<story><title>AMD lands Google, Twitter as customers with newest server chip</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amd-alphabet/amd-lands-google-twitter-as-customers-with-newest-server-chip-idUSKCN1UX2KL</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>erikpukinskis</author><text>Must be strange to work on a huge technical project knowing your work will likely never be used and is there primarily to put pressure on someone else to lower their prices.&lt;p&gt;I guess you get paid, and can think of it like a hobby project for your own technical chops. But still.</text></item><item><author>mktmkr</author><text>The historical context here is that AMD once had a monopoly inside Google&amp;#x27;s datacenters and pissed it away by shipping the horribly broken Barcelona followed by the not very broken, but also not very fast, Istanbul.  This is a return to form for them, after a decade of poor form.  The important thing for an operator like Google or Amazon is pricing power. As long as they can brandish a competing platform under the nose of Intel sales reps, they can get a better deal from Intel regardless of which they really prefer. You may have noted that a few years ago Google was showing a POWER platform at trade shows. That has the same purpose of putting Intel (and AMD) on notice that they have the capability to port their whole world to a different architecture if needed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>recursive</author><text>This is my favorite kind of work, because there&amp;#x27;s no chance you&amp;#x27;ll ever get called by an irate customer.</text></comment>
<story><title>AMD lands Google, Twitter as customers with newest server chip</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amd-alphabet/amd-lands-google-twitter-as-customers-with-newest-server-chip-idUSKCN1UX2KL</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>erikpukinskis</author><text>Must be strange to work on a huge technical project knowing your work will likely never be used and is there primarily to put pressure on someone else to lower their prices.&lt;p&gt;I guess you get paid, and can think of it like a hobby project for your own technical chops. But still.</text></item><item><author>mktmkr</author><text>The historical context here is that AMD once had a monopoly inside Google&amp;#x27;s datacenters and pissed it away by shipping the horribly broken Barcelona followed by the not very broken, but also not very fast, Istanbul.  This is a return to form for them, after a decade of poor form.  The important thing for an operator like Google or Amazon is pricing power. As long as they can brandish a competing platform under the nose of Intel sales reps, they can get a better deal from Intel regardless of which they really prefer. You may have noted that a few years ago Google was showing a POWER platform at trade shows. That has the same purpose of putting Intel (and AMD) on notice that they have the capability to port their whole world to a different architecture if needed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>drewg123</author><text>Just imagine how nice a project is when you&amp;#x27;d don&amp;#x27;t have to worry about supporting it for years.</text></comment>