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Alibaba Open Source XuanTie RISC-V Cores, Introduces In-House Armv9 Server Chip

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Re: Alibaba Open Source XuanTie RISC-V Cores, Introduces In-House Armv9 Server Chip

#61

Post by vishnugupta »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #53
easygenes wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs are still a relatively small (but profitable) chunk of the computing world. The ground Intel has lost in desktop and mobile is more than made up for by their utter dominance in server. Intel also has a lot of plays that should bear fruit in holding or retaking ground on consumer compute in the next few years: 1) Arc GPUs. Looks like they will be seriously disruptive. 2) Hedging their process node bets by using T…

Did you forget about Amazon and Google Arm servers? It's not just Apple, everyone is moving away from x86.

Indeed.

AWS launched their own ARM based processor, Graviton a while ago.

Now they have begun nudging them to serverless fleet by making them available at a lower price point.

Not too different from their parent, Amazon, pushing their own branded products, cutting out the middleman.

Re: Alibaba Open Source XuanTie RISC-V Cores, Introduces In-House Armv9 Server Chip

#62

Post by swalsh »

maxpert wrote: post #5

Intel is gonna be in deep trouble in couple of years. They are the PowerPC of modern era. IDK what held them back from reimagining the architecture for less power hungry processors and tooling. With Mac mainstream switching to ARM and Microsoft doing something similar, I think within next 5 - 10 years ARM is gonna take over Intel architecture in general.

I'd counter with the opposite sentiment. If Intel's foundry play pays off, they will still be big and important. All these companies designing chips need a place to manufacture them. While Intel's own chips might be decreasing in marketshare, they still have an opportunity to get a tiny sliver from of everyone's pie... and that pie keeps getting bigger.

Re: Alibaba Open Source XuanTie RISC-V Cores, Introduces In-House Armv9 Server Chip

#63

Post by girvo »

easygenes wrote: post #21
maxpert wrote: post #5

Intel is gonna be in deep trouble in couple of years. They are the PowerPC of modern era. IDK what held them back from reimagining the architecture for less power hungry processors and tooling. With Mac mainstream switching to ARM and Microsoft doing something similar, I think within next 5 - 10 years ARM is gonna take over Intel architecture in general.

Macs are still a relatively small (but profitable) chunk of the computing world. The ground Intel has lost in desktop and mobile is more than made up for by their utter dominance in server. Intel also has a lot of plays that should bear fruit in holding or retaking ground on consumer compute in the next few years: 1) Arc GPUs. Looks like they will be seriously disruptive. 2) Hedging their process node bets by using T…

> The only magic in the wins AMD and Apple have had the last few years have been in them being effectively a manufacturing process node ahead of Intel.

While I mostly agree with that, the fact that Intel are also moving to a chiplet-style architecture that AMD adopted beforehand means I think there is at least _some_ other bits AMD was ahead of Intel on aside from purely the process node.

I'm nowhere near as knowledgeable about this stuff as others, but from my understanding from Dr Ian Cutress' articles and YouTube channel, Intel is somewhat following AMD in this area. I could be misunderstanding, of course.

Re: Alibaba Open Source XuanTie RISC-V Cores, Introduces In-House Armv9 Server Chip

#64

Post by FreezingKeeper »

metagame wrote: post #13
maxpert wrote: post #5

Intel is gonna be in deep trouble in couple of years. They are the PowerPC of modern era. IDK what held them back from reimagining the architecture for less power hungry processors and tooling. With Mac mainstream switching to ARM and Microsoft doing something similar, I think within next 5 - 10 years ARM is gonna take over Intel architecture in general.

They've tried a lot of "reimagining." It never works. No one wants Intel on mobile, despite Intel's mobile chips being absolutely great when they were actually releasing them, and no one wants a genuinely high-performance chip if it means they have to make alterations to how their software is written. I have a lot of criticisms of Intel, but held back from reimagining isn't quite a great one.

