Comments on: Microsoft Azure Adds Ampere Altra Arm CPUs

By: Will

Will — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 11:55:58 +0000

Jim – remember that building your own custom server chip costs several hundred million. New processes are becoming ever more expensive. It only makes sense if you have the money and volume – only the largest hyperscalers will roll their own. Do you expect companies like CloudFlare to design their own CPU? There is still a significant market for server chips.

By: Jim Z

Jim Z — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 15:25:48 +0000

You have to wonder what the endgame is for Ampere chasing the hyperscalers if MS and the others are just going to be building their own custom chips in 5 years with in-house design teams.

By: Carl

Carl — Tue, 05 Apr 2022 17:30:41 +0000

“ARMing the locals”:

For semi-retired ex Linux Sys Admin / Data Center Tech with ~50 aging Xeon chips affixed into various sheet metal skins as cannon fodder for my $HOMElab, saying I hope to see more ARMish warriors in the data center space might seem odd.

Yeah it may seem petty, but as a former (late 70’s, all thru the 80’s) assembler / C programmer, I rarely met something as ugly as the x86 ISA. I always felt sorry for X86 compiler writers.

At some point in the near future, I will be ARMing/”Apple Si-ing” my remote teaching wife’s IT infrastructure (2011, 2015 Intel-based MacBooks, original M1 based MacBook supplied by her school) with a mid-level Mac Studio (she does a lot of video work, has 34K YouTube followers).

At least I live in the US, so “ARMing the locals” doesn’t have the same intense meaning as in a certain Eastern European country.