Intel Rumored To Lose One Of Its Biggest Processor Clients - Google

[Mr_Troll]

Google Rumored To Switch To Qualcomm And Reduce Its Dependency On Intel – Does Qualcomm Have Such Resources At Its Disposal?
 

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Despite being the leading manufacturer of desktop, laptop and server processors, Intel has faced stiff resistance, particularly from manufacturers intending to commence a skirmish with the company in the server CPU market. Now, it looks like cracks in the firm’s armor have finally started to show as one of its biggest clients could be looking to sever the partnership.

 

 

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Google happens to be one of the biggest clients of Intel’s server processors. Now, the latest report from Bloomberg suggests that the advertising giant intends on publicly announcing its support for Qualcomm, the world’s largest mobile chipset manufacturer during an investor meeting that is going to take place next week. Both Google and Qualcomm has have already cooperated on design work and the former will commit to using the processors if they are able to meet performance goals. Currently, individuals hailing from both companies have declined to comment on the matter.

 

Qualcomm’s SoCs and custom developed processors use ARM’s architecture, which is ultimately used in chips that consume far less power as opposed to x86 processors, which will substantially reduce the power draw and make them more favorable for companies that want to pay for less overheads. Additionally, Intel does not go easy on its server processor pricing, and this is another area where Qualcomm will also be looking to attack. Long time back, there was news suggesting that Qualcomm was prepping a 64 bit cappable proccesor that had been codenamed Hydra.

 

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The cores would be custom made and will be able to handle high parallel applications, which is exactly the kind of performance feature that enterprises and consumers are looking for. On Google’s orders, we could see Intel’s market share dwindle, after possessing a firm grip over the market for the past decade. For those that do not know this, Intel currently possesses a market share of more than 99 percent of processors used in servers, making its dominance unmatched in this sector. However, the company’s struggles in tapping into the mobile chipset market are well known, and it was reported that it was actually giving away free chips to potential partners like Xiami in order to secure more clients for its mobile SoCs.

In other news, Google is also intending to be a completely green tech firm in the foreseeable future, so perhaps this also encouraged the company to reduce to dependency on Intel. Intel has enjoyed a huge operating income, and there is very little that its partners can do to negotiate prices, particularly when the company’s closest rival AMD has been unable to produce powerful chips at a competitive pricing element. According to the latest statistic, Google purchases as many as 300,000 processors every quarter for servers it manufactures, meaning that cutting off its relationship with Intel would definitely deliver a huge blow to the latter. It cannot be said what Qualcomm will offer to Google to rival the capabilities of Intel’s products, but during the next investor, we shall find out.

 

Wow. that might be big deal if it happens.

 

Source:http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-03/google-said-to-endorse-qualcomm-s-fledgling-server-chip-efforts-ik6ud7qg

http://wccftech.com/intel-rumored-to-lose-one-of-its-biggest-processor-clients-can-you-guess-who/

[Samfisher]

I don't think this meets the rules for news.  You have 1 sentence added in, and the rest are directly quoted from WCCFtech.

[CommandMan7]

If anyone is going to stop the behemoth that is Intel now, it will definitely be Qualcomm & ARM architecture.

[Misanthrope]

I guess Google's tired of waiting for an AMD comeback for Intel to become competitive price-wise again.

[KemoKa]

Wow... This is gonna be really interesting to watch go down, because this will really, REALLY give Qualcomm a massive bump into the top-tier competitive market. Good to see ARM finally being put into action on a massive scale that doesn't involve phones, tablets and microcontrollers.

[patrickjp93]

I'll believe it when I see it. Qualcomm is out of its element in server hardware (other than network switches). Second, of all the RISC architectures that could stand against Intel, I'd think PowerPC be the big one to stand up to Intel in the server space.

[KuJoe]

ARM is the future for servers, AMD knows it also which is why they are rolling out ARM-based Opterons.

[alexyy]

Honestly doubt that Intel are currently crushing everyone in the x86 market.

[Deli]

What are the advantages of ARM vs x86 besides energy efficiency and maybe price?

[patrickjp93]

5 minutes ago, Deli said:

What are the advantages of ARM vs x86 besides energy efficiency and maybe price?

Smaller cores since they're RISC and have fewer instructions (though that 24-core QCOM chip was as big as the guy's hand in the one photo we've seen), so you can potentially fit more of them on a chip at the same lithography vs. x86. That all being said, Intel's been making big enough strides in power efficiency server side I don't see power being much if any advantage for ARM these days.

[Deli]

1 hour ago, patrickjp93 said:

Smaller cores since they're RISC and have fewer instructions (though that 24-core QCOM chip was as big as the guy's hand in the one photo we've seen), so you can potentially fit more of them on a chip at the same lithography vs. x86. That all being said, Intel's been making big enough strides in power efficiency server side I don't see power being much if any advantage for ARM these days.

I's hoping you'll answer my question, because you're very knowledgeable in this field. Thank you for the explanation.

