Google is promoting the growth of open source tools for designing semis. The science fiction version of this story leads to everyone designing chips, the reality is going to be much narrower, but still means many more companies designing their own semis.
We think Qualcomm is expanding its “ASIC” business, helping hyperscalers in designing their own chips.
Fifty years ago the Street fell in love with diverse conglomerates like Gulf + Western. How different are the sprawling operations of the major Internet companies today?
MobiledgeX has reportedly been acquired by Google for a modest price. This demonstrates the challenges that small, innovative companies are starting to face when going up against the Giants.
Google’s new Aquila protocol is interesting because it begs the question what do they need it for? But it also harkens back to the days of packet switched networks, in an ironic sort of way.
Google has a new chip – the TiN – for networking. An interesting chip in its own right but we also see it as a sign that Google is creating tools that let any software coder design a chip. And if Google can do it, maybe everyone else will too. Someday.
The cloud service providers – AWS, GCP and Azure – have to support the software of all their customers, this complicates the case for them building their own chips.
MWC is once again the venue for the global persuasion campaign between competing visions of the O-RAN project. The big swing factor this time around is the growing presence of hyperscalers, notably Microsoft Azure.
Did Aliens Build the Pyramids? – Did Ali really build its own CPU? It looks like they got help from a few outside parties which just shows that designing chips, especially CPUs, is still hard.
Is the Cloud Your Friend? – The big cloud service providers are buying up the world’s communications infrastructure and they are funding those purchases by the enormous profits they make on their core services. Hard to see this trend going on indefinitely