
Qualcomm Plans Exit From Server Chips - ksec
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-07/qualcomm-is-said-to-plan-exit-from-server-chips-amid-cost-cuts
======
masklinn
It's a bit odd that this would happen so soon after Cloudflare started testing
& praising ARM-based server (and specifically Qualcomm's Centriq). For
reference:

[https://blog.cloudflare.com/arm-takes-wing/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/arm-
takes-wing/) where they find Centriq is mostly performance-competitive with
Skylake at a significantly lower TDP/power point modulo platform
support/optimisation e.g. Go's ARMv8 backend being immature and lacking
optimised assembly routines

[https://blog.cloudflare.com/neon-is-the-new-
black/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/neon-is-the-new-black/) where they
demonstrate the latter by simd-optimizing jpegtrans for ARMv8[0] leading the
Centriq 2452 to reach (and even overtake) Xeon 4116's performance-per-worker
and blowing its throughput-per-watt out the water (25 image/second/watt on
Centriq 2452 versus under 10 on the 4116)

[0] as they'd previously done for AMD64, though starting with equivalent
optimisations using SIMD intrinsics then adding ARM-specific assembly for
further gains as "the compiler in that case produces somewhat suboptimal code"
using intrinsics[1]

[1] because according to a commenter and SO[2] GCC inserts unnecessary
register copies when involving NEON yielding to very poor machine code,
Microsoft's ARM compiler is apparently stellar and Clang used to be meh but
greatly caught up between 2012 and now

[2] [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9828567/arm-neon-
intrins...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9828567/arm-neon-intrinsics-
vs-hand-assembly)

~~~
jsheard
Isn't it a bit dubious that Cloudflares articles don't disclose that they have
received investments from Qualcomm?

[https://www.qualcommventures.com/companies/data-center-
enter...](https://www.qualcommventures.com/companies/data-center-
enterprise/cloudflare)

~~~
nimish
Very much so. It undermines their value argument considerably: what kind of
sweetheart deal did they get that a regular customer wouldn't?

~~~
detaro
The only cost-related argument I can see in those posts is about power
consumption? Cost of the hardware isn't mentioned (and probably not even
available when comparing engineering samples)

I'd still liked to have seen the relationship disclosed, but IMHO the validity
of the posts is only in question if you assume they'd actually lie about
results.

~~~
ekianjo
> is only in question if you assume they'd actually lie about results.

Were the results reproduced/confirmed by any other large experiment?

------
kbumsik
Yeah, who would want to use ARM server, especially these days? Performance and
power efficiency is not the only story nowadays. Most modern cloud servers
rely on virtualization technologies. AFAIK ARM is very weak in running VMs.
AMD's AMD-V struggles with that too. Even Docker EE does not support ARM (CE
does but it's not been a long time yet).

~~~
cat199
This comment in 1996:

Yeah, who would want to use an Intel server, especially these days? Cost and
vendor-lock-in is not the only story nowadays. Most modern data center servers
rely on high-availability technologies. AFAIK Intel is very weak in running
HA. AMD struggles with that too. Even Linux/FreeBSD does not support HA.

------
osivertsson
Which company could be interested in buying this data-center CPU division from
Qualcomm?

~~~
ksec
My guess would be Samsung, I don't see anyone else being a good fit. Centriq
is already being Fabbed by Samsung, it also has a in development Next
Generation CPU that has improved ISA and uses Samsung 7nm. They also own
Joyent, although I am not sure if it is relevant anymore.

~~~
monocasa
My guess is no one. The whole point was to apply the perf/watt gains you see
in mobile SoCs to a larger die. Qualcomm wouldn't want to sell it to Samsung,
just to see Exynos get better. Better to just destroy the project and write it
off as a loss rather than help a competitor in your primary market.

~~~
ksec
[b]Server Chips[/b]

------
dmitrygr
Didn't they just make their entrance into server chips?

~~~
mino
Indeed: the Centriq announcement was maybe 6 months ago.

What does this mean in practice?

~~~
vertex-four
Probably that they were trying to chase one or two major clients, who turned
out to be uninterested.

~~~
__d
Or ended up going with Cavium's ThunderX2 instead?

~~~
igravious
bit of history here:
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/08/cavium_thunderx2/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/08/cavium_thunderx2/)

First Broadcom, now Qualcomm – if neither of those two can't crack the server
market I don't hold out much hope for anyone else.

~~~
baybal2
I's say that nobody really tried hard enough. All of them can make a true
killer product. And Intel has little defence against defeat in details, other
than "being Intel." Many, many niches are not being hold tight by Intel, and
they can't spare resources to fight them all.

------
ausjke
who else left for ARM-Server-Chips? so far many if not all ARM-server efforts
fell apart.

it took a long while for xeon to get where it is today in the data center,
maybe it is as hard as making Xeon run on cellphones comparing to getting ARM
into Servers.

~~~
nappy-doo
Cavium/Broadcomm

~~~
__d
Ampere

------
bhouston
I think the issue may be that the core-war between Intel and AMD has heated up
recently and that will push the performance bar higher fairly quickly.

~~~
ahartmetz
Not much seems to be happening on the performance front, but Intel can't
charge quasi-monopoly prices anymore. They started to sell 6-core desktop CPUs
at the same price that they were selling 4-cores for... dunno, 10 years? In
servers, Epyc is applying the price pressure, and it actually has some
performance advantages over Intel's offerings (more cores, more PCIe lanes).

~~~
imtringued
How is a 50% increase in core counts "not much on the performance front"?
Intel used to push out yearly 5% IPC increases + 5% clock rate increases
before AMD released Zen.

