That is an interesting assertion. While it is true that Intel has great fabrication chops, their biggest competitor in that space, Samsung, makes ARM chips. There is an outside possibility that AMD gets into the ARM space, gets some traction and Samsung brings their manufacturing muscle to bear and captures the 'high' end.
It is interesting to understand the 'Intel monopoly' [1] and how it came to be. I worked at Intel in the mid-80's and basically IBM 'created' a personal computer market by bringing their reputation to the market, Microsoft provided the software, and rigid compatibility was demanded by the market to maximize software re-use (software and training has always been the biggest 'cost' of switching instruction set architectures). Early on Intel was cross licensing that 8086 architecture with partners to get market share against the 68000 architecture but later they clawed back a lot of the licenses.
The requirement that is be 'windows compatible' created a giant moat around the x86 instruction set architecture. That moat wasn't officially breached until the early 2000's when AMD announced their Sledgehammer (aka Opeteron) AMD64 architecture. Here was an architecture that was not Windows compatible (windows didn't really support 64 bit chips until Windows 7) and yet AMD managed some big design wins in servers because of Linux and OEMs who could adapt quickly to the new extensions. Intel finally caved and shipped the AMD extensions in their own chips, even though they knew it was probably the end of the Itanium as a viable product.
Now AMD announces an ARM server chip, they have some expectation that it will gain some market share because they did it with Opteron. They are even calling it an Opteron perhaps as a nod to that history. They will be able to innovate in the peripheral chips because all off the 'bets' are off in terms of what has to be in the 'south bridge'. They can do more creative memory interconnects because they aren't constrained by folks expecting the Intel stuff.
And here is the interesting thing, there are easily 10x the ARM licensees than the x86 licensees. That pretty much guarantees a lot of competition and price pressure.
The strategic questions are these:
Can AMD establish a 'server' standard? Something like the PC spec but for ARM chips, a minimum set of things that will always be there and a way to find out what optional things are there. This enables shipping a generic kernel that boots on everything and customizes itself to the environment.
Can AMD survive the ingress of a number of other players earlier in the life cycle rather than later. If they are getting traction expect competitive chips in 12 months rather than 24 or 36 months.
What is Intel's "Thermonuclear war" strategy and would they be willing to pull that trigger. Unlike Apple's Android antagonists, AMD is not well positioned to survive a huge litigation punch.
We'll see of course, the game is afoot as Sherlock Holmes would say. I'm hopeful that we crack this thing open and start innovating again.
Comments
That is an interesting assertion. While it is true that Intel has great fabrication chops, their biggest competitor in that space, Samsung, makes ARM chips. There is an outside possibility that AMD gets into the ARM space, gets some traction and Samsung brings their manufacturing muscle to bear and captures the 'high' end.
It is interesting to understand the 'Intel monopoly' [1] and how it came to be. I worked at Intel in the mid-80's and basically IBM 'created' a personal computer market by bringing their reputation to the market, Microsoft provided the software, and rigid compatibility was demanded by the market to maximize software re-use (software and training has always been the biggest 'cost' of switching instruction set architectures). Early on Intel was cross licensing that 8086 architecture with partners to get market share against the 68000 architecture but later they clawed back a lot of the licenses.
The requirement that is be 'windows compatible' created a giant moat around the x86 instruction set architecture. That moat wasn't officially breached until the early 2000's when AMD announced their Sledgehammer (aka Opeteron) AMD64 architecture. Here was an architecture that was not Windows compatible (windows didn't really support 64 bit chips until Windows 7) and yet AMD managed some big design wins in servers because of Linux and OEMs who could adapt quickly to the new extensions. Intel finally caved and shipped the AMD extensions in their own chips, even though they knew it was probably the end of the Itanium as a viable product.
Now AMD announces an ARM server chip, they have some expectation that it will gain some market share because they did it with Opteron. They are even calling it an Opteron perhaps as a nod to that history. They will be able to innovate in the peripheral chips because all off the 'bets' are off in terms of what has to be in the 'south bridge'. They can do more creative memory interconnects because they aren't constrained by folks expecting the Intel stuff.
And here is the interesting thing, there are easily 10x the ARM licensees than the x86 licensees. That pretty much guarantees a lot of competition and price pressure.
The strategic questions are these:
Can AMD establish a 'server' standard? Something like the PC spec but for ARM chips, a minimum set of things that will always be there and a way to find out what optional things are there. This enables shipping a generic kernel that boots on everything and customizes itself to the environment.
Can AMD survive the ingress of a number of other players earlier in the life cycle rather than later. If they are getting traction expect competitive chips in 12 months rather than 24 or 36 months.
What is Intel's "Thermonuclear war" strategy and would they be willing to pull that trigger. Unlike Apple's Android antagonists, AMD is not well positioned to survive a huge litigation punch.
We'll see of course, the game is afoot as Sherlock Holmes would say. I'm hopeful that we crack this thing open and start innovating again.