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Coming Soon: AWS Graviton2 Processor for AWS

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Re: Coming Soon: AWS Graviton2 Processor for AWS

#11

Post by monocasa »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #2

This is an interesting twist in the processor wars, here is the #1 cloud company that is turning its profits in providing cloud services in to processor R&D to build new CPUs. This is a much more important announcement than the press is giving it credit for. I have argued in the past the Intel "lost" the smartphone CPU war because Apple decided not to wait for them to come up with some high margin processor compromis…

> I have argued in the past the Intel "lost" the smartphone CPU war because Apple decided not to wait for them to come up with some high margin processor compromise and instead to re-invest profits into the development of bespoke processors that gave their products an edge over their rivals. Others like Samsung followed suit with own processors for Android.

Kind of a weird way to phrase it given that iPhone 1 through 3GS ran on Samsung SoCs. It wasn't until the iPhone 4 that Apple used their own SoCs. Not sure how Samsung could be following suit in that case.

Edit: also, Apple was never going to wait around for Intel. Apple is actually one of the early investors in ARM, back in the early ninties, had used ARM.in the whole iPod line (as well as the ill fated Newton), and iPhones lined up with ARMs in mobile TDPs starting to have full MMUs.

Re: Coming Soon: AWS Graviton2 Processor for AWS

#12

Post by walrus01 »

Whatever happened with the Qualcomm Centriq ARM based server CPU? It never became available at any reasonable price in small quantities for software development/test/prototyping as something you could actually buy an ATX motherboard + CPU together and install (redhat, centos, debian, freebsd, whatever) on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm_Centriq

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/qualcomm-server-chip-exit-...

https://www.networkworld.com/article/3327214/qualcomm-makes-...

Re: Coming Soon: AWS Graviton2 Processor for AWS

#13

Post by PHGamer »

monocasa wrote: post #11
ChuckMcM wrote: post #2

This is an interesting twist in the processor wars, here is the #1 cloud company that is turning its profits in providing cloud services in to processor R&D to build new CPUs. This is a much more important announcement than the press is giving it credit for. I have argued in the past the Intel "lost" the smartphone CPU war because Apple decided not to wait for them to come up with some high margin processor compromis…

> I have argued in the past the Intel "lost" the smartphone CPU war because Apple decided not to wait for them to come up with some high margin processor compromise and instead to re-invest profits into the development of bespoke processors that gave their products an edge over their rivals. Others like Samsung followed suit with own processors for Android. Kind of a weird way to phrase it given that iPhone 1 through…

Samsung has Exynos however, due to Qualcomm and patents you don't ever see their phones equipped with it here in America.

Re: Coming Soon: AWS Graviton2 Processor for AWS

#14

Post by nordsieck »

devhwrng wrote: post #5

The pricing level for the ARM instances should be interesting. If Amazon prices them well below their Intel and AMD instance types, they could really drive adoption and lock-in.

> If Amazon prices them well below their Intel and AMD instance types, they could really drive adoption and lock-in.

Adoption? Sure.

Lock-in? Umm...

Most servers run Linux, and most software on Linux is distributed as source. The same reason that people can easily move to ARM - they can just recompile/download software for the correct architecture and everything mostly works - is the same reason they can leave easily.

All the other AWS proprietary APIs: sure. It'd take a stupendous amount of work for Netflix to migrate away from AWS. But running on ARM isn't really part of that.

Re: Coming Soon: AWS Graviton2 Processor for AWS

#16

Post by [deleted] »

dman wrote: post #10

If Intel makes it out of the current soup with its dominance intact it will make for an interesting case study. Think they are facing the perfect storm on multiple fronts. a. The 10nm process fiasco b. Missing the chiplet concept c. ISA fragmentation - AVX512 which was supposed to be the next big thing was server CPU side only till recently and downclocks the entire chip when used making it extremely hard to reason a…

[deleted]

Re: Coming Soon: AWS Graviton2 Processor for AWS

#17

Post by moonbug »

vorpalhex wrote: post #3
ChuckMcM wrote: post #2

This is an interesting twist in the processor wars, here is the #1 cloud company that is turning its profits in providing cloud services in to processor R&D to build new CPUs. This is a much more important announcement than the press is giving it credit for. I have argued in the past the Intel "lost" the smartphone CPU war because Apple decided not to wait for them to come up with some high margin processor compromis…

This is entirely Intel's fault for trying to get fat by choking out the market with a gazillion UPCs and a ton of markup. They exhausted their own food supply.

they also made bank, like good monopolists ought

Re: Coming Soon: AWS Graviton2 Processor for AWS

#19

Post by rb808 »

Its interesting but I wouldn't say Graviton2 is likely to succeed.

Every ARM based PC I've seen has been disappointingly slow, which I dont really understand because phones usually are amazingly quick.

DEC Alpha, Sun Sparc, MIPS, PowerPC couldn't keep up with Intel in the recent past either.

Intel CPUs aren't cheap, but they're a fraction of the cost of a server.

All adds up to interesting innovation but not necessarily the future.

Re: Coming Soon: AWS Graviton2 Processor for AWS

#20

Post by monocasa »

PHGamer wrote: post #13
monocasa wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have argued in the past the Intel "lost" the smartphone CPU war because Apple decided not to wait for them to come up with some high margin processor compromise and instead to re-invest profits into the development of bespoke processors that gave their products an edge over their rivals. Others like Samsung followed suit with own processors for Android. Kind of a weird way to phrase it given that iPhone 1 through…

Samsung has Exynos however, due to Qualcomm and patents you don't ever see their phones equipped with it here in America.

I mean, now you don't. But earlier cellphones hadn't integrated the baseband yet so it was a moot point either way.

Still not seeing how Samsung followed Apple in SoC design when Apple started by using Samsung SoCs.

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