[FPSwithaWacomTablet]

3 hours ago, patrickjp93 said:

I'll believe it when I see it. Qualcomm is out of its element in server hardware (other than network switches). Second, of all the RISC architectures that could stand against Intel, I'd think PowerPC be the big one to stand up to Intel in the server space.

But wasn't PowerPC dead in the last decade? Even if clunky, x86 today still outperforms the PowerPC since no one bothered investing R&D in it. And also the problem of IBM not letting anyone use the IP for PowerPC.

[patrickjp93]

42 minutes ago, FPSwithaWacomTablet said:

But wasn't PowerPC dead in the last decade? Even if clunky, x86 today still outperforms the PowerPC since no one bothered investing R&D in it. And also the problem of IBM not letting anyone use the IP for PowerPC.

No, Power 8 is alive and kicking Intel's tail in scale-up workloads (anandtech has a review on this). Power 9 is coming in a year. And IBM is letting anyone use it. It's called the Open Power Alliance.

[Prysin]

5 hours ago, patrickjp93 said:

I'll believe it when I see it. Qualcomm is out of its element in server hardware (other than network switches). Second, of all the RISC architectures that could stand against Intel, I'd think PowerPC be the big one to stand up to Intel in the server space.

i can understand Google wants to move to lower powered ARM CPUs. That is fine, but why qualcomm? they dont even have proper x86 version of this... I could understand both why and why not AMDs ARM venture was considered, however AMD atleast know wtf they are doing when it comes to X86 and X86-64. but if i was a big company needing to cut back power, why move the worlds most extensive privatly owned server network to a new processor that hasnt even proven its worth yet?

[FPSwithaWacomTablet]

1 hour ago, patrickjp93 said:

No, Power 8 is alive and kicking Intel's tail in scale-up workloads (anandtech has a review on this). Power 9 is coming in a year. And IBM is letting anyone use it. It's called the Open Power Alliance.

Damn. What do you think of the Intel-MS oligopoly in the consumer market then?

[Prysin]

4 minutes ago, FPSwithaWacomTablet said:

Damn. What do you think of the Intel-MS oligopoly in the consumer market then?

Honestly, PowerX based CPUs are atrociously power hungry. They are right up there with AMD Opterons, like seriously so. But in certain workloads, they are so fast and scale so well that it outweighs the added power costs by far.

 

The reason PowerX based CPUs arent in consumer devices is because IBM decided they didnt want to deal with consumers ever again back in the 80s or 90s. Ever since then, IBM was hellbent on only serving the enterprise market.

 

But why did it end up like this?

Because there were two others fighting for the throne at the time. Intel and AMD, and both of them had chosen "better" ways atleast for consumer devices. At the time, IBM was a behemoth in the server market, Intel or AMD werent even able to compete in that regards, so IBM decided that "oh hell, we make way more money in enterprise, screw consumes. AMD and Intel can do price wars and GHz wars all they want. we're out".

 

However, IBM got complacant, and before they knew it, Intel came with their Xeon line of CPUs, which put pressure on IBM. BUT, AMD wasnt "out" just yet, and they pushed their Opteron CPUs, which would prove to also be very good for servers. AMD had a brief win with their Bulldozer based Opterons by being almost as good as a Xeon but half the price, but it didnt last more then a few months before intel decided, fuck it, we've had it with AMD, and launched a even faster, more power efficient and way better scaling Xeon product that kicked AMD out of the server market, and they have pretty much been completely irrelevant in the server space since mid 2012. However, IBM were in a shit situation back then. Their product was and still is, not that power efficient, but their performance and scaling is very respective and more often then not, equal or better then intel.

 

However, the issue is X86 and compatibility with software. PowerX and Xeon/Opteron uses different instructions, and thus requires vastly different optimizations and adaptations. Which can add to costs. Therefore, it is often cheaper to stick with what works, X86/x86-64, then try your luck with something else.9

[CTR640]

Good, I hope this will be true and Intel will loose everything.

AMD can't hurry up enough.

 

[Bouzoo]

1 hour ago, CTR640 said:

Good, I hope this will be true and Intel will loose everything.

AMD can't hurry up enough.

 

Why exactly would you want Intel to lose everything?

[patrickjp93]

2 hours ago, Prysin said:

i can understand Google wants to move to lower powered ARM CPUs. That is fine, but why qualcomm? they dont even have proper x86 version of this... I could understand both why and why not AMDs ARM venture was considered, however AMD atleast know wtf they are doing when it comes to X86 and X86-64. but if i was a big company needing to cut back power, why move the worlds most extensive privatly owned server network to a new processor that hasnt even proven its worth yet?

Google hasn't made the move yet. Right now it's about sampling and seeing which is better: Avoton or Qualcomm (or maybe even Cavium or Applied Micro).

[Prysin]

1 minute ago, patrickjp93 said:

Google hasn't made the move yet. Right now it's about sampling and seeing which is better: Avoton or Qualcomm (or maybe even Cavium or Applied Micro).

true, i still fail to see why google would move towards companies with next to zero experience with 32 or 64bit server loads.