And to think they had it in their hands in 1997 with StrongARM

Re: Alibaba Open Source XuanTie RISC-V Cores, Introduces In-House Armv9 Server Chip

#65

Post by [deleted] »

girvo wrote: post #63
easygenes wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs are still a relatively small (but profitable) chunk of the computing world. The ground Intel has lost in desktop and mobile is more than made up for by their utter dominance in server. Intel also has a lot of plays that should bear fruit in holding or retaking ground on consumer compute in the next few years: 1) Arc GPUs. Looks like they will be seriously disruptive. 2) Hedging their process node bets by using T…

> The only magic in the wins AMD and Apple have had the last few years have been in them being effectively a manufacturing process node ahead of Intel. While I mostly agree with that, the fact that Intel are also moving to a chiplet-style architecture that AMD adopted beforehand means I think there is at least _some_ other bits AMD was ahead of Intel on aside from purely the process node. I'm nowhere near as knowledg…

[deleted]

Re: Alibaba Open Source XuanTie RISC-V Cores, Introduces In-House Armv9 Server Chip

#66

Post by easygenes »

girvo wrote: post #63
easygenes wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs are still a relatively small (but profitable) chunk of the computing world. The ground Intel has lost in desktop and mobile is more than made up for by their utter dominance in server. Intel also has a lot of plays that should bear fruit in holding or retaking ground on consumer compute in the next few years: 1) Arc GPUs. Looks like they will be seriously disruptive. 2) Hedging their process node bets by using T…

> The only magic in the wins AMD and Apple have had the last few years have been in them being effectively a manufacturing process node ahead of Intel. While I mostly agree with that, the fact that Intel are also moving to a chiplet-style architecture that AMD adopted beforehand means I think there is at least _some_ other bits AMD was ahead of Intel on aside from purely the process node. I'm nowhere near as knowledg…

No, that's pretty accurate. Though it could be argued that it was only the move to the smaller process node that necessitated a chiplet architecture (as a means of spreading the thermal density, and to improve yield in a more hostile process).

Also, Intel's tiling tech is more versatile than chiplets. Though AMD is adopting TSMC's SoIC, which should be comparable. https://www.hardwaretimes.com/intel-believes-its-tiles-are-a...

Re: Alibaba Open Source XuanTie RISC-V Cores, Introduces In-House Armv9 Server Chip

#67

Post by adrian_b »

leeoniya wrote: post #23

> In-House Armv9? https://semianalysis.com/the-semiconductor-heist-of-the-cent... (discussed recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28329731 )

Because ARMv9-A is very new, publicly announced only this year, it does not seem likely that Alibaba could have licensed it from the rogue former ARM subsidiary, but more likely from the parent company.

IIRC, the problems with ARM China started long before the launch of ARMv9-A. Alibaba has certainly received technical information some time before the public announcement, but it is unlikely that any IP would have been transferred to ARM China before that.

Re: Alibaba Open Source XuanTie RISC-V Cores, Introduces In-House Armv9 Server Chip

#68

Post by foota »

loeg wrote: post #45
PeterisP wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO server marketshare is much more fickle than the consumer one. For consumers, compatibility is a big issue and hard to switch unless a myriad of things work properly. For servers, if just a single commonly used system (e.g. mariadb or wordpress) works and you can do it 10% cheaper, companies can replace large quantities of hardware to a completely different architecture.

Server marketshare has been fairly sticky -- despite AMD offering low-risk, same ISA migration, and attractive pricing, the server market was relatively slow to adopt Zen.

I think this is largely just lag between orders for new xen parts and the capacity coming online. I would expect to see a lot of xen processors in fleets being built today.

Re: Alibaba Open Source XuanTie RISC-V Cores, Introduces In-House Armv9 Server Chip

#69

Post by regularfry »

a-dub wrote: post #47
fulafel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel had the best high performance ARM processors for a long time (StrongARM, acquired from DEC). Timing is hard.

how much of arm's renaissance comes from the iphone and qualcomm's socs? i don't recall hearing about arm in other places really... maybe the occasional home router or cable set top box...

Low-end ARM chips are everywhere as generic microcontrollers in things you probably only barely think about as having electronic components at all. The next vacuum cleaner I buy will probably have an ARM in it.

Re: Alibaba Open Source XuanTie RISC-V Cores, Introduces In-House Armv9 Server Chip

#70

Post by micv »

swalsh wrote: post #62
maxpert wrote: post #5

Intel is gonna be in deep trouble in couple of years. They are the PowerPC of modern era. IDK what held them back from reimagining the architecture for less power hungry processors and tooling. With Mac mainstream switching to ARM and Microsoft doing something similar, I think within next 5 - 10 years ARM is gonna take over Intel architecture in general.

I'd counter with the opposite sentiment. If Intel's foundry play pays off, they will still be big and important. All these companies designing chips need a place to manufacture them. While Intel's own chips might be decreasing in marketshare, they still have an opportunity to get a tiny sliver from of everyone's pie... and that pie keeps getting bigger.

Contract manufacturing won't have anywhere near as fat a margin as their CPU lineup has had the last decade though. That'd be a hard thing to sell to the shareholders.
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