Microsoft Corp. is working on in-house processor designs for use in server computers that run the company’s cloud services, adding to an industrywide effort to reduce reliance on Intel Corp.’s chip technology.
The world’s largest software maker is using Arm Ltd. designs to produce a processor that will be used in its data centers, according to people familiar with the plans. It’s also exploring using another chip that would power some of its Surface line of personal computers.
Of course they are. At this point, any major consumer platform company not working on their own ARM chips is being irresponsible.
I am reminded of Ricardo Montalbans joke about the five stages of Hollywood which might be repurposed to the five stages of SIlicon Valley.
1. Who is Intel?
2. Get me an Intel CPU.
3. Get me a Intel CPU clone.
4. Get me a replacement for an Intel CPU.
5. Who is Intel?
Who is Ricardo Montalbans?
Let’s put him in a movie!
Custom ARM on a blade makes perfect sense, everybody who has any volume requirement should be doing it.
cpcf,
You are right. ARM servers make a lot of sense for some time now owing to energy efficiency and I for want would like to add production grade ARM servers to my servers… However as sukru mentioned in a different post, I really wish these were more readily available as commodity products. A lot of would-be ARM customers are not realistically able to entertain custom systems, as interesting as that could be.
So ARM is making way to desktops now (Apple Mini). It was already tried (with little success) on laptops, but that is getting better too. For high performance computing (which ironically needs lots of slow but efficient cores) ARM is now running on super computers.
Two areas remain:
– Actual servers. Still Intel and Epyc are kings. Especially when you needs TBs of RAM and lots of PCIe devices
– Gaming. Yes Shield is essentially a repurposed nVidia Shield, and yes Sony dabbled in portable ARM machines too, but main gaming consoles are still AMD machines with very specific optimizations.
Nintendo has sold 380 million ARM-based consoles. It’s nearly twice as many as AMD-based consoles
I’d say ARM is doing quite fine when it comes to gaming.
Nintendo has sold 380 million swtiches. Are you sure? That figure sounds really high.
Nintendo themselves, via Nintendo.co.jp claim far far far less:
Total Unit Sales
Nintendo Switch
Hardware:68.30million units
Software:456.49million units
In fact, there are only a few Nintendo devices that have sold lower numbers than the Switch.
No, Not 380 million Switches.
380 Million GameBoy Advances, Nintendo DSes, Nintendo 3DSes, and Nintendo Switches.
All of them ARM-based.
Ha! Totally forgot about those,
Plus all the smartphones/tablets that a lot of people play games and are all ARM.
Plus the very capable Oculus quest 2 VR
I have a WOA snapdragon notebook, and for the most part I like it, did have a battery related problem… but don’t think that has anything to do with it being an ARM based system. I also had many other ARM systems, but the reason ARM is not taking over everything has been from lacking a standardized boot loader. My rule is simple, No UEFI…. I will not buy. If it has UEFI, I will.
Thom Holwerda,
Why? Sure they should be supporting ARM, but why does it have to be “their own ARM chips”? I strongly prefer for hardware and software vendors to remain independent in order to minimize the corrupt influences one has on the other. If the major consumer platform companies did end up dominating the commodity hardware markets with their own ARM chips, then that could really spell disaster for open computing by putting gategeeper powers for commodity ARM computers in the hands of our largest companies. And I’m afraid that taking control away from owners is in character for both microsoft and apple.
The other issue is it’s all a pseudo war while Nivida snatches ARM away from the EU. The US will have ownership of both x86 and ARM. I’m not happy with this at all.
Aaaaannnnd… RISC-V
NVIDIA’s adquisition still has to go through most regulatory processes. I wouldn’t say it’s a done deal yet.
I have no idea about the US side of the fence but have less than zero confidence in the UK government. I don’t know what the EU position is.
I don’t know either, but I could see China not approving it.
There are times when I wish life came with a rewind button.
I also strongly prefer for hardware and software vendors to remain independent. That is not how the embedded world works, and it’s not how ARM works.
What we’re seeing is people cheering as they’re slowly being forced towards inescapable/vendor locked prisons.
This is why it is so critical to ensure we only buy ARM systems with a functional UEFI boot loader, this will ensure we have the ability to escape from the sort of hardware lock in we experience on ARM mobile SOCs. No UEFI on your arm board, I refuse to buy it.
I second the need for a like button.
> At this point, any major consumer platform company not working on their own ARM chips is being irresponsible.
Nope, Unless you have Apple’s ambition and hundred million device quantities you do not want to waste your time and resources with a modern complex, superscalar, out of modern CPU design. You want to partner with companies to create the best chip out there. That is the problem in the ARM ecosystem, instead of outstanding chips, there are thousand of mediocre, “we did it ourselves but this low performance is all we got” chips. Microsoft should partner with other leading edge ARM designers and create an even better design. Otherwise it will just be a barely modified SQ3.
PS: even in Apple’s case it took them purchasing the PA Semi POWERefficient company and 15 years to reach today’s A14 / M1 level. 15+ years!
I don’t think anyone other than Apple are building their own cores. They seem to just take off the shelf cores from ARM, and they just cut and paste them into the SOC.
It’s a different business model, than what we are used to. Because this is a new type of scale and deployment, which are outside of the abilities of most traditional system vendors.
So what the large cloud guys are doing is basically the same PlayStation/Xbox model. You get an off the shelf core from ARM, all you have to do is tweak it. Then TSMC/Samsung fabs it. And pegatron or Foxconn puts the rest of the system together. At the scales that these guys operate, it is cheaper for them to design their own infrastructure blocks and just have 3rd parties take care of the IP blocks and manufacturing.
I have no idea what the technical challenges were but I know patents can be an issue. One example is Intel holding back on licensing transputer bus technology and waiting until it was out of patent before using it. The buses on modern cpus are based on this and it took a similar amount of time before Intel and then AMD began using this type of idea.
Hypertransport was somewhat inspired by the transputer, but to think that they were waiting for the Transputer patents to expire is waaaay off. Besides, other companies, like SGI, were already doing similar chp-to-chip interconnects instead of shared front side buses already in the 90s.
Some systolic array designs had used the idea before Transputer as well.
Maybe you’re right but this is just what I read a long time ago. Inmos did try to licence technology but Intel refused from what I gather. Exactly which patent or patents were the issue I don’t have a clue. Maybe someone at STMicroelectronics (who acquired Inmos) would have clue?
Good or bad, that leaves Linux and the BSDs with intel.