Cracks in the Firmament
Arm CPUs are Eating the World – Twitter is moving to AWS and using Arm-based CPUs, a major milestone in the advance of Arm into the data center and really bad news for Intel.
Arm CPUs are Eating the World – Twitter is moving to AWS and using Arm-based CPUs, a major milestone in the advance of Arm into the data center and really bad news for Intel.
Amazon AI Assemble – Amazon launches its ML accelerator, demonstrating how hard it is to supply the data center industry with chips.
Start-up Semis Live – CRN published a great list of ‘hot’ semis start-ups. We hope this encourages more investors to support chip companies.
Duct Tape and 5G – Could Huawei use old, unencumbered technology to build its own data centers? It is possible, but highly impractical.
Semis Musical Chairs – AMD for XLNX – AMD is now competing with Intel everywhere that matters, and every other major chip company has to worry about relying on FPGAs owned by a potential competitor.
What is happening to the supply chain? There are some significant bottlenecks in the electronics supply chain right now, with even some of the most overlooked components in shortage. Blame 2020, but also, call ALL your suppliers, just to double check.
AI accelerators are special purpose chips whose appeal is economic rather than technical. And it is now likely that China has more stand alone AI accelerator companies than the US has, or maybe ever will have.
Who benefits from Huawei’s predicament? – Foreign and domestics competitors win, foreign suppliers see little change, customers lose a supplier, but the biggest losers are China’s aspiring component vendors.
What will happen to Huawei? Huawei now has very few options, and no good ones, for obtaining most of its key components.
Trouble at Intel – Intel’s delay of 7nm chips is a near-term financial problem, a boon to its data center competitor, a geopolitical problem and not least a major identity crisis for the company.