 

[patrickjp93]

2 hours ago, Prysin said:

Honestly, PowerX based CPUs are atrociously power hungry. They are right up there with AMD Opterons, like seriously so. But in certain workloads, they are so fast and scale so well that it outweighs the added power costs by far.

 

The reason PowerX based CPUs arent in consumer devices is because IBM decided they didnt want to deal with consumers ever again back in the 80s or 90s. Ever since then, IBM was hellbent on only serving the enterprise market.

 

But why did it end up like this?

Because there were two others fighting for the throne at the time. Intel and AMD, and both of them had chosen "better" ways atleast for consumer devices. At the time, IBM was a behemoth in the server market, Intel or AMD werent even able to compete in that regards, so IBM decided that "oh hell, we make way more money in enterprise, screw consumes. AMD and Intel can do price wars and GHz wars all they want. we're out".

 

However, IBM got complacant, and before they knew it, Intel came with their Xeon line of CPUs, which put pressure on IBM. BUT, AMD wasnt "out" just yet, and they pushed their Opteron CPUs, which would prove to also be very good for servers. AMD had a brief win with their Bulldozer based Opterons by being almost as good as a Xeon but half the price, but it didnt last more then a few months before intel decided, fuck it, we've had it with AMD, and launched a even faster, more power efficient and way better scaling Xeon product that kicked AMD out of the server market, and they have pretty much been completely irrelevant in the server space since mid 2012. However, IBM were in a shit situation back then. Their product was and still is, not that power efficient, but their performance and scaling is very respective and more often then not, equal or better then intel.

 

However, the issue is X86 and compatibility with software. PowerX and Xeon/Opteron uses different instructions, and thus requires vastly different optimizations and adaptations. Which can add to costs. Therefore, it is often cheaper to stick with what works, X86/x86-64, then try your luck with something else.9

12 cores at 4.6 GHz can draw 150+W all day if they're the best solution for my workload. In the SAP benchmarks and transactional workloads like databases, x86 gets creamed by Power 8. They're not that power hungry for what they are.

 

1 minute ago, Prysin said:

true, i still fail to see why google would move towards companies with next to zero experience with 32 or 64bit server loads.

 

Eh, if it's for lightweight work like hosting the email servers or web page forwarding, you hardly need top of the line performance hardware to do that. And if it's significantly cheaper, it might be worth a try.

[-rascal-]

I kind of saw this coming...

• Google's own programming language (Go Lang)
• IBM also using Go Lang for their Z Systems mainframe
• Google / IBM shifting to ARM processors for their servers
• The need for more power efficient computing
• Even AMD's got ARM Processors in the workings

 

Then again, Intel is thinking the same thing as well

• Acquiring Altera
• Promoting Xeon + FPGA
• Intel 3DX-Point data storage (512GB+ of storage capacity on a DDR4 module form factor with speed several magnitudes faster than PCI-Express)

[patrickjp93]

1 hour ago, CTR640 said:

Good, I hope this will be true and Intel will loose everything.

AMD can't hurry up enough.

 

1) Keep dreaming

2) Why do you want Intel dead? They're leading the charge on improving hardware and software. People need to learn to program better and not force legacy support all the way back to the Pentium IV (like Windows 10) and thus not use newer, higher-performance instructions which do multiple things in 1 step.

[Prysin]

1 minute ago, patrickjp93 said:

12 cores at 4.6 GHz can draw 150+W all day if they're the best solution for my workload. In the SAP benchmarks and transactional workloads like databases, x86 gets creamed by Power 8. They're not that power hungry for what they are.

 

Eh, if it's for lightweight work like hosting the email servers or web page forwarding, you hardly need top of the line performance hardware to do that. And if it's significantly cheaper, it might be worth a try.

what you do need though, is high amounts of memory, with ample IO. Something i have yet to see ARM based server CPUs being able to supply in equal quantity as x86/x86-64/Power CPUs.

 

I know AMDs offering does have ample memory availible, and i can understand the risk and benefits of going with AMD from a customer perspective. But nothing ive seen in rumors from Anandtech or other review sites suggest that the competing ARM server SKUs can even match Intel, AMD or IBM in terms of IO/memory features

[patrickjp93]

1 hour ago, Prysin said:

what you do need though, is high amounts of memory, with ample IO. Something i have yet to see ARM based server CPUs being able to supply in equal quantity as x86/x86-64/Power CPUs.

 

I know AMDs offering does have ample memory availible, and i can understand the risk and benefits of going with AMD from a customer perspective. But nothing ive seen in rumors from Anandtech or other review sites suggest that the competing ARM server SKUs can even match Intel, AMD or IBM in terms of IO/memory features

It can't be that tough to make a quad-channel memory controller these days... I mean Intel's moving up to 6-way with Skylake E5/E7 and for Knight's Landing.