensive compared to other providers. Hetzner costs about 1$ per TB of Traffic. EC2 costs 88$ for that amount of outgoing data, Cloudfront 80$, etc. That's not even accounting that Hetzner doesn't bill incoming and internal traffic, which AWS does. There is no way that the little work I need to put up a network on a Hetzner host is wort…

That's not even accounting that Hetzner doesn't bill incoming and internal traffic, which AWS does.

This is incorrect. AWS does not charge for incoming traffic nor does it charge for internal traffic within the same zone.

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#342

Post by zaarn »

bluedonuts wrote: post #341
zaarn wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS has a few pain points in the cost department; especially Traffic is insanely expensive compared to other providers. Hetzner costs about 1$ per TB of Traffic. EC2 costs 88$ for that amount of outgoing data, Cloudfront 80$, etc. That's not even accounting that Hetzner doesn't bill incoming and internal traffic, which AWS does. There is no way that the little work I need to put up a network on a Hetzner host is wort…

That's not even accounting that Hetzner doesn't bill incoming and internal traffic, which AWS does. This is incorrect. AWS does not charge for incoming traffic nor does it charge for internal traffic within the same zone.

In an old project I had 2.8TB of transfer per month between DCs (ie zones in AWS). The hoster provided that service for free, AWS bills this for 20$.

Incoming traffic is charged on a few AWS applications, not EC2, but some do.

That doesn't really change the point though; AWS Networking is magnitudes more expensive than competitors and they bill for things that are accepted as part of the service in other places.

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#343

Post by zaarn »

aarbor989 wrote: post #300
zaarn wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS has a few pain points in the cost department; especially Traffic is insanely expensive compared to other providers. Hetzner costs about 1$ per TB of Traffic. EC2 costs 88$ for that amount of outgoing data, Cloudfront 80$, etc. That's not even accounting that Hetzner doesn't bill incoming and internal traffic, which AWS does. There is no way that the little work I need to put up a network on a Hetzner host is wort…

Not disagreeing with your points, but internal traffic is free between the same AZ on AWS

Ye but I wouldn't know any projects that on AWS would need internal traffic that wouldn't also need instances over AZs/regions.

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#344

Post by fareesh »

wmf wrote: post #193
fareesh wrote: post #177

How does competition work with regard to trade secrets like chip design etc? If I hire the top dogs at a chip maker and they design a similar chip for my company from memory, how is this prevented from happening?

There are patents and non-competes in some states but basically nothing prevents it. Silicon Valley exists because of the cycle of engineers leaving established companies to start startups (or now, leaving established companies to go to companies that are branching out into every area possible).

Would patenting the chip design also expose the very secret that is being guarded? So someone in China could just read the patent and make the same thing, is that right?

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#345

Post by rbanffy »

jononor wrote: post #197
rbanffy wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPLv3 has anti-TiVoization and patent protection built in.

Yes, but that doesn't make it more likely that anyone would have to open source their apps or OS?

No, but those fears weren't rational to begin with.

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#346

Post by rhinoceraptor »

Koshkin wrote: post #302
pjmlp wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like it doesn't have a native Win32 environment, rather different personalities built on top of a common layer. UNIX environment on Windows is just like how IBM and Unisys mainframes deal with it.

Indeed. (Except that "WSL" should be read as "Windows Substitute for Linux.")

It's more like a "Windows Subsystem for Linux Applications"

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#347

Post by danmaz74 »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #332
danmaz74 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most cases, you can just provision the OS from a web interface. If you get a bigger machine where you need to configure the disks yourself, there is a pretty easy to use command line tool they built which does most of the work. The only part which I had to learn the hard way is configuring iptables to secure my servers against external attacks. Luckily, recent versions of docker make it easy to keep iptables confi…

Is there a command line tool to automate installing the OS? Well what I would really like is to be able to deploy something like an "AMI" on these dedicated servers. Any ideas for how to get something close?

Yes, there is one: https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Installimage/en

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#348

Post by bogomipz »

Symmetry wrote: post #335
bogomipz wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the thorough detailed reply, I really appreciate it. I failed to grasp one thing you mentioned which is: >"is actually an issue and that's part of why you don't see BIG.little approaches in x86 land and why atom did so poorly in the phone market." Is BIG an acronym here? I had trouble understanding that sentence. Cheers.

I was reproducing an ARM marketing term incorrectly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_big.LITTLE Basically, the idea is that you have a number of small, low power cores together with a few larger, faster, but less efficient cores. Intel hasn't made anything doing that. Intel also tried to get x86 chips into phones but it didn't work out for them.

Thanks, this is actually a good read and clever bit of marketing. Cheers.

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#349

Post by ATsch »

metildaa wrote: post #203
ATsch wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how they could shut down GloFo, considering they don't own it. Besides, GloFo is still doing decently even if they've dropped 7nm... high-end isn't the whole chip market. And AMD is still using GloFo for non-7nm designs.

AMD's strategy of using multiple Zen 2 dies (7nm) tied together by a 14nm I/O die (since I/O doesn't scale down quite as well) is a really interesting strategy to improve yields using smaller dies (rather than making huge, low yield chips like the competition) & reduce mask/production cost. One 7nm Zen 2 mask can be used to produce CPU cores for a multitude of SKUs, optimizing for different markets using (cheaply cus…

I think you replied to the wrong comment, but this also allows AMD to manufacture the IO die with glofo, which saves cost not only because 14nm capacity is much higher, but also since AMD's agreement with glofo requires them to pay a fee for every wafer they manufacture with another fab.

Re: Amazon’s Chips Threaten Intel

#350

Post by jammygit »

3pt14159 wrote: post #291
nova22033 wrote: post #224

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. so what do you recommend instead of Amazon?

I recommend DigitalOcean. Enough of the stuff you need, without the annoyances that come with dealing with AWS. That said, when meltdown / spectre was announced AWS was already patched. The rest of us on hipster VPS providers had to cross our fingers. One of the main things I dislike about per-minute billing for servers is that it's too easy for bad actors to cycle through if there is some sort of side channel attack…

The DO privacy policies and terms of service have some confusing clauses or missing promises. Other than that, DO is really nice to use
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