
The Server At Peak X86 - gaius
http://www.nextplatform.com/2016/09/15/server-peak-x86/
======
jonstokes
This comments thread is off-track. This is not yet another article about how
ARM is poised to eat Intel's lunch, and that cites (worthless) Geekbench
scores to make that claim. No, this was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan,
who actually knows hardware.

His basic argument, at least on my quick reading, is that right now, Intel's
Xeon margins are insane -- some 50% -- and x86's market share is north of 99%
in servers. Furthermore, Intel, Microsoft, and Red Hat are sucking up all of
the margin in the stack, and leaving everyone else to fight for scraps. (We've
seen this "Intel eats all the margin" movie before in the PC space, and I
wrote about it here: [https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/17/how-intel-missed-the-
iphon...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/17/how-intel-missed-the-iphone-
revolution/))

So, these three things -- an x86 monoculture, crazy high margins, and three
companies sucking up all the profits from the rest of the stack -- are both
individually and collectively unsustainable. Morgan seems to be arguing that a
rational market is going to take care of this arrangement one way or the
other. By virtue of its margins and market dominance, Xeon has a massive
target on its back, and there is a ton of ingenuity gunning for it. So at some
point things will change.

So no, this isn't yet another in a near-decade long string of "ARM vs. x86 as
told by Geekbench, with a side of OMG Apple" articles. He's actually pointing
out that, technical considerations aside, there is a set of market conditions
currently prevailing that looks unsustainable on its face, and at some point,
like when pressure builds up along a fault line and then gives way, there will
be a big shift.

~~~
legulere
> arguing that a rational market is going to take care of this arrangement one
> way or the other

That's a silly argument. If the market would be rational and it would take
care of this we wouldn't have landed in this situation in the first place.

The reality is more that we're more in a winner takes it all situation.

~~~
TheCowboy
Drop the "rational" to avoid that baggage, and the argument is certainly
valid.

It could be a winner takes all if it was a huge technical hurdle to move many
x86-based systems to ARM and back. But it's likely never been easier, and a
lot of software already works on x86 and ARM. Unless x86 can consistently
perform better for less power consumption and price, there will be
competition.

~~~
fulafel
There's aren't any big architectural reasons that x86 would need to be less
power efficient. Intel already had a go at that side but very few people
bought the low power server chips (Avoton etc). AMD also hasn't had much luck
with low power server chips (see SeaMicro etc).

One big reason is that halving the CPU power consumption doesn't nearly halve
the server power consumption, but it often goes pretty close to halving the
system performance. And CPUs are pretty efficient at idling so you're really
only paying for the power consumption when there is work to be done - instead
paying for larger fleet of reserve servers. And of course scaling to more but
slower servers means a lot of expensive software/admin complexity.

------
AstroJetson
I disagree with the article author and at the end of the super long article,
so does IDC. For the big workloads, x86 systems are going to be on top for the
next years. Yes ARM is making strides, but it will take time before the move
into data centers at any significant rate.

The trend lines from the IDC charts show continued growth, 5-6% growth is
pretty decent as you remember manufacturing costs continue to drop.

~~~
bitwize
The Apple A10 is trouncing lower-end Intel kit already. We may be looking at a
future of client-side computing dominated by Apple; if they can get their shit
in one sock cloud-wise they'll make dents in the server space too. Think
Amazon AWS, but running Mac OS X server and fully integrated with OS X. Easy
peasy deployment of your Rails app straight from your MBP dev box right to the
cloud, with almost zero config management required.

~~~
protomyth
Why would I as a buyer trust Apple in the server space? They've already
withdrawn once and they cannot even keep pace at the workstation level (Mac
Pro).

~~~
gaius
Twice

Before the Xserve there was the Apple Network Server
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Network_Server](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Network_Server)

~~~
protomyth
I supposed we can A/UX to the list. So, its A/UX -> AIX -> OS X Server. I do
admit an iOS Server would be an interesting product. I guess it would be all
containers all the time.

~~~
watersb
(The chronology of Apple *nix is correct, but they are very different
products. A/UX for 68k. AIX for PowerPC is an IBM OS. And OS X from NextStep.)

~~~
protomyth
Yep, which I think is the point of trusting Apple in the server segment. That
they are all different adds to the point.

------
bluedino
Google has been quoted as stating if they could get a 20 percent
power/performance advantage buy switching to IBM Power they would do so, even
if it were only for a single generation.

My question is, wouldn't this be possible with ARM?

~~~
lallysingh
I don't think so. AFAIK, ARM performs well in computation/watt on the low end
of computation. But you have to get above a certain performance level to
amortize the power overhead of the rest of the computer (motherboard, ram,
etc).

But that's mostly a guess.

------
imtringued
So why does AMD bet on Zen instead of creating their next ARM SoC? The A1100
is pretty good on paper except the CPU but they released it two years too late
and the availability still isn't great.

~~~
bryanlarsen
According to the article, x86 constitutes 99.3% of the market. I think AMD
would rather have a small piece of the 99.3% rather than a large piece of the
0.7%, even if that 0.7% grows dramatically.

------
kalleboo
When this article talks about "Unix systems" as something seperate from X86,
what does that mean? Itanium and... SPARC? (Assuming POWER comes under "IBM"?)

~~~
ajdlinux
Power is a completely separate architecture and product line from "IBM
mainframes" (i.e. System z), and "traditional" (i.e. AIX) IBM Power Systems
products are generally considered "Unix systems".

(Disclaimer: I work for IBM Power Systems, opinions my own)

~~~
kalleboo
I'm not in the space at all, so from outside "Unix systems" seems like a very
arbitrary label - since I'm assuming most of the X86 machines are running
Linux or BSD which are very much Unix, I guess the "systems" part is where
there is some specific definition

~~~
ajdlinux
"Unix systems" when referred to in this space generally means _proprietary_
Unixes (which are all Open Group certified) - Solaris, AIX, etc etc.

~~~
kalleboo
Solaris also runs on x86 though, so a "Unix system" means what? Software
licenses? Hardware sold with a software license? But that would also include
x86 systems?

~~~
acdha
It's really a historical label at this point but to a first approximation it
means that it didn't start on commodity PC hardware, even if decades later it
now runs on x86 boxes.

The ancient history is that mainframes (mostly IBM) were so expensive (upfront
+ license/support) that many places jumped onto minicomputers starting in the
1960s and that process repeated itself a generation later as hardware
continued to get cheaper and (later) Unix went from a curiosity to something a
lot of people wanted and was generally both considerably cheaper and —
especially appealing – meant you at least in theory weren't just locking
yourself into yet another proprietary single-vendor platform.

For awhile, that meant companies like Sun, HP, DEC, Data General, SGI, etc.
would sell you their hardware running something Unix-like and this was popular
enough that even IBM started selling AIX to avoid losing customers entirely.
At some point this was termed “Open Systems Unix” since the theory was that
you could mix vendors fairly well, although anyone who worked in that period
could tell you that the definition of “Unix” or “C” had significant variations
across vendors.

As x86 improved, that cycle repeated again. Unlike its predecessors the 80386
was 32-bit and had hardware memory management and permissions so it was much
easier to maintain the Unix model there, and the sky-rocketing volume meant
other hardware platforms found it increasingly hard to remain competitive on
performance or cost. One by one they either gave up and ported to x86, left
the market, or tried to specialize in some niche like SGI's various high-
performance computing products with exotic interconnects, graphics hardware,
etc.

