Replies to post #138063 on Intel Corp (INTC)

[Unkwn]

ARM server vendors don't have to win the game, they just need to score points. Intel NEEDS to win... Like you said, it's a market that's too important to cede. But selling server processors at cost is not an option that Intel could sustain for very long.

The opposite situation in mobile. Are you short ARM?

[chipguy]

Amazon: ARM Chipmakers Aren’t Matching Intel’s Innovation

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-13/amazon-arm-chipmakers-aren-t-matching-intel-s-innovation.html

Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), which operates some of the world’s largest data centers, said makers of chips that use ARM Holdings Plc (ARM)’s technology aren’t keeping up with Intel Corp. (INTC)’s pace of innovation.

As a result, Amazon isn’t ready to start using alternatives to Intel’s chips in its servers, according to James Hamilton, a vice president for Amazon Web Services, which provides computing power and storage over the Internet to other companies.

“It’s just not quite moving fast enough,” Hamilton said in an interview, referring to the pace of development of ARM-chip technology. He spoke after a presentation at Amazon’s annual Web-services conference in Las Vegas.

ARM spokesman Edmund Gemmell declined to comment.

[chipguy]

just keep pretending there's no demand for ARM servers there

Maybe IDC and Gartner will buy mass spectrometers to detect the presence
of ARM servers in the market place at ppm trace levels.

[Ideal_Inv]

ARM server vendors don't have to win the game, they just need to score points. Intel NEEDS to win... Like you said, it's a market that's too important to cede. But selling server processors at cost is not an option that Intel could sustain for very long.

You do know that the current ARM/Intel debate as far as the server market is concerned is only for microservers, don't you? Microserver market as a percentage of the server market is forecasted to be only in the 5-10% range even by very optimistic IT analysts.

Intel will not cede that wimpy core microserver niche because it will provide an entre to the higher-end market for ARM. By doing this, Intel will make sure it has pretty much the entire high-end server market.

So, no, Intel can sell its microserver offerings at-cost for a long time. Can any ARM vendor do that, I don't think so.

[mas]

Just keep pretending there's no demand for ARM servers there

The pretence is in believing there is ! It is still much < 1% and holding. Normally the way it works in chip sales is you develop a disruptive product and people then demand the technology. ARM did it back to front, wildly claimed they would have a disruptive product and that there would be great demand for it before even the first A9/A15 array was built. Neither was or is true in the real world.

[Tenchu]

FPG,

ARM server vendors don't have to win the game, they just need to score points.

Given the lack of mobility in the server market (a.k.a. No one got fired for choosing Xeon), ARM would need to do much more than just score a few points.

This is a lot different than the way Xeon penetrated into the server market in the first place. Xeon didn't just "score a few points," but rather demonstrated clear, almost order of magnitude advantages over the RISC competition at the time.

Tenchu