
Marvell Technology to buy chipmaker Cavium for about $6B - rbanffy
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/marvell-technology-strikes-deal-to-buy-chipmaker-cavium-for-6-billion/
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jgowdy
The deployment of ARM in the data center has been more words/vapor than
reality for years. And if you try one of Scaleway’s baremetal ARM offerings,
you realize that using Intel CPUs is similar to using an SSD. Once you use it,
it’s difficult to use something far slower. I’m not holding my breath on ARM
in the Server, and I think we will see ARM desktops become widespread _much_
sooner than ARM servers.

All that being said, I really want ARM servers to happen. One because a
lifetime of x86 monoculture makes me curious about other platforms, and two
because like AMD when they’re pushing hard, it’ll drive Intel out of their
slumber. Intel’s major advancements come when they’re at least challenged if
not threatened. Otherwise they do the equivalent of the old +25Mhz SKUs.

Still if I could have one wish, and it had to be CPU related, I would prefer
to see an open ISA like RISC-V delivered by multiple vendors competing become
widespread.

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mtgx
Scaleway uses the ARM cores of 2011. The cutting edge ARM server cores from
Qualcomm and Cavium are a little faster than that.

[https://blog.cloudflare.com/arm-takes-wing/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/arm-
takes-wing/)

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bhouston
These were impressive results from Qualcomm and Cloudflare. It seems like a
serious threat to Intel.

Cavium not so much for some reason, not sure why their numbers are so much
worse that Qualcomm.

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rwmj
That was the (somewhat old now) Cavium ThunderX. Cavium are prototyping
ThunderX2 which has better performance.

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tonysdg
I wonder how this will affect Cavium's ThunderX line. When Applied Micro was
bought by Macom, their X-Gene line was more or less trashed. If this keeps
happening to companies trying to develop ARM servers, you'll never see an ARM
server in a datacenter.

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pinewurst
Remember though that X-Gene wasn't very good when examined. And the current
ThunderX is actually the continuation of the very interesting (and canceled
by) Broadcom Vulcan, not the mediocre original.

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tonysdg
Oh I'm well aware -- the lab I work in bought a couple of X-Gene 1s for
testing, and even an X-Gene 2. They were complete and utter crap performance-
and power-wise -- but they were (at the time) the only thing available.

Didn't know that about the ThunderX -- fascinating! Thanks!

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rwmj
I wouldn't expect much from ThunderX(1). Qualcomm Amberwing or Cavium
ThunderX2 are where it's at for Xeon-like performance.

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arcanus
Remarkable the consolidation going on in general, but silicon is really seeing
a wave of (possible) mergers and acquisitions.

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pjs_
Why is the image a picture of a D-Wave chip